Posts tagged Activism
Mainstream feminism and motherhood: solidarity extends beyond the personal
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I approached a group of contributors at The F-Word (none of whom have children) to see if any of them would be interested in writing an article for the readers of Fertile Feminism; Laura Woodhouse responded with enthusiasm. I asked Laura to give us her thoughts on why mainstream feminism is often (or at least feels) exclusionary to parents and what her ideas are for bridging that divide. This is her response, in the form of a guest post. In return, I’ve written a post at The F-Word explaining why I created this site and what its goal is, which you can read here.
A note before you get reading: It takes courage and insight to write sensitively about a subject with which one has no personal experience, so please, if you are able, leave a comment and let Laura know what you think — if you liked it, agree with her, disagree (and why) or your ideas for building on what she’s written. Taking part in these discussions is what Fertile Feminism is all about so I hope you’ll feel moved to comment.
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When FertileFem suggested that a childless feminist blogger contribute to this site, in the spirit of building bridges between mainstream feminism and the feminist mothers it often excludes, I was really keen to get involved. However, I’ve found it difficult to figure out quite what to write. I feel a little like an impostor entering a territory where my personal experiences and knowledge are suddenly exposed as somewhat lacking in relevance. The temptation is to say, ‘Actually, I’m not sure there’s really a lot I can do here. I’ll leave it to the experts.’
It seems that’s the position taken by many of us childless feminists who make up a significant portion of the current UK feminist community when it comes to motherhood. We either prefer not to try and tackle issues of which we have no direct knowledge, or – worse still – we are entirely oblivious to their existence, and to their relevance to feminism. The personal is political, right? So for those of us who, like me, came to feminism fresh out of our teens, sick to the back teeth of being sexually harassed, assaulted and objectified by our male peers and a sexist dominant culture – launching ourselves with headstrong gusto into campaigns against lads’ mags and for abortion rights – issues such as childcare, birth trauma, maternity care and breastfeeding rights just weren’t on our agenda. Which is understandable. But when these campaigns united young women into larger feminist groups and later developed into conferences and events, and those groups and conferences failed to take the childcare needs of feminist parents into account, or offer any talks or workshops that recognised motherhood – and mothers’ – relevance to feminism, this short-sightedness became discrimination. And that’s not what feminism is about.
It doesn’t help that the middle class feminist aim of freeing women from the shackles of enforced motherhood and housewifery in order that we could make it in the worlds of education and employment (ignoring the working class women who often never had the option of staying at home in the first place) inevitably paints motherhood in a bad light, nor that the dominant cultural narrative of the feminism-liberated modern woman struggling to ‘have it all’ makes it seem nigh on impossible to have children while achieving any of the things middle class feminism promised us. Until you start thinking about having children of your own, or until you’re faced with an unexpected pregnancy and motherhood becomes a personal issue, it can be all too easy to separate it from feminism.
Yet, for me, some of the reasons I have always thought I would be unlikely to have children were rooted in sexism: employment discrimination against pregnant women and mothers (how can I progress at work if I’m going to have kids?), the horrible gender role indoctrination of children (would I ever be able to counteract it?), the lack of affordable childcare and flexible working hours (how on earth can I have it all?). And as I’ve begun to think more seriously about having children (I can’t even tell you how much it’s freaked me out realising that having kids with my partner would actually be really rather lovely!) I’ve started to feel this mother-directed sexism on something close to the same visceral level that I felt sexual objectification and beauty fascism when I first became a feminist. And I want to do something about it.
But it shouldn’t take that level of visceral, personal identification with an issue to kick me into gear and start trying to do my bit for mothers. Feminists should advocate for all women; ‘the personal is political’ just isn’t enough. We need to remember that not all women’s ‘personal’ is the same, but that all women’s ‘personal’ matters.
I think it’s a reflection of my privilege as a young, sheltered, middle class woman that my early activism was centred around things that affected myself, and it’s only been through reading the experiences and theories of disabled, trans and BME feminists that I’ve succeeded in breaking out of my own little personal bubble and expanded my range of activism to include issues that don’t affect women with whom I can identify. And it’s a reflection of the marginalisation of mothers within feminism – and the dismissal of mothers’ needs in wider society – that it took a change in my personal circumstances for me to really identify motherhood as a feminist issue.
