Skirts and Ladders 'Computing is too important to be left to men' — Karen Spärck Jones

“The best way to shatter the glass ceiling, she said, is first to shatter the myth that you can have it all.” – Mrs Moneypenny

Monday is International Women's Day 2010. I had expected one of the FT writers, a Mrs Moneypenny, to write about it - because she touches on a range of interesting issues around women in business - but instead she chose to ignore it and focused on something else.

It's an unheard, unsaid, shameful truth: women can't have it all.

It's thankfully not because we are somehow inferior. No, it's because no one can. Superman doesn't exist. Superwoman, less so. No one can have it all. Men have never had it all - it's just that 99.9% of them like to think they do, and like to tell the world it. But the sad truth is that men made the decision to go for the career and to leave their families behind. There is a small but fighting group of stay at home dads, and while they get the occasional mention in some news article, they generally are fighting for parental rights and leave the work/life balance issue alone. Most men, it seems, don't feel the need to have it all.

So why do women? There are countless reports and surveys produced showing the lack of women on FTSE 100 boards, and even more reports (usually produced by our Scandinavian friends) quantifying the benefits of gender balanced boards. No wonder career driven women are so focused on entering that elusive echelon where they can increase profitability by their mere existence.

Unfortunately, the truth has finally emerged. You can go and sit on a board and be that superwoman, but something else has got to give. It doesn't take a genius to realise that it's going to be the family - if you managed to find the time to have one in the first place. Countless networks and organisations work to find ways to enable women to keep their hands and feet firmly in both worlds, but is it time to admit defeat? Perhaps women can't have it all.