August 11, 2010

It’s the Small Stuff That’s Going to Bring About the Revolution

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.

8 Comments

Filed under News, Politics, Work

Tagged as , , , ,

August 4, 2010

Family Policy for A New Age

Today’s New York Times piece by David Leonhardt sums it up, quoting Columbia University professor Jane Waldfogel:

American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities…[consequently] women do almost as well as men today… as long as they don’t have children.

Since 80% of women will have children at some point (not to mention the many who are caregivers for parents, spouses or siblings), this really means that most women are still marginalized from corporate advancement.  While men are able to pursue their dream careers regardless of family situation, studies have shown conclusively that women — if they reveal that they have children — are less likely to be hired, promoted and compensated fairly than their childless counterparts.

And that’s just about the women who lose because employers perceive them to be less competent.  It doesn’t take into account women who lose out on advancement opportunities because there isn’t high-quality affordable childcare availailable, or because they don’t have paid leave, or because pumping milk on site is frowned on, or because they need the flexibility to take their child to the doctor on a given day.

Morra Aarons-Mele (Women and Work) and I are facilitating a “Room of Your Own” discussion on how social media can impact work and family policy at BlogHer on Saturday at 1:30pm.  I hope some of you will join us.  Earlier this week Morra wrote a terrific piece laying out all you need to know to join the movement; I’m following up today with a few “from the trenches” thoughts about organizing around “worklife” issues from a corporate perspective.

1.  Even the best public policy won’t create meaningful change in the workplace unless business is on board. And to get business one board we need to message the many studies that have been done showing that productivity and efficiency increases when employers adopt family-friendly practices.  There has to be focus on the bottom line, not what we believe is “the right thing to do.”  Nanette Fondas recently wrote about this in Psychology Today, but dozens of others have made the case for years now.  Let’s aggregate the research and disseminate is widely to corporate titans (and their HR staff).

2.  It’s not about women. Everyone benefits from improved family policy.  Men need to be on board with the greater work life mission and message — we can’t do this without them.  We have to stop thinking, writing, and conceptualizing about work life as a “women’s issue.”  Cali Yost has written compellingly on this at Work+Life Fit.

3.  Getting more women to be CEOs is only half the battle. It’s absolutely critical that we get more women in power positions, but it’s equally critical that women have access to middle management jobs that offer autonomy, meaning and growth.  Why are so many women unhappy at work?  Family obligations may play a role, but I believe job dissatisfaction is a function of stifling jobs with limited challenge, meaning and advancement.

4.  Flexibility has to go both ways. That means that if employees demand flexible workplaces, they need to be ready to be on call outside of normal business hours.  You would be surpised at how many people think of flexibility as “working less.”  In fact, flexibility may mean working the same or a greater number of hours — but on a tweaked schedule.  Employees have to be on board with availability before 9am and after 5pm for flexibility to work in most contexts.  And if there’s a crisis at work, the employee has to be ready to address it fully whenever and wherever, or trust breaks down.

5.  Effective public policy in this area can’t focus primarily on flex-time or telecommuting. For those of us in the corporate world, flex-time may or may not work.  It’s not a solution for all jobs in all contexts.  Instead, we need to hone in on family policies that will make a meaningful difference for all employees right away.  I would flag paid leave, sick days and affordable childcare as primary issues.  And let’s not forget that improved transportation and technology infratstructure is key to making life better for working families, even though they are not “family” issues per se.

For more on my perspective around family and worklife legislation, see “Legislating Worklife” and “Advocating Wisely.”

And for more great blogging on worklife policy, check out:

WorkLifeNation
PunditMom
Leanne Chase
Chrysula Winegar
Cali Yost

And don’t forget to come visit us at BlogHer ’10 this week!

5 Comments

Filed under News, Politics

Tagged as , , ,

August 3, 2010

Mommy War Research

Will we never learn that when we ask whether a child is better off with a working mother or a stay at home mom nobody wins?  Such is the case with the most recent study reported in the Washington Post that shows “the overall effect of 1st-year maternal employment on child development [to be] neutral.”