That’s why I’m so pleased to have discovered all the feminist mother blogs that have been springing up recently, and why I want to work with feminist mothers to help bring your voices and battles and mainstream feminism together. It’s been all too easy for childless feminists to ignore motherhood, and it really, really shouldn’t be. We need to listen, learn and become allies to mothers by not only centring your voices but using our own to advocate for mothers everywhere. I know when I wrote a short blog post on the proposed maternity reforms last week I felt rather out of my depth and a little embarrassed by the blandness of my writing compared to the informed passion of the mothers who left comments. But discomfort and ignorance is no excuse, particularly when mothers like FertileFem are putting the necessary information out there to enable us to learn. It isn’t good enough to say ‘I’ll leave it to the experts’; we’re supposed to work in solidarity with all women, and when the women in question are working their arses off raising the next generation, the least childless feminists can do is make some noise on your behalf!
Book review: The Equality Illusion
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This is the first in a run of book reviews I hope to do in the coming months, seeing as I have a backlog of relatively new feminist non-fiction to read. First up is ‘The Equality Illusion’ by Kat Banyard, former campaigns officer for the Fawcett Society, an organisation that campaigns for social and economic justice for women in the UK.
Before I get to the review, I’d just like to make a somewhat-tangential aside about Ms. Banyard’s place of employment. While I know that there are sectors within which unpaid internships are the norm and that non-profits are one of the biggest culprits, I was pretty disheartened when I emailed the Fawcett Society a few months back to eagerly ask how I might assist them with some volunteering of some description. I didn’t mind if it was stuffing envelopes or whatever, I just wanted to get involved with an organisation I’ve always admired and would love to work for some day, when my return to paid employment outside the home is imminent. In reply to my query about volunteering on an occasional basis, I was sent details of an unpaid internship (what other kind is there?) instead. The kicker was that the job would’ve been perfect for me and I would have happily applied right then and there…if it actually paid any money. Travel expenses and £4/day for lunch isn’t going to pay the bills or the childcare though, that’s for sure. When I wrote back to say as much and again asked if there were any more occasional tasks or weekend events I could help with, I was told they “don’t really do that sort of thing.”
Now, the only reason I bring this up is because I think this is a good example of an organisation trying to do good work but putting restrictions on who can actually work for it. I mean, who else but the wealthy or those just out of university and living with their parents, sans any immediate financial responsibilities, could afford to work for three days a week for 3-6 months, completely unpaid? The assumption that those interested in feminist activism can do unpaid internships (especially by an organisation that campaigns for fair wages and equal pay for women!), just comes across as astoundingly arrogant and clueless to the realities most of us face. And the only reason I’m pointing this out is because some of my criticisms of this book are based around this general appearance of excluding some topics in favour of others that may be more sensationalist or controversial but less relevant to the majority of women’s everyday lives in the UK, ones that are affecting their livelihoods and personal lives in deeply-ingrained, meaningful ways. So with that grumble out of the way (and with it having no direct bearing on Banyard because she is not the sum of her employer’s policies, obviously), on to the review.
First off, I will say that my overall impression of the book as a tool to get the general public thinking about ways in which gender inequalities still exist is a fairly good one. If you ever heard someone say “We’ve/you’ve got equality now, what are you complaining about?” or use a term like “post-feminist world,” (has a more laughable phrase ever been uttered, aside from ‘post-racial’?) you could do worse to hand them ‘The Equality Illusion.’ For those unversed in gender issues, this is a good starting place. However, as Jess at The F-Word already pointed out in her review, Banyard is kind of preaching to the ‘yes, we all know this’ choir as far as how already-established feminists are likely to react to it.
The first chapter, on body image, does a pretty good job at dissecting the main issues — media representations of women, objectification, gender conformity, beauty standards and the beauty industry and how all of it is damaging to girls and women. The young women she interviews for this portion of the book indeed have heartbreaking tales of shattered self-esteem and distorted views of their bodies, but I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t include much in the way of how we can combat these images in our daily lives, not just by taking on the huge structures perpetuating and capitalising on it, which is a huge task that no one is really sure how to undertake.
One of the most important ways we can help girls (and boys, for that matter) build healthy self-esteems and realistic body expectations is through involved parenting and leading by example. The messages sent by a constantly-dieting mother who is always (only half-jokingly) calling herself a pig can be far more harmful and seep into a child’s subconscious than a parade of billboards with conventionally attractive, airbrushed models on them. Talking to your children about the messages they receive and the images they see can be a very effective tool in keeping their expectations healthy, yet Banyard does little, if anything, to mention empowered parenting as a potentially massive part of the ‘solution,’ as it were.
I have similar complaints about the chapter on education. Overall it’s very good in presenting facts and providing a context in which we can see the gaping inequalities still present in today’s schools, but where are the interviews with parents? What do they think of gendered behaviour, gendered education, the arguments for and against biological and socially-conditioned differences in the way boys and girls think and perform? What are theirthoughts and concerns on how gendered education is effecting their kids and if they are counteracting that at home in any way? Speaking to the teachers and to the children themselves is all very well and good, but leaving parents out of the education equation just because they don’t actually attend school with their kids is trying to complete a 24-piece jigsaw puzzle with only 18 of the pieces.
