“Stories from the Sidelines: Career Versus Family” by Megan Pinand
Pinand discusses her experience as a professional woman who also wanted to maintain a family. At one point, one of her bosses – a single father – cautioned her that she would not be able to do both. Pinand pulled against this advice, being frustrated by the fact that men are never asked to choose and working class women are expected to handle both. This connects to the ways feminism means different things to different classes. The Betty Friedans were coming more from Pinand’s perspective. Pinand’s insight here helped me to make sense of the conflict between the classes in second wave feminism. The middle-to-upper class educated female is under a distinct and different set of pressures when it comes to the family/career choice when compared to her working class counterparts.
Pinand goes on to explain her experience at a new company that was decidedly not female friendly. There, mothers experienced implicit pressure to not take full advantage of maternity leaves in order to maintain positions and gain promotions. Though not yet a mother, Pinand plans to be. She challenges us that larger social change needs to occur. A necessary shift I see is one that does not simply focus on women as having to make this choice. If a marriage is a partnership, and the couple has decided earning finances should be as well (ie they both work full-time), raising children should also be a partnership. Unfortunately, women are still expected to pull much more of the weight when it comes to child-rearing regardless of the extent of their work commitments.
“A General Strike” by Marirosa Dalla Costa
Using strong Marxian rhetoric, Costa argues that the unifying feature of all women is that they do housework. She argues that this universal quality itself allows housework to be discredited. She then urges women to strike and demand wages for their work. I appreciate what she is doing. I think equally satisfying solutions would be either for husbands to equally share housework or for housework to be completed by whichever member was unemployed as long as the general hour commitments of each partner remained roughly equal.
“The Mommy Tax” by Ann Critenden
Critenden explains that the Mommy Tax is whatever money the mother sacrifices, particularly in terms of wages, with the decision to have a child. She provides a look at the way the French treat mothers; all receive government money and healthcare. Critenden goes on to compare what women make in comparison to men. She explains the normal way this statistic is calculated – it considers full-time workers only – and argues that since women overwhelmingly work more part-time positions then men part-time work should be included. When this is considered, women make 60 cents to the man’s dollar. This article argues that it is not discrimination in the work place that accounts for this but cultural pressures on women to parent. Therefore, it is not a women’s issue so much as a mother’s issue.
She later goes on to acknowledge that there is also a daddy tax. However, she explains this away by saying that it indicates continued sexist discrimination not a move towards equal parenting relations. Critenden argues that these wage gaps are not due to the time commitment of parenting as much as to unsympathetic employers. Though assuredly it is both, based on her own calculation of her “tax,” not working was a huge factor. Not working certainly decreases the amount you would make otherwise regardless for the reason for being unemployed.
I understand some of her argument but key points seem preposterous to me. Though I can see her argument connecting to Costa’s she does make this explicit. If we lived in a truly socialist society, perhaps then the government could pay for housework and mothering. However, as it is, we live in a primarily capitalist society. I think it unfair to harangue the companies for wanting to pay workers less when workers ask to work less or demonstrate being less committed by working less. Perhaps push the government to acknowledge mothering as societal work – harping on the companies seems like a poor strategy.
Also, what exactly does she mean by “educated black women face an additional problem- an acute shortage of eligible black men” (page 108)? Is she implying that black women are not having children because they cannot find eligible husbands who must also be black? Could I possibly be reading that right? If so, that seems problematic to me – she assumes black women only choose to procreate with black men.
“Maid to Order” by Barbara Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich provides a comprehensive look at paid household work in America. In many ways, this is exactly what the previous articles are arguing for. Here however, it carries heavy baggage of ethnic discrimination. After second wave femnism, many women wanted their husbands to take up some of the housework. Subsequent malre refusal caused tensions in the marriages. Rather then addressing this issue, society moved towards the bandaide of hiring a maid. This creates troublesome relationships between classes and races, relationships of superior and inferior. Some of this has been combated by the rising use of maid agencies. This creates a relationship between the customer and the agency and helps to deal with some of these issues that arise from personal maid/mistress interactions. However, these agencies often focus on the cosmetic aspects of cleaning rather on their sterilizing benefits.
Ehrenreich ends with the lament that this culture creates children who do not know how to clean even for themselves. In this way, though housework is quantified, it is also made invisible to members of the upper to middle class who employ a maid. This does little to alleviate the gender, class, and race issues surrounding housework.
