Is having it all really all there is?

As women take their hard-won places in corporate boardrooms, operating theaters, flight decks and classrooms, it can seem that the goal of gender equity has been met. Yet this notion often overlooks some of the real challenges that women face when navigating both career and family expectations.

Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College, a women"s undergraduate college affiliated with Columbia University, will bring these issues to Tulane University as she talks about her latest book, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.

Spar calls for a new feminist agenda, drawing on her experiences as a professor, mother of three and wife of 25 years. Previously a Harvard Business School professor, Spar has taught courses on the politics of international business, comparative capitalism and economic development.

Her lecture will focus on how American women"s lives have — and have not — changed over the past 50 years, and how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection.

Spar recently told The Huffington Post, “Feminism was meant to remove a fixed set of expectations; instead, we now interpret it as a route to personal perfection. Because we feel we can do anything, we feel we have to do everything.”

Spar will reflect on her personal experiences, as well as speak to the role of women"s education and leadership skills, in a public talk on Monday (March 9) at 7 p.m. in the Stibbs Room of the Lavin-Bernick Center on the Tulane uptown campus. Her talk is the 2015 Alberto-Culver Women in Business Lecture, organized annually by Newcomb College Institute and co-sponsored by the Women in Business student organization.

The Alberto-Culver Lecture Series, established by Carol Bernick, a 1974 graduate of Newcomb College at Tulane, invites distinguished women to campus to meet with students and discuss topics about women in business.

Aidan Smith is external affairs officer for the Newcomb College Institute.