I have similar complaints of the reproductive rights chapter, which deals, unsurprisingly, with teenage/young pregnancy and abortion but not much else. There is no mention of feminist issues relating to pregnancy or birth rights, or of the changing role and consequences of reproduction throughout a woman’s life. Again, the focus seems to be on young(ish) women and those who have chosen not to have children, at least for the time being.
From my corner of the feminist parenting blogosphere, there hasn’t been much hope that this book would be any different from most of the others in really dissecting some of the issues important to mothers, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the ‘Sexism in the City’ chapter to be dedicated almost solely to the injustices and inequalities that women face with regards to work and childcare and the division of domestic labour. The case study she uses to open the chapter is about one woman”s struggle to care for her children and earn enough money to support them. Banyard asks some good questions and raises relevant topics, such as:
Why do so many women have to work below their skill level because those are the only jobs that fit around their caring responsibilities? Why are cleaning and other forms of traditional ‘women’s work’ (like carers and caterers) paid so little — and in particular less than traditional ‘men’s work’ (like plumbers and decorators) that require equivalent levels of skill and effort? Because gender discrimination in the workplace is illegal and women make up nearly half the workforce it is easy to assume that all is now fair and equal. But the near equivalent numbers of women and men in the workplace is where any ‘equality’ ends: 30,000 women are sacked each year in the UK simply for being pregnant, women make up only 12 per cent of FTSE 100 company directors and women are paid on average 22.6 per cent less per hour than men.
She also writes:
When discussing women in the workplace a standard media refrain is to ask whether women can ‘have it all’, i.e. a family and a career. But women have always had to combine work and caring. For many, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, that question is redundant; if they don’t work their family doesn’t eat. The real question is why is it only women who have to choose between a family and maximising their career potential? And, in fact, why should anyone have to choose between these two things at all?
Banyard goes on to talk about discrimination against mothers at work, the belief that women’s careers are curtailed by their ‘choices’, not because the system is set up to favour those without caring responsibilities, and the concept of a ‘sticky floor’ that exists well below the ‘glass ceiling.’ She interviews a charity that supports working parents and talks to working mothers themselves, making a real effort to understand and explain the disparities they face. There were things she didn’t touch on, of course — issues relating specifically to mothering are about more than just combining work and family — but for a feminist book by (from what I gather is) a relatively young, childless woman, I thought it was pretty well done.
Finally, the chapters on violence against women and the sex industry were informative, compelling and passionate. It seems pretty obvious that these issues are the most important to Banyard, and many young feminists, and she/they are doing a great job of speaking out against them. However (didn’t you know that was coming?), I will say that while I am 100% supportive of feminist aims to help women exit prostitution and to combat the pervasive and often-unpleasant sex industry, I can’t help but feel that the intense focus on it can be a bit off-putting to the general public. As Rachel Cooke pointed out in her review in the Guardian:
Mostly, she is preoccupied with finding ways to help women exit prostitution, and while I’m all for that, too, there are 30 million women in Britain, of whom not even a quarter of 1% sell sex for a living. What about the rest of us?
That’s not to say that prostitutes or sex industry workers don’t deserve our help and attention, because they unreservedly do. But if a book about gender inequality is trying to reach out to large swathes of people in one country, many of whom probably don’t identify as feminist in the first place, it needs to be relatable to their lives. Focusing on the sex industry, or female genital mutilation or forced marriages in other parts of the world (for example) can be, rightly or wrongly, seen as directing focus away from the issues that women right here in the UK face, all around them, every day. Portrayals of Western feminists as young, childless, middle-class, white girls who want to save ‘those poor women’ (sex industry workers, African women, child brides, etc..) from themselves may be off base entirely, but the fact is that this is the image they (we) have been saddled with by some. If a book’s aim is to foster greater understanding and enthusiasm for gender issues within a Western framework and amongst the women who inhabit it, I have to wonder if narrowing the focus a little bit and not necessarily worrying about casting the net wide in an effort to be ideologically diverse would actually catch more fish, as it were.
Again, I don’t want to insinuate that international problems or ones affecting a small, specific minority are not our problems or that we should be discouraging others from thinking about and acting upon them, but if Banyard truly wants to inspire ‘grassroots feminism’ (to which she devotes most of her last chapter), she would do well to remain focused on issues a bit closer to home and our hearts and remember that most of us — especially those living with children, or with disabilities, or financial hardships — can’t easily attend meetings and marches, or get online to check out all the latest blogs and conferences, or partake in unpaid internships.