Titled “Working Mothers Not Necessarily Harmful to Child Development,” as though there had been definitive proof that working mothers were necessarily harmful to children, the report tells us something those of us on the front lines have known for years: there are pros and cons to working, trade-offs at every level, every day.  High-quality early childcare is key, but that care need not be provided exclusively by a mother.

A study like this should be a good thing for mothers, working and non-working, because it essentially suggests that you can be a good parent no matter what choices you make.  But the devil is in the details.  By contextualizing child development gains in terms of whether the mother works or not, we miss out on the greater truth: it’s not about working in or out of the home, it’s about how parents communicate with their children, arrange for childcare, buy into early education practices and connect emotionally.

As soon as we invoke the mommy wars, and in effect, that’s the way this study is framed — working versus stay-at-home — we lose the opportunity to think critically about capturing the best childcare practices from all different kinds of mothers and fathers.  Once we’ve uncovered these “best practices,” there might be opportunity to advocate for public policy that would make them available to all parents, working in and out of the home.  Instead of the headline “Babies Don’t Suffer When Moms Return to Work,” there might be an article that offers a roadmap to successful parenting, regardless of work schedule.

Working mothers have the money to invest in high quality early childcare, stay at home mothers have the time.  The real question is what can be done for both groups to ensure the best outcomes for children.  This study and many others indicate that high-quality early childhood education in formal and informal settings offers a path to better cognitive and socio-emotional development.  Rather than asking how we can ensure that all children have access to the kind of early learning that would help them reach their highest potential, we continue to ask ourselves is it better for women to work or stay home.

Ultimately, the report proves nothing so much as that working versus staying at home is a lose-lose question.  The study found that children of working mothers score slightly lower on cognitive testing, at least until first grade.  But stay at home mothers were less responsive and emotionally sensitive to their children’s needs, and had less income to plow into formal education and childcare.  So we all have something to feel badly about.

But there’s hope.  This study overturned findings by the same researchers at Columbia University from 2002.  If we wait another couple of years, I’m sure we’ll get another study with new conclusions about mothering.  Maybe this time it will be truly be about parenting, and not about mommy wars.

Related links:

3 Comments

Filed under Childcare, News, Politics

Tagged as , , ,

August 2, 2010

Suck Me, Long Island Railroad

Do we still need the women’s movement?  On Friday I had a personal experience that reminded me that sexism is alive and well, even in the most liberal of places — the New York metro area.

I was coming home with my infant son on the Long Island Railroad from a visit to friends.  The baby was fussy, so I began to nurse.  Soon after, the train conductor came around collecting tickets.  When I handed mine over, he said me to “Cover up, miss.”  I was shocked — my breastfeeding has never so much as elicited a dirty look — and so I asked if he was kidding.  He said “No, COVER UP, miss.”  I told him that it was my legal right in the State of New York (NYS Civil Rights Law § 79-E) to nurse in any public place.

The conductor became angrier and angrier, saying that what I was doing was “offensive to him and other passengers.”  I reiterated my legal right, and he then told me to “call a cop” if I was so concerned.  The interchange was disturbing; in the context of the LIRR the conductor is a power figure who should be aware of the law.  But what happened next was even more troubling: our conversation had clearly left the conductor enraged and as he passed through the car he pushed my stroller, which was in the aisle (the only place it could be on the crowded train) into my seat, knocking me and the baby while we nursed.

I’ve been on the LIRR many times.  I’ve seen women in tiny string bikini tops on their way to the beach, I’ve seen men walk into station newsstands to buy porn, I’ve seen people drinking beer and smoking cigarettes on both the platforms and the trains.  None were approached by the conductor on my watch.  Here’s where the pervasive sexism comes into play:

Bare (or almost bare) breasts are tolerated both in person and in print on the LIRR if the woman in question is revealing herself for the pleasure of others.  But not if she is breastfeeding her five month old baby.

