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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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June 11, 2010

First Person Friday: Saving Time=Losing Sanity

Today’s First Person Friday comes to us from Diana Windley, who blogs about her mom+career world in Green Mountain, Utah at Mom Means Business.  You can follow Diana on Twitter at DiWin.

A few years ago I called to schedule two appointments with our pediatrician.  Our older daughter needed a pre-kindergarten exam and our younger daughter was ready for her 18-month check-up.  In an effort to be efficient, I asked the nurse to schedule both appointments at the same time.  She told me that the doctor preferred to see siblings on separate visits, but I begged for an exception.  I explained that I was a working mom, and it would be a much better for me to have both appointments at once.

Right decision?

No…not by a long shot.

I went with my girls to the exam room, and had them strip down to their respective underwear and diaper. No matter what I said to my oldest daughter, she would not calm down.  She had heard horror stories about the impeding shots from her friends and was terrified.

She let out bone-chilling screams and sat her hands when the nurse tried to prick her finger for a single drop of blood.

The yelling became louder when the shots came out…and she started kicking the poor nurse.  The kind of kicks that leave dark purple bruises.  The nurse finally pinned my daughter’s legs against the table while I wrestled with her arms and torso.

During this entire embarrassing episode, my toddler was running around the room oblivious to the torture being inflicted upon her sister. She was busy flipping the light switch up and down. The flashing-light affect added to the drama.

When the shots were over I turned to stop my younger daughter’s disruptive behavior to see her sans diaper.  She was totally nude, streaking all around the room.

What had been left of my motherhood dignity was completely destroyed at that point.  It was obvious I had no control over my kids.  I blamed my lack of parental skills on being a working mom.

The chaos at the doctor’s office lasted for 90 minutes…much longer than anticipated.  My frustration went on for hours.  I returned to the office completely frazzled.  My quest for efficiency ended in disaster and self-doubt.

Last week I started reading Stephen R. Covey’s First Things First.  He says that “more” and “faster” isn’t always better.  This example from his book hits very close to home:

“There’s a vital difference between efficiency and effectiveness.  You may be driving down the highway, enjoying great traveling weather and getting terrific mileage.  You may be very efficient.  But if you’re headed south down the California coast on Highway 101 and your destination is New York City – some three thousand miles to the east – you’re not being very effective.”

***Light Bulb Moment***

Efficiency doesn’t necessarily equal effectiveness.

Now they tell me!  Why didn’t I get this concept years ago???

I don’t need to be the most efficient woman around.  What’s most important is that I’m an effective woman, balancing family and work.

Help combat the invisible working mother phenomenon by telling your working mother story. Interested?  Email The Mama Bee at mamabeeblog at gmail dot com with the subject line “First Person Friday.”

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