Overall, this is a good ‘primer’ book but it’s approach is too broad and there’s not enough fire in the belly. We need less theoretical pontificating and more solid ideas for action. Because until we start organising the latter, the former is all we will ever do.
Cross-posted at Noble Savage
A new kind of war story: PTSD in childbirth
11The following is a guest post from one of the most influential bloggers in my life. When I found her site I was just starting to get really interested in and writing about the intersection of mothering and feminism and the veritable minefield of hot-button issues out there. Among the nearest and dearest to me is birth advocacy. I’d written about birth issues before but Jill at The Unnecesarean helped inspire me to take that advocacy to the next level — activism. She is a fiercely feminist protector of women’s bodily rights, their choices and their lives. In short, she kicks ass. I am honoured to share her words on my site.
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Via Lauredhel of FWD/Forward, who included the following warning:
WARNING: story of obstetric assault and PTSD symptoms. More accurately labelled “obstetric trauma”, not “birth trauma”.
In the article, How childbirth caused my PTSD, which appeared on Salon.com, Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes of being violated against her consent by a doctor while on Pitocin and Stadol.
The delivery of my son didn’t start with a rush of water, or cramps that left me hunched. It was a decision, an edict, and with it, the drip Pitocin, a drug that induces contractions. The contractions came big and loud, almost immediately at one minute apart. My cervix wouldn’t dilate, though. I was eventually given the narcotic Stadol, which caused me to hallucinate through a very long night. Twenty-four hours later, clear-headed but still not dilated, I told my doctor I didn’t believe the induction was working, that I wanted to discuss other options. But before I knew it, he began painfully separating the membrane guarding my bag of waters.
“He isn’t examining me,” I yelled at my husband. “He’s doing something.”
In a hushed tone, the doctor asked the nurse for the hook, a mechanism that breaks your water.
“Why did you do that?” I asked when it was done. “I thought we were going to talk about it!”
His voice was cold, flat. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
She discusses how the diagnosis of PPD she received a week after birth didn’t fit, as she “felt that [she] was stuck in fight-or-flight,” then received a PTSD diagnosis that seemed to fit her symptoms. When she searched the Internet for information, she didn’t find a warm reception.
Just around the time I was figuring this all out, the Wall Street Journal published an article discussing postpartum PTSD. It referenced a now-famous study by Harris Interactive for Childbirth Connection, in which 9 percent of postpartum women screened met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, according to the mental-health diagnostician’s Bible, the DSM-IV.
Not surprisingly, it elicited a giant eye-roll from bloggers. “Something about applying the term PTSD to childbirth irks me,” said Hannah Tennant-Moore, a blogger for Babble’s Strollerderby. “PTSD is most commonly associated with war veterans and victims of extreme violence; applying it to new mothers makes maternity seem like a pathology.”
Over on Jezebel Jessica Grose sneered, “Have we become so precious and hyper-conscious that something women have been doing for time immemorial is now ranked alongside war as a painful event?” She went on to say: “Certainly having a bowling ball of a baby shooting out your vag isn’t a picnic for anyone, but the hysteria surrounding something so matter-of-fact is troubling.”
The article goes on to quote a pediatrician from the University of Chicago claiming that “[f]ifty years ago, women were anesthetized for childbirth” and are now awake to experience what he calls “misadventure[s] in the delivery room.”
The pediatrician follows the cultural script of pinning the trauma on this trend of women being awake to witness the rare events in which “the mother’s life [is] at risk or the baby’s.” He stated that having a baby is opting into a normative experience and that it is difficult to find people to turn to when you’re one of “the other 2 percent” who do not have uncomplicated births, and “[w]hen you find it’s totally different from what you were told it would be, it’s traumatic.”
Rupturing membranes without consent while a woman’s body is being slammed with pharmaceutically induced contractions is not a mere “misadventure” of childbirth itself. This is a violation of patient rights, autonomy and human decency. It’s the act of a doctor who clearly would have preferred for his patient to be anesthetized as in pediatrician’s scenario of days past so that whole annoying “informed consent” thing wouldn’t get in his way. The obstetricians that the author consulted about her birth raised questions about the necessity of the induction in the first place.
Slapping women in the face with the unrealistic expectation line serves only those wishing to perpetuate the status quo and blame women for creating their own PTSD. While is it true that the rareness of death in childbirth contributes to a “couldn’t ever happen to me” factor that is exacerbated by the unrealistic “I can control this from ever happening to you” or “you or your baby will die right now/tomorrow/next week/next month unless you do everything say” sales pitches from care providers, the time has come for women discussing the trauma associated not with childbirth but with coercive over-management of childbirth to not be thrown into some sexist, ableist Cassandra metaphor.