And maybe we think this isn’t that big a deal — just one crazy older white guy on a train.  But if this was the reaction of a conductor on a train in one of the most liberal cities in the country, how are our sisters in more conservative areas faring?  Forty-four states have the same law protecting the right to breastfeed in public as New York, but how many people in “power positions” are ignorant of this basic woman’s right?

An equally troubling epilogue to the story: when I told my husband and mother, each of them asked if my breasts had been showing; in other words, if I might have been breaking any indecent exposure laws.  Wrong question.  First of all, New York exempts nursing mothers from indecent exposure laws.  But the point isn’t that I showed a little more nipple than was comfortable for this man — it’s that his anger at seeing my breast while I was nursing was crazy and irrational.  Even if my rights had not been protected by New York’s penal code, the idea that there was something prurient about what I was doing is just insane.  And their reactions indicated that even my liberal husband and mother were uncomfortable with seeing me nurse in public.

What is it about nursing that made this conductor and others so angry, when women wear equally revealing clothing on the LIRR all the time?  For some reason breastfeeding signaled to him subversiveness, power, and female empowerment.  And his discomfort with women and power and motherhood infringed on my right to feed my baby in the way recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics.  On a micro level, that’s why we still need feminism.

Related links:

16 Comments

Filed under Breastfeeding and Pumping, Politics

Tagged as , , , ,

July 28, 2010

The Stigma of Being a Feminist

This quote from The New York Times‘ recent “Female Factor” piece “The Stigma of Being a Housewife” made me raise my eyebrows:

When it is no longer socially acceptable to be a housewife — or homemaker, in modern American parlance — has feminism overshot its objective?

Has feminism has been so wildly successful integrating women into the workforce that homemakers are now considered deadbeats?  There are a couple of problems with this hypothesis, starting with the idea that feminism has substantially increased the number of working women.  I think that would be news to most feminists, who despite their many accomplishments, know that it’s the economy, stupid.

By incurring the “f” word, the Times also implies that feminists have been party to the devaluing of housewifery.  It’s the kind of assertion that pits woman against woman, feminist against homemaker, career woman against stay-at-home mom.  In other words, it drives traffic.  But if indeed you believe that homemakers are being widely stigmatized — and I’m not sure that’s the right conclusion — feminism certainly is not the culprit.  Just the opposite: homemaking has always been valued less than formal work in part because it has been the domain of women.  Feminism works to combat this kind of institutional sexism.

The answer to the question of whether feminism “has overshot its objective” depends on how we define feminism’s objective.  I’ve always felt that feminism is about giving all women the same opportunities as men.  It’s not about validating every person’s choice or telling women that whatever they want to be is okay.  It’s about making sure that both social convention and public policy support women’s advancement in all fields, and about institutions that protect women regardless of their chosen path.

The reality is that most homemakers are not the privileged opt-outers, but rather under-educated women with few prospects.  They want to work, but cannot get a job or make enough money to justify childcare.  These women are stigmatized because they are female, socio-economically depressed, and lack education and skills.  The fact that they are housewives is the least of the issue.  But the Times chooses to focus on middle-class European women who have chosen to leave the workforce, not those who have been forced out by circumstance.

The Times piece ends by quoting an economist who suggests that we formally recognize homemaking as part of the economy.  I’ve written about some of the problems inherent in valuing housework and child-rearing before, as have a number of others: Laura Vanderkam, Ashley Merryman, Lisa Cullen, and Nancy Folbre in the Times Economix blog.  Folbre rightly points out that putting a market value on childcare “cannot capture the intangible, personal and unforgettable gifts our parents make to us.”

From an economics perspective, most women who work are ALSO homemakers, so it’s not clear to me that putting a value on child-rearing or housework would raise the status of housewives.  In fact, I would see a working mother who manages to do all the same tasks as her stay at home counterpart, plus participate in the formal economy, coming out with a substantially higher “value.”  Doesn’t this just artificially inflate the economy, since everyone has to do housework — married or single, parent or childless.