3/28/11
ReplyDeleteWomen Studies Blog
Week 10: Women’s, Labor
Ann Critenden, “The Mommy Tax”, Barbara Ehrenreich, “Maid to Order,” Harper’s Magazine, Megan Pinand, “Stories from the Sidelines: Career Versus Family,” and Marirosa Dalla Costa, “A General Strike”
Megan Pinand, “Stories from the Sidelines: Career Versus Family”
Pinand converses about companies discouraging employees from taking advantage of family-friendly policies. Her statements reminded me of a book I read for Sociology class. In Competing Devotions, by Mary Blair-Loy, Blair-Loy examines the work-devotion schema and family-devotion schema in regards to female finance executives who work in competitive industries that only admit high-ranking women. In her book, she states that women who violate either schema by working part-time are stigmatized and they are susceptible to job loss at their corporations. In a sense they are perceived as traitors. I assume that is why so many women work long hours; and in Pinand’s bosses case, cut back on maternity leave. She states, “woman feel the need to appear so attached to their jobs that they cut their maternity leaves short” (209). It’s like living in fear. As one vies for more and more of your attention, either your career or your family life suffers and the guilt begins to worsen.
- This article makes me wonder what’s Colgate’s take on maternity leave. Furthermore, what are Colgate’s family-friendly policies?
Image of Supermom: http://marinasleeps.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/super_mom.jpg
-Now a day, mothers have to be it all. They must be able to juggle their careers and families.
Marirosa Dalla Costa, “A General Strike”
Interesting Quotes: - “We believe that the weakness of all women- that weakness that’s behind our having been crossed out of history, that’s behind the fact that when we leave the home we must face the most revolting under-paid and insecure jobs…”(Freedman, 301).
- “We all do housework; it is the only thing all woman have in common, it is the only base on which we can gather our power, the power of millions f women”(Freedman, 301).
Ann Critenden, “The Mommy Tax"
The Mommy Tax: During the duration of your lifetime, your loss of income if you have children
Critenden exposes the costs of being a mother in her article. She says that not only do working mothers earn less than men, but they also earn less than childless women. She states that Waldfogel argues that mothers earn so much less because employers fail to provide maternity leave, so they simply quit their jobs to stay at home with their newborn babies. I don’t understand how an employer can refuse maternity leave. I think that it is morally unethical.
- The only countries that don’t require a paid maternity leave: America, Australia, New Zealand, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea
- “‘They believed it was just too hard for a woman to raise little kids and do a ‘good job,’ Steele told me. ‘The thinking was, how can a woman do all that, not could a company do that?’” (Critenden, 92)
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Maid to Order,” Harper’s Magazine
In this article, I found it interesting that Ehrenreich discusses the payment of females for doing domestic work, but in regards to maids. Moreover, the actual mothers’ and wives’ of these households do not receive compensation for their part in housework. I think that their recompense is what the previous excerpt “A General Strike” has been explicitly stressing. Costa was not calling for the employment of maids, but for the recognition of millions of mothers who are marginalized.
Megan Pinand in “Stories from the Sidelines: Career Versus Family” talks a lot about the pressure that is put on professional women to both work full time and raise children. We have spoken at lengths about equality in the workplace but have not touched on parenting responsibilities quite as much. In our society women are considered the primary caregiver when it comes to children. If they are professional women who work full time this becomes a problem. Why, Pinand asks, if a husband and wife both have full time jobs, is it still considered the woman’s responsibility to care for the child. In this case, responsibility should be shared. I personally come from an upper middle class family in which both my mother and father work. Unlike most families that Pinand is referring to, my mom and dad shared responsibilities in taking care of my two sisters and me. Having grown up in this scenario, it is hard to believe that men expect their wives to bring in a steady (full time) pay check and exclusively take care of the kids. Marirosa Dalla Costa in “A General Strike” makes a similar point as Pinand but on a different subject matter. She speaks about how women are expected to be able to clean the house regardless of their profession or social standing. Unlike Pinand, she believes that women should go on a strike and demand pay for their work. This seems a little extreme. Women should, however, not automatically be the sex expected to clean. This is a stereotype created at some point during our history that has yet to be crushed.
ReplyDelete“The Mommy Tax” and “Maid to Order” are very interesting and have a lot of substance but they both remind me of a sociology class that I took last semester. In this class we discussed money within the household. We spoke about how the household has its own economy, independent of the real world. The breadwinner in the household (usually the male) is given a position of power because without him the family cannot function. Of course, without the mother (primary caregiver and keeper of the house), the family would not be able to function either. This speaks to the issue of the public and private sphere. Men are considered superior because they ultimately have the advantage in the public sphere. Women are generally thought of as doing work in the private sector, which is considered far less superior. Women who break the mold and make just as much or more than their husbands are considered threatening to the balance of power in a family. If this is the case, who cleans the house? Who takes care of the kids? Society still says that women should. However, if a woman has essentially switched roles monetarily with her husband, shouldn’t the roles reverse in the house too?