Akner no longer feels like “the only person who survived a normal life cycle event damaged and ruined” thanks to the community that she has found, a community that will probably continue to increase in numbers concomitantly with the increase in the number of unnecessary inductions and cesareans.
Women’s bodies, men’s work (part two)
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Carrying on from part one, in which I discussed cleavage and how views of women’s bodies affect our views of ourselves and the way we are treated, I want to talk about women’s bodies as they relate to the workplace.
When women were finally integrated into the workplace, the move was largely concessionary. Women at that time were only ‘allowed’ in after many, many years of political and social struggle and after proving their worth doing men’s jobs during World War II. Gradually, more companies became open to or were forced to begin hiring women, with great big shoves from bodies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the US and passage of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 in the UK. That these laws were only passed a few years before I was born reminds me that this really was a long and hard-fought battle by the women of my grandmothers’ and mother’s generations and that they completely revolutionised the way we navigate public spheres and live our lives. Hell, it was only 45 years ago that it became illegal for companies in the US to fire a woman immediately upon marriage! These were not easy trails our foremothers blazed.
Unfortunately, when these women fought to get into the workplace they largely based their arguments on the premise that they could do the same work as men and, therefore, should be treated exactly the same as them. While I’m sure these pioneering ladies had done what they felt was necessary to get that first foothold on the ladder secured, I’m not sure they properly contemplated and anticipated the negative aspects of this kind of strategy. Because let’s be honest — the working environment didn’t change all that much when women moved in, and they didn’t ask it to. They were expected to simply fit in with the guys and draw as little attention to their gender as possible. That is, if they wanted to do a ‘man’s job’; if they were doing traditionally female jobs (like secretarial work, nursing, etc..) they were expected to be a bit of helpful eye candy and not much more. You’ve seen Mad Men, right? The ass-slapping, “c’mere, darlin” open patronisation and blatant sexism? It’s a true portrayal of working life for many at the time.
But that was then and this is now, or so say those who claim we are living in a ‘post-feminist’, non-sexist, utopian (read: imaginary) society. Women’s lib, equal opportunity laws and sexual harassment lawsuits took care of all that, didn’t it? We have maternity leave (though only an extremely paltry 12 weeks in the US) and the right to report our sexist co-workers or bosses to the proper authorities if they bother us and only a 17% disparity between our pay packets for the exact same work. What the hell else do we want, some wonder?
The problem is this — nearly all of the business world was built around the male biological and social imperative. It was understood that a working man was either single and carefree or with a wife at home who took care of his house, his children and all domestic tasks, aside from the more ‘manly’ chores like grass-cutting, wood-chopping and car repairs. The male worker had no need for flexible hours that fit in around school or shopping hours. The male worker had no dramatic hormonal changes, pregnancies, breastfeeding or post-partum recovery to deal with. The male worker was not the primary caregiver for his offspring and, if his wife did work for some reason, he was not held responsible for arranging their care. If a project needed more work or clients needed schmoozing or the boss wanted more hours put in, it wasn’t much of a problem. A quick phone call to say he’d be late and to keep his dinner warm in the oven was all that was required.
For women who were wives and had children, it was not so easy. Because their jobs were often seen as insignificant or merely ways to ’keep them busy’ — rather than sources of personal fulfilment, empowerment and financial independence – they were still expected to put their responsibilities to their children, husbands, husbands’ careers, home and image before their own aspirations. The fact that they were paid less and so were nearly always the secondary earner in the relationship (hence, with the ‘less important’ career), didn’t seem to register, or even matter. We’d thrown our hats into the ring and now we were going to have to take it on the chin…like men. No special treatment here, sweetheart!The fact that women were (and still are, in some quarters) viewed as irrational, emotional and lacking in intelligence didn’t help either. Hundreds of years of gender stereotypes and male privilege made sure of that. And though the distinctions are not so black-and-white as they used to be, the division between men and women in how they are expected to prioritise their careers and families is still prevalent.
But one of the biggest problems remaining, in my view, is that women’s bodies have not been integrated and accepted into the workplace. Pregnancy and maternity leave are still career-killers. Taking time off for antenatal appointments or to look after a sick child is still met with groans and rolled eyes from a sizeable minority who wonder why mothers don’t just chuck in their jobs and stay at home already, like they’re supposed to. We’ve all heard of colleagues who make that asinine remark, “I wish I could have a few months off,” as if taking time off to give birth and care for a newborn was a beach holiday with cocktails.