What role should feminist advocates play for homemakers?  For most stay at home mothers, an emotional validation of their contributions isn’t the greatest need.  Instead it’s education, affordable childcare, and social services that can help all women live their highest potential.  But to do this, those of us who identify as feminists can’t let ourselves be dragged into the mommy wars.  We can’t say that feminism is about choice; we must recognize that it’s about opportunity.

Related links:

4 Comments

Filed under News, Politics

Tagged as , , ,

July 8, 2010

Why Women May Not Advance – Even Without Sexism

The Wall Street Journal’s “The Juggle” blog recently reported that benefits like paid maternity leave, comprehensive healthcare, tuition reimbursement and flex-time are on the decline according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).  I’m not surprised.  We’re in a recession, more companies are hiring part-time and contract workers versus full-time employees, and the salaried workers who are being hired are valued less than they have been in the past.  There are a lot more of them out there.

But most interesting to me is how the SHRM study squares with our new predominantly female workforce.  What it suggests is that, while there may be more women working, they are not likely to have the same opportunities for advancement as their predecessors — male or female.  In the case of support for graduate education, for instance, it’s clear that today’s workers will pay higher tuition from their own pockets, leaving many marginalized from higher learning.

Even in the case of paid maternity leave and healthcare, the cutbacks affect women’s ability to reach for top jobs.  Without health benefits families are subject to financial hardship that tethers the primary or co-breadwinners to jobs they dislike, and that may have poor growth opportunity. The security of health and family benefits are likely to keep many women in jobs they would otherwise leave.

Ironically, the decrease in flextime benefits may reflect corporate response to a greater number of women in the workforce.   I suspect that companies are pre-emptively cutting back on a benefit they assume more and more women will be interested in using.  Flextime is one of those benefits that looks great on paper, but can cause chaos if everyone actually opts in — not because flextime is inherently less efficient, but because coordinating flexible scheduling for maximum efficiency takes a little creativity and work.  And to the extent that managers and human resources professionals can think creatively enough about management to create effective flextime, nobody wants to invest in implementing those plans.

All of this is by way of saying that with so many benefits being phased out, it seems unlikely to me that women will be “on the rise” in the same ways that men have been in the past.  Even without bringing in issues of sexism or child rearing, women are disadvantaged today simply because there is less employee development and support from the corporate sector.  And in general, the government has not stepped in to fill the gap.

When we think about our fathers who got advanced degrees or worked their way up corporate ladders in the 1960s through the 1980s, I can’t imagine women today doing the same today with so many fewer resources.  Especially given that many are saddled with the financial burden of childcare.

This is why women’s achievement is so much more complicated than people like Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic would have you believe. Working mothers who are climbing the corporate ladder today won’t be walking in the steps of our mothers or fathers — we will have to forge an entirely new kind of career model with much less support.  It won’t be easy.

Related links:

3 Comments

Filed under Health, Politics, Work

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 1, 2010

The Childcare Conundrum

Earlier this week the The Wall Street Journal reported on new legislation that would require parents to pay caregivers overtime for more than an 8-hour workday, and would mandate at least one day off per week along with holidays and sickdays.  On its face this seems like perfectly reasonable policy that any thoughtful, liberal-minded person would support.

But this new proposal drives right into one of the greatest conundrums affecting working families today.  While caregivers in general make very little money and are often without benefits, childcare costs represent a large piece of family budgets.  The National Association of Childcare Resource and Referral Agencies estimates that care represents roughly 15% of family budgets; they point out that infant care costs more in 43 states than tuition at a public college.

I fully support giving childcare providers the same workers rights that most corporate employees receive.  And yet I understand very well that even a few thousand additional dollars in childcare expenses are prohibitive for working families.  What happens when a family needs their caregiver to work more than an 8-hour day — as most who commute do?  What about parents who need 7-day a week coverage?  How about parents who need to work holidays?

