Last week I was at BlogHer, and it was great — great to meet so many amazing bloggers in person, and great to feel like feminism and activism are alive and well.
The closing keynote was nominally about using your voice, your platform and your power for advocacy, but really was a much deeper conversation about the role of women in public life. As much as I liked what the panelists were saying — their commentary skirted a big elephant in the room of the women’s movement: that mothers (80% of women) are being left behind. When I asked about this, the women on the panel were most interested in absolving the women’s movement of blame. And it’s true; feminists have tried to advocate, but not practically. Corporate cultures don’t change because they recognize “the right thing to do,” and they won’t spend money on programs to support working mothers without seeing significant pay-off.
It irks me when we talk about the “sacrifices” or “trade-offs” that women make without contextualizing those choices with an understanding of the institutional discrimination mothers face. The women’s movement has been careful to validate every woman’s individual life decisions, especially to work in a formal setting, full-time, part-time or not at all. What the movement hasn’t said is that this “choice” is frequently made under duress.
Most stay at home mothers are not homemakers by choice; circumstance, lack of skills and under-education has forced their hand. Those who do have education and skills may still have their hand forced by institutional sexism that values a male or childless employee over an equally credentialed mother.
Part of this is mindset. Certainly we must win the hearts and minds of our supervisors and colleagues so that they no longer believe that mothers work less hard or are less ambitious. But institutional discrimination against mothers manifests in small and unnecessary ways that are much easier to address than hearts and minds. Fostering women’s advancement in the workplace need not require painful choices between work and family — they can coexist without either suffering. Consider the following three scenarios:
Scenario #1: A friend started a prestigious MBA program recently that had a week long “in-residence” period at a conference center. She was nursing her new baby during this time, and asked to be allowed to bring the child along with a 24-hour caregiver so that she could continue breastfeeding and participate fully in the planned social and academic activities. (As any nursing mother knows, pumping round the clock for six days takes a lot of time out of the day.) Allowing the baby would represent a relatively minor exception, while holding firm to their no-family policy would require my friend to make a life-altering decision between continuing to nurse her baby and pursuing an MBA. The program ultimately allowed the baby, but not without much discussion. Small change for the school, huge impact for the working mother.
Scenario #2: At BlogHer, I met Susan Niebur of Women in Planetary Science. She pointed out that one reason women are marginalized in the science community is that there isn’t childcare available at most conferences. Since many female scientists are married to other scientists, the two have to make a decision about which partner can attend a particular conference, and which stays home with the kids. Typically women stay back, and are therefore less able to present and may have their name omitted from important papers. The diminished public attention hurts their careers. I would love to see some of the money we commit to promoting women in STEM support childcare at conferences; it’s an easy fix, but no one recognizes it as a root of the problem. Small change for the scientific community, big impact for the working mother.
Scenario #3: TechyDad was liberated enough to attend BlogHer, and told a story at our Worklife session about a company he worked for that offered sick pay, but stipulated that it could only be used for the employee, not an employee’s child. So if an employee had to stay home, s/he was required to use a vacation day. This kind of policy — that would be easy to change and would have relatively little impact on a company’s bottom line — signals that primary caregivers have low value in the corporate infrastructure. It’s the kind of policy that makes women think they are powerless in their company environments and that they might as well just quit. It means something to women, but virtually nothing beyond principle to companies. Small change for the company, big impact for the working mother.
These are three of dozens of small changes that could meaningfully address institutional sexism, gender inequality and the pay gap. Because it appears that gender discrimination persists in the working world at least in part because mothers are not treated fairly. And I’m not waiting anymore for the women’s movement to recognize this. Feminist advocates are focusing on massive change, but it may be that relatively small and inexpensive modifications in how we do business would help to achieve our goals bigger, stronger and faster.
Related links:
- David Indiviglio has a bogus post on “Why Mothers Fall Behind” in The Atlantic. Indiviglio suggests that women take off more time to be caregivers and therefore are fairly denied advancement opportunities commensurate with their peers. This is an old and discredited canard. Maria Shriver’s report, A Woman’s Nation includes research indicating that only 10% of the pay gap can be explained by career choices including taking time off to be a caregiver.
- Nancy Folbre at The New York Times Economix blog writes about how the women’s movement has supported mothers. My beef is not whether they have supported, but how. Their solutions have been impractical.
- Fertile Feminism points out that it’s not feminism’s fault that mothers have fallen behind; it’s bad public policy and corporate culture. I agree, but the women’s movement hasn’t done enough to practically combat the problems.
- Momania asks “Do Kids Kill Women’s Careers?” Spoiler alert: yes.
Excellent. I especially liked Scenario #2. Childcare at scientific conferences and conferences in general would be marvelous.
Thanks Mamabee.
You and others inspired me to reach higher, do more.