Some people would even begrudge a woman the right to pump milk at work, calling it an ‘extra break’ and complaining that she’s getting ‘special treatment,’ which I think any mother who has ever breastfed or expressed knows is misguided. Trying to get as much milk as possible out of your breasts while hunched over an electronic pump in a storage closet, hoping no one walks in on you, is not a ‘break’. It’s just more work, though of the unpaid, ‘unimportant’ variety in capitalism’s eyes.
And then there’s the super-gross, super-secret monster called Menstruation. Ever dragged yourself into work despite the debilitating menstrual cramps, copious bleeding, excessive bloating, splitting headache and hormone levels that rise and plummet like a roller coaster? Ever had to sit through a round of PMS jokes when you snap at someone or cry after a tense conflict with a colleague? I don’t know many women who haven’t.
No, women’s bodies are not welcome in the workplace. Our biological differences are still shrouded in shame and secrecy. When we walk into our offices, we’re supposed to check our femaleness at the door. No crying, cramps, children or breast milk, please. It’s all man here.
Look also at what is considered ‘professional’ dress code for women and all of the mixed messages therein: be sexy and attractive, but not so much that other women are jealous and men are ‘distracted’ or don’t take you seriously; wear fitted, tailored clothing so as not to hide’your figure (if you have a ‘good’ one) but attire must also not be too tight or revealing, lest men are distracted or don’t take you seriously; etc., etc., etc… The workplace didn’t welcome women (and their bodies) as they were, it tried to force them into the existing mould of masculine power.
Women’s bodies have always been blamed for men’s moral weaknesses; it’s why strict adherents of many religions (and even those of a more secular persuasion) have rules about how covered up women should be and why this is for their own protection from men. From the burqa-clad Muslim to the mini-skirted rape victim, women’s clothing has always been a symbol of her modesty and an advertisement for her chasteness, or lack thereof. It’s a man’s world and we’re just living in it…and so we have to dress accordingly, including at work.
Because industry and business were built upon male norms, the working environment reflects this attitude as well. We got on the ladder alright, but what we should’ve been after was an entirely different climbing apparatus, one in which we could move horizontally across a continuum we helped create, not forced to climb vertically up those rigid, historically-male rungs (in high heels, naturally) before hitting that infamous glass ceiling.
And so the women of the previous generation — not wanting to appear unreliable, uncommitted or in any way inferior to men — shouldered the burden of both work and home and tried to turn the enormous stress and strain of it all into a message of empowerment for their daughters. Saying, “See! We can work and still have kids and houses and husbands! We’re not asexual, frigid, heartless, childless wenches after all! We can have careers and be taken seriously and earn money while still running the PTA, doing all the grocery shopping and ironing everyone’s clothes! This is freedom!”
I don’t blame those women one bit for taking on that message. They did the best they could with what they had and turned centuries of degradation and discrimination into opportunity and possibility. I applaud them. I respect them. My beef is not with them.
But.
‘Doing it all’ is not working. ‘Having it all’ is not possible. Women of my generation have watched as our mothers worked themselves to early graves, ill health, divorces, unimaginable stress, or lives devoid of personal interests once the careers were finished and the kids were grown. Men of my generation have been raised by these women and lauded their efforts, thought it ‘noble’ that their mothers did everything while perhaps their fathers did what they’ve always done — worked, and done the odd bit of housework or parenting when asked. We have, by and large, not grown up seeing functional, equitable, reciprocal partnerships. While what these women did was indeed extraordinary, it needn’t be The Way Things Are.
People of my generation are, more than ever, seeking the kinds of partnerships they saw as lacking in their own parents. More men are involved in the rearing of their children, the cleanliness and order of their homes and the day-to-day tending of their romantic relationships. More and more women are realising that they perhaps can’t or even don’t want to do everything all at once. More mothers are choosing to stay at home when their children are young and then returning to work later. This is, of course, usually to the detriment of their careers. More women with successful careers are choosing not to have children at all due to the constraints of their professions, or delaying motherhood until the possibility of it occurring naturally becomes slimmer and slimmer. So, at the moment, we seem to be faced with two choices, neither of which seems all that appealing: Do it all at once, or choose between career and children.
There must be a better way. There has to be a better way. We deserve it. Men who care about their partners and their children deserve it. Children most certainly deserve it. We can’t carry on the status quo anymore, it is (by and large) not working. This is why we are fighting for the right to decide when and if we will become mothers at all. This is why those who are already mothers are getting angry. This is why I think we’re approaching some of the major feminist dilemmas from the wrong angle. And in the next post, I will outline some of the changes that I think we need in order to really revolutionise the way both men and women combine careers and families and how women are treated within the public spheres.
Here’s where you come in; I want to hear your experiences, ideas and suggestions. What do you think we need to do to get real change rolling? Let’s think outside the box and brainstorm here. From the smallest detail to the bigger picture, I want to hear your ideas for how we can make motherhood truly compatible with having careers and equitable marriages. What small things are you doing within your own lives to help reach that goal? What kind of legislation do you think would be helpful in effecting these changes? How can we overcome patriarchal norms and heteronormativity and reach out to those who hold the reins to these stifling structures?
Blog For Choice: Trust Women
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Blog For Choice Day 2010
Each year, NARAL Pro-Choice America poses a question to pro-choice bloggers before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and then asks them to blog their answer on January 22.
Blog for Choice Day provides us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere, all the while celebrating Roe’s 37th anniversary. Plus, it’s a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected and advanced.
Last year more than 500 people participated in this effort. We hope you will join us this year!
If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate! You can post your response in a Note on Facebook, or tweet your response on Twitter and use the hashtag #bfcd.
This year’s topic
In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women,” this year’s Blog for Choice question is:
What does Trust Women mean to you?
I don’t know about you but I’m loving this year’s topic. To me, trusting women is the crux of the abortion issue and all of women’s reproductive rights, really. Because if we can’t trust women to make their own decisions about their own bodies and lives, what in the world is the government and our society doing even pretending that they consider women fully sentient human beings who should be afforded the same rights as men?
Regardless of what some people might think, the decision to keep or terminate a pregnancy is not an easy one. Sometimes a baby is wanted but not feasible and sometimes it’s the other way around. There are as many different reasons for choosing to carry a pregnancy to term as there are for deciding not to. Not all of them are selfless. Not all of them are selfish. But really, it shouldn’t matter why a woman exerts her choice to reproduce or not – all that matters is that the choice exists.
Trusting women to make the best choices for themselves, their health and their families extends not only to abortion, though, but to all aspects of their reproductive processes. Informed consent and real choice in childbirth is also being threatened with alarming regularity. The technologies invented and the methods adopted in the last several decades in an effort to improve outcomes and maternal satisfaction with the birth experience has swung from the useful, life-saving end of the pendulum towards the other side, where maternal and infant mortality rates actually rise instead of fall with excessive interventions and unnecessary surgeries performed, leaving scores of health-impaired babies and traumatised or dissatisfied mothers in its wake.
Trusting women means trusting them to know whether they’d like to or are able to become mothers, and when, and how many times. It means keeping public scrutiny and laws and judgment off their pregnant bodies. It means providing them with the tools, knowledge and support to make their own decisions in childbirth and allowing their instincts to flourish and guide them, with confidence. It means accepting that sometimes people will make choices that we wouldn’t make ourselves and trusting that they were the right ones for them at that time.
What does Trust Women mean to you?
How I got here and where I’m going: an introduction
9Before I became a mother I was moderately interested in women’s issues and occasionally ranted about some sexist attitude or another, but would probably only call myself a feminist if pressed. While I knew that injustices and prejudices existed, I’d led a relatively privileged life as a white, straight, cis, middle-class, Western, educated woman. As a result, my experiences with inequality were limited. In short, I wasn’t fully invested in the movement. I thought I had no reason to be.
Then in 2006 I had my first child, a daughter, and the veil fell from my eyes.
My pregnant body became public property, subject to unsolicited comment and touch. Birth was something best left to the professionals; an event to be endured and controlled instead of experienced and enjoyed. Breastfeeding in public became something I had to learn to do ‘modestly’. Taking my baby into a cafe or on a train was suddenly a nuisance and cause for hostility from other adults. Trying to navigate public areas and access services that had not taken the needs of children or their carers (or those with disabilities, for that matter) into consideration became a constant source of frustration. For example: train stations without lifts, toilets with no baby change facilities, shops with aisles and doorways so narrow and overstocked as to prevent entry or movement once inside and limited scope for taking a pushchair onto a bus.
I quit my job to look after my daughter because I wanted to be with her but also because I couldn’t afford good-quality and reliable care for her. I would have loved to return to work in a part-time capacity after her first year but there was little on offer and financially it just didn’t make sense. So I buckled down to do the ‘full-time -stay-at-home-mum’ thing, even though it didn’t feel quite right. I enjoyed being there for my daughter, to watch her every developmental milestone, but I found it quite isolating and I was keenly aware that for the first time since I was 15 years old, I didn’t have a job or any source of income. And what made that such a bitter pill to swallow was that I was actually doing the most challenging and intensive work of my life, with the longest hours and fewest accolades. Everything started to feel quite…unfair, somehow. There seemed to me a distinct lack of ‘choice’ about this situation but since Mother’s Guilt says we should all be overjoyed if we can afford to stay at home with our children, I swallowed my uncertainties and plastered on a smile.
Everyone had told me that having a baby would be difficult, but I thought they’d meant the actual caring and being responsible for a child. No one told me that the really difficult part would be reconciling the fact that how the world viewed me had irrevocably changed and, consequently, altered my view of the world and how I navigated through it. I felt invisible and powerless.
Then one day, while looking for some baby-related information online, I stumbled onto a few websites that changed my life. Finally, I had found something that encapsulated and acknowledged everything I was feeling and going through: Feminism. I began devouring feminist and feminist-mothering websites, books and magazines as voraciously as if they were food and I hadn’t eaten in days. In a way, the words and the stories and knowing I was not alone in my experiences were my sustenance. My hunger for them grew alongside the seething bubble of anger in the pit of my stomach.
I was completely transfixed as I read story after story about women’s rights being trampled on “for the safety of the baby:” Pregnant women being kicked out of the pub for having a beer or refused the purchase of cheese at the supermarket; women being coerced into unnecessary c-sections for reasons related not to her or her baby’s well-being, but the hospital’s convenience or lawsuit concerns; women experiencing trauma and even assault in the course of or as a result of their child’s birth, their bodily autonomy stripped away without a second thought. My eyes moved with indignation over articles about women being kicked out of aeroplanes, department stores and restaurants for breastfeeding their babies in view of other people and without adhering to some indeterminate and wildly-varied idea of “discretion.”
I read news and discussions on these topics, and more, with a mixture of disbelief and horror. I became very interested in broadening the scope of my comprehension, both socially and academically, on issues ranging from reproductive rights to gender stereotyping to the proliferation of sexual violence and how all of these intersect with race, class, and heteronormativity. But still, my interest was drawn strongly towards issues facing mothers, particularly after I had my son (via an amazing home birth) in 2008.
Now, I cringe at how stay-at-home mothers and working mothers alike are vilified and criticised, pitted against each other in the media-constructed ‘Mommy Wars’. I clench my fist when I hear the pay gap nonchalantly explained away as being the result of “lifestyle choices” that women make (i.e. taking time off to give birth to and raise young children) without any meaningful discourse on how a male partner’s often-already-higher salary and greater earning potential (not to mention how women are the presumed carers for any and all children) are a big determinant in the female parent’s decision to quit her job, reduce her hours, change jobs to something more family-friendly or put her career on hold altogether. That some would make something so complex and with so many different factors at work out to be a kind of ‘all-things-being-equal-I-make-this-lifestyle-choice‘ decision, made as lightly and as simply as figuring out what to have for lunch…well, it gets me fuming.
Women who are the main breadwinners, the sole parent or who choose to return to work shortly after birth are often ostracised, condemned and even fired from their jobs for doing things like taking the day off when their child is sick or daring to breastfeed or pump milk for their babies beyond the confines of their allotted break time or on the premises without ‘permission’. Even before her baby is born a woman is at greater risk of losing her job — it is estimated that 30,000 pregnant women are sacked or forced out of their jobs and a further 200,000 discriminated against each year in the UK. Each YEAR!
Those who stay at home after their children are born are simultaneously scorned for being dull and unambitious, and martyred (for doing what they are ‘supposed’ to do), while women who do work for pay (usually out of necessity) are berated for not “choosing” to stay at home. And regardless of work-for-pay status, partnered women with children (and even those without) do a disproportionate share of the child-related and domestic labour.
When I first started looking into these things, I couldn’t believe the minefield of feminist issues specific to mothering that were out there. Why wasn’t I hearing more about these issues in the news? Why weren’t books being written about this, marches being organised, legislation to correct these problems being introduced? Namely, where were all the feminist voices? Did they not care about these things as much as the banner issues of abortion, equal pay, sexual violence and discrimination?
A whole world and other side of feminism opened up before me and I jumped in — unhesitant, with both feet — eager to find the answers. I discovered that mainstream feminism is talking about these issues but not with the dedication and commitment they deserve. But what I worked out relatively quickly is that this is by no means a purposeful omission. First and foremost, people tend to care about, write about and be most passionate about what they know and have personally experienced. As it is, a lot of the most active and vocal women in the feminist movement are either childless by choice, haven’t had children yet or have already raised their children into adulthood. The twenty-somethings and the fifty/sixty-somethings tend to run the show (the former on feminist websites and the latter in academia), likely because the women in their thirties and forties are quite preoccupied with the most demanding years of their careers and/or involved in time-intensive childrearing.
So while some mothers might feel that mainstream feminism isn’t interested in fighting their fights, I have not found that to be true in the vast majority of cases. Feminists who have not had children are not, as a rule, unsympathetic towards issues that are unique to parents. They might not be aware of the complexities or have experienced the challenges