I suspect that, despite the prevailing image of families that need this kind of care, we are not for the most part talking about the over-privileged.  More likely the legislation will profoundly affect middle class families who can’t find or afford high quality daycare,  so are piecing together coverage with a sitter.  I get the sense that some of the commenters on the WSJ article think that those who use individual sitters are the elite — not so.

The irony of daycare is that, while it’s a cheaper and better solution for working families, it also is virtually inaccessible for large numbers of those same families.  First, there just aren’t enough high-quality center-based programs, particularly for children under a year old.  Second, most centers have set hours that may or may not match parents’ working hours.  If a center runs from 8:00am to 5:30pm, for example, but a parent has to commute, it’s almost impossible (not to mention incredibly stressful) for that parent to be a pick-up on time.

So parents have to turn to nanny care.  For many this is the first time they have managed people in their home, and maybe at all.  These families want to be fair, but they are struggling to make ends meet themselves.  They don’t, as Sue Shellenbarger suggest in her WSJ column, have the choice to give up a sitter in favor of a better option.

The good news is that there are legislative, social welfare, and even business solutions that could make a meaningful difference towards meeting the needs of domestic workers and the families they support, starting with more high-quality, center-based daycare.  I support the legislation reported on by The Wall Street Journal, but I wish it addressed the problem more holistically, with an understanding that it isn’t the government or some great corporate entity or even just rich people who are paying for extra benefits — it’s working families.

The worst part of this kind of legislation, built in something of a vacuum to protect one vulnerable group against another, is that it pits activists against parents when the two groups should be working together to find comprehensive solutions.  In this case, I get the sense that those working on behalf of domestic workers see the parents as wealthy and capable of providing better benefits.  Parents’ hackles are raised because, while in theory most agree that domestic workers deserve better, in practice working families are being squeezed financially in so many other ways that they can’t make ends meet.

I continue to believe that childcare is one of the cornerstone issues of our time.  It speaks to family policy, to workforce development, to economic security — but it also speaks very directly to women’s advancement in the workplace.  For all of the gender equity programs out there, nothing would do more to get women in top jobs than providing comprehensive, high-quality, accessible and affordable childcare.

Related links:

13 Comments

Filed under Childcare, News, Politics

Tagged as , , , ,

June 24, 2010

Advocating Wisely

Last week Melissa at Momocrats responded thoughtfully to my recent post expressing ambivalence about legislation around flextime saying:

I wonder how we can continue without government intervention. I’ve no doubt that MamaBee is a terrific manager but…she is one manager. For most U.S. employees, your work life balance, your ability to telecommute, to have flextime or comp time, to have paid time off, or to job share, is only as good (or bad) as your manager, your department head, your unit, and/or your company. Most of us are one job reclassification, downsize, merger, acquisition, or reorganization away from instantaneous disappearance of our work life policies.

So here’s my question: what would legislation around flexible work really look like?  Mandating that companies integrate flexible scheduling into their day to day operations is not realistic for all jobs.  If we take the recently passed bill sponsored by Senators Akaka (D) and Voinovich (R) on telework for federal employees as an example, a flex work bill would say something like employers must have flex work policies in place, and must consider requests for flexible scheduling without prejudice.  In other words, all employees have the right to ask.  Well, it’s something.

But for those of us “on the ground” legislation around flex work will have relatively meager impact. Yes, we won’t be discriminated against for asking about flexible scheduling, but neither will we be any less at the mercy of individual corporate cultures and managers.  Most critically, legislation will pay lip service to flex work without putting any of the support in place that would practically make it work for most businesses, notably improved technology infrastructure and universal high-quality childcare.

Many managers, including myself, will not support flex work for all employees under current conditions.  Most of us in the corporate world have been in situations where a President or big boss of some kind needs information immediately, but the staff person who holds the keys to that info is unavailable.  Whether we think this sense of urgency is good management or not, it is common in most offices, and highly stressful.  Especially in these lean times, the kinds of redundancies we need to allow people to work at different hours simply are not there.