Re your post, I thought Susan said they had made that change, and introduced childcare, and that had made a big difference. Maybe Susan can correct me if I am wrong?
Many friends who are nursing often have to raise the issue of whether they can bring their babies to a conference, a work dinner, a trip, etc.
They’re often successful, but as you point out, not without it being a matter of much debate.
I’d like to see nursing rooms and childcare become the norm at any business or educational event. Dare I say in the same way that most business conferences nearly always cater to men (and women) by providing golf?
TMB,
I’m not comfortable with the distinction you’re trying to draw between “the women’s movement”, and “feminists” and mothers.
I think of myself (and many others) as being in all of those groups at once. Who do you think is asking for lactation rooms at the office? That would be me– a mom/feminist/local-level member of the women’s movement. Who else is making sure that women of color are invited in for job talks, even though they went to Spelman and not Yale? That would be me, a mom/feminist/local-level member of the women’s movement. And making sure that there is childcare during evening student orientations…. again, done by a mom/feminist/local-level member of the women’s movement.
It sure isn’t being done by people who aren’t feminists, or aren’t members of the movement.
I’m not disagreeing with your ultimate point– that more change can happen when we look for local, small efforts of change that clear the way for other women/mothers. Yet, I disagree that feminists/mothers/the women’s movement have been impractical in our efforts to move businesses/organizations to change. I think we’ve been very pragmatic and also pretty resilient.
I do wish feminists/the women’s movement/mothers were more powerful in the workforce and more influential, and I’m not particularly happy with the constant argument of “the business case” for diversity, but I do wonder “who” this feminist movement is that has let you down.
Hi TMB,
You, as always, make some wonderful observations. My experience related to change is that both the broad, systemic, cultural change and powerful small “wins” need to live together and reinforce each other. Small wins alone and disconnected to broader strategic advocacy lose their collective influence, but larger initiatives that don’t leverage small, in the trenches improvements risk losing their relevance to real people. Now, if it were easy to marry and sustain the two together…well, that’s the real trick.
I’ve seen the childcare and conferences issue raised in women in science forums. I don’t go to many conferences anymore (mostly because of the fact that I’m less of a practicing scientist and more of a manager these days) so I don’t know how well that is done.
I went to a local Women in Bioscience conference when my first baby was 6 weeks old. I’d been to this conference before, and found it really valuable, so I decided to go. It was my first day away from my first baby… so you can imagine how magnified everything felt. And when I asked about a place to pump, they couldn’t come up with one. I ended up pumping in my car.
I’ve actually been thinking about the “motherhood penalty” lately, and wondering how much our guilt plays into it. Working moms have a lot of guilt, most of which I think is misplaced- reinforced, if not invented, by the cultural cues we get. The horrible thing about guilt is that it can make you project an aura of not being as productive or competent- people wonder why you’re feeling guilty. It must be because you aren’t doing something “right”. So I wonder if part of the way to make things better for ourselves as individuals right now is to really fight the guilt. Don’t feel guilty for leaving “early”. Don’t feel guilty for missing a day at the office because you’re home with a sick kid. You aren’t doing anything wrong, so don’t give the impression that you are.
Anyway, my current post is about this topic, because I’ve started to wonder if the fact that I don’t feel guilty about the amount of time I work is part of the reason that my career seems to be chugging along OK since having kids. A lot of it is luck- reasonable bosses, good support system, etc. But maybe not all of it?
Obviously, we need changes in the work place, too. But I can’t wait for those to come. I have to run my career now.
All three scenarios are striking, aren’t they? There is still a lot to do to allow parents to participate fully in both parenting and work — and some low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
The classic study in our field is called “the two-body problem,” by Marc Sher and Laurie McNeill (I think) — the data are a decade old by now, but many of the conclusions still apply.
Hi there: So glad to have found your blog (found it via Ms. Mary Mack). I am with you on all of this! Will keep stopping back!
I read your blog alot and have for about a year now. I just keep getting the feeling that you have it out for those of us choosing to stay at home with our kids and feel like you are minimalizing our commitments to our families. I really feel like you are helping to fuel the mommy wars we all talk about.
Just sharing. I don’t think I’ve come across one encouraging comment lately you have toward stay at home moms. You seem to be out to portray us all as undereducated, unskilled, and trapped in situations and that’s why we are home with our kids. That is not the case and you know it. It would be no different if I wrote off every working woman by saying she was a slave to her job because she can’t afford to stay home. Forget career aspirations – all women with children working outside the home are slaves to the money they don’t have or they would be at home.
Comments that most stay at home moms are doing so as a last resort and not by choice or we couldn’t fare any better for ourselves in the corporate world are as hurtful to us as those who accuse you of loving your children any less because you choose to work. I don’t believe this for a second. And don’t tell me to read up on the media stories supporting your points on “trapped” stay at home moms . That’s as much garbage as stories claiming kids without full time stay at home moms are loved less.