Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi's mantra generates fizz in social media

WASHINGTON: Some see in her comments signs of a supermom or alpha-mother. Others detect signs of "mommy guilt" in a career-obsessed woman. In either case, remarks by PepsiCo's India-born CEO Indra Nooyi that that professional women "can't have it all" and have to just cope with the guilt of not giving their everything to a domestic home life has generated a firestorm in the social media and beyond about balancing motherhood and workplace.

Nooyi's remarks came in response to a question by Atlantic Magazine chairman David Bradley about a controversial essay by former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter titled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All". Nooyi agreed with Slaughter's views, saying, "Anne-Marie's on to something. I don't think women can have it all, we pretend we have it all," and then expanded the discussion into her own struggles trying to balance home and career.

She went on to relate how she and her husband Raj Nooyi have been married 34 years, they have two daughters, and every day she had to make a decision "about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother." She explained how she had to usually skip a Wednesday morning class coffee with other mothers at her daughter's Catholic school. Her daughter would come home and would reel off all the mothers that were there and say, "You were not there, mom."

"The first few times, I would die with guilt. But I developed coping mechanisms. I called the school and I said, 'Give me a list of mothers that are not there.' So when she came home in the evening she said, 'You were not there, you were not there.' And I said, "Ah ha, Mrs Redd wasn't there, Mrs so-and-so wasn't there. So I'm not the only bad mother."

Despite such coping mechanisms, Nooyi said, it is difficult to maintain a high-pressure career with raising kids. "My observation, David, is that the biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other. Total, complete conflict. When you have to have kids, you have to build your career. Just as you're rising to middle management, your kids need you because they're teenagers," she said.

One of Nooyi's solutions, which generated a lot of social media chatter, was to enlist her employees for help. When her daughter was young and wanted to play Nintendo, for instance, she would call Nooyi's office. A receptionist would run her through a list of questions, including, "Have you finished your homework?" If her daughter said yes, the receptionist would give her permission to play Nintendo for 30 minutes.

"You have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our families. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've been a good mom. I'm not sure," Nooyi said.