In most cases, executives want to do right by their employees.  But not at the cost of their own sanity or the sanity of others.  As managers, we simply don’t have the tools to offer all employees access to flexible scheduling.  (We should all be so lucky to be able to hire someone like Cali Yost to help us out with this!)

So where do we invest our energy if not in flex work policy?  Let’s start with the basics.  I want to see the same kind of pressure that built up around healthcare brought to bear around childcare.  It’s not just a family issue, early childhood education directly affects our workforce.  It should be something we can all get behind.  The school day and year needs remodeling to fit the needs of working parents, not an agrarian society that no longer exists.  Parental leave certainly needs to be addressed; as Melissa notes it is disgraceful that the US offers so little relative to the rest of the industrialized world.

And more practically, technology and transportation infrastructure are critical pieces of this puzzle.  While they aren’t “family issues” per se, improvements in these areas will make all the difference in changing the nature of work.

There are only 24 hours in the day, so us working mothers (and by that I mean all mothers) need to use our advocacy time wisely.  The business case for flexwork is there, but the social supports are not.  I suspect that if we shape a broader culture that is amenable to flexible and telework, we will see strong, sustainable change.  Just framing legislation around flexwork without those supports, I worry that our impact is limited.

Even more importantly improved childcare, education, technology and transportation would meaningfully improve the lives of all workers, not just those who can take advantage of a flexible work situation.

Related links:

9 Comments

Filed under News, Politics, Work

Tagged as , , , ,

June 17, 2010

Nurturing Women in Science and Math

The Wandering Scientist, one of my favorite working mom bloggers, brought my attention to John Tierney’s recent New York Times op-ed, Daring to Discuss Women in Science.  The piece is nominally about new legislation being introduced to increase the number of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math), but Tierney veers into broader territory by suggesting that men are innately better at STEM learning than women.

There are a couple of issues here.  First, there’s the base suggestion that women are inherently not good at left brain functions.  This assertion is not new, it’s certainly not daring, and it continues to hurt women’s advancement and achievement in inumerable ways in areas beyond just math and science.  The science Tierney cites is light: mathematician Quomodocumque and his commenters do a good job of deconstructing the stats.

Tierney seems to think that the PC police will try and get him for just “reporting the facts.”  I’m not denying that feminists, particularly those in the science community, are up in arms about this.  But it’s not for empty reasons; we’ve been burned.  Women have been denied training and education in math and science fields for years.  Even those who have natural aptitude have struggled to get what they need to nurture and support their interest.  Those who have shown less ability have been written off, though with some effort and encouragement many could have developed a high level of competancy.

Let’s imagine the counterpart scenario: boys are deemed inherently less competant in verbal skills because girls get better scores on standardized verbal tests.  As a society we decide to divest resources in educating and promoting male achievement in professions like communications, writing and the arts.  How many wonderful professionals in these areas would we lose?  It’s crazy to even think about.  And yet this is exactly what is happening to girls – to the detriment of STEM industries – because of arguments like John Tierney’s.

We don’t study prodigies when we think about other fields.  We don’t assume that a child who does well on the verbal section of the SAT will automatically be a great writer or communicator.  But for some reason, we do think that way when it comes to STEM.  And that holds boys and girls to impossible standards when it comes to junior achievement in these areas.

Even if there is some credence to the idea that proportionally more men have prodigious natural talent in STEM functions than women, it’s not clear that this should translate into the disporportionately small number of women in STEM jobs.  “Natural” talent doesn’t automatically mean a better scientist or better doctor or better professor.  In fact, hiring someone who has a lot of solid knowledge, great passion, and good interpersonal skills may be as good or better than hiring a prodigy.

But let’s circle back to where Tierney originally started: the legislation that creates “workshops to enhance gender equity” in STEM fields.  I actually think this is a pretty lame idea.  This kind of program hasn’t worked to increase gender equity in the corporate world, and I don’t see it doing any better with the STEM community.  It isn’t likely to effect profound change and is probably a waste of resources, two good reasons to be against it.  What New York Times columnists should be writing about is why we can’t seem to come up with solutions that will increase the number of women pursuing STEM education and jobs.  There have to be some better ideas out there. 

Related links:

  • Extremely interesting and valid points on women in science, and science education generally, at Maitri’s Vatulblog.
  • Geek Feminism does a great job of rounding up other responses to the article here.
  • The Association for Women in Science is working to achieve gender equity in STEM fields.
  • Check out IWasWondering.org, a site for kids and tweens all about women’s adventures in science.

2 Comments

Filed under News, Politics, Work

Tagged as , , , ,

June 15, 2010

Touting Meager Gains

A few weeks ago Barbara Kellerman wrote a Harvard Business Review piece imploring us to “stop touting gains [for women] so long as those gains remain meager.” As if on cue, The Atlantic ran a cover story by Hanna Rosin last week titled “The End of Men: How Women Are Taking Control of Everything,” which suggests that women have indeed arrived — we are now a greater percentage of the workforce, a larger percentage of college graduates, and 40% of primary breadwinners.  Can we retire the women’s movement?

The biggest problem with The Atlantic piece is that is confuses diminished opportunities for boys and men with increased opportunity for girls and women.  Just because boys are suffering in a education system that doesn’t always meet their needs, and men have lost jobs in industries like manufacturing and construction, doesn’t mean that women’s ships are on the rise.

I’m not sure where Hanna Rosin is getting her information; she writes that “men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer.”  The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells a different story.  Their top 15 fastest growing occupations include biomedical engineers, network systems and data communications analysts, financial examiners, medical scientists, biochemists and biophysicists and computer software engineers — all professions still dominated by men.

So I thought, maybe she’s looking at the table of industries with the largest employment growth.  But that table has construction at the top, and also includes male dominated industries like computer engineering, law, and management consulting — some of which may have significant numbers of women in entry-level positions, but very few in top jobs.  Janitor doesn’t show up on either list.  So where is she finding this info?

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stats and other studies I link to here, the trajectory for women looks a lot less rosy.  While women are earning more college degrees than men, their majors are not in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields that offer the greatest earning potential.  Women do dominate some BLS high-growth industries, like healthcare, caregiving, food services, dental hygeine and skincare; however, these are not high-income fields.  While they can be incredibly rewarding, they offer little opportunity for promotion or advancement.  We are looking at a generation of women who are employed, but disproportionately poor, under-insured and insecure.

And, as Rosin mentions, 40% of these women are primary breadwinners.  That sounds positive, but under these employment circumstances, it’s no asset.  What is really means is that 40% of women have primary responsibility for their children’s childcare, food, housing, education, and health.  Because they are in industries with less opportunity, and because of the motherhood penalty, they are much less likely to be able to meet all of these obligations in a robust way.

Rosin largely talks to and reports on young women — those who are in college or graduate programs and have their whole lives ahead of them.  What she doesn’t say is that by the time most of these women are middle-aged, they will have fallen significantly behind their male counterparts.   They will be subject to the persistent 23% wage gap.  Eighty percent will be mothers and likely to face discrimination, even if they work as hard or harder than their childless peers.  Even as men are facing their own challenges, these trends don’t seem to be diminishing.

Only when STEM careers are more appealing and changes in the corporate world make high-level careers more feasible for women will we be able to champion women’s gains.  In the meantime, articles like Rosin’s are doing more to hurt than help.  By looking superficially at statistics and citing pop culture examples (think “cougars” and “omega males” in the media), Rosin does an enormous disservice to the real women who are struggling to get by every day.  I’d take empty rhetoric from Sarah Palin over this kind of misguided reporting any day.

Related links:

1 Comment

Filed under News, Politics

Tagged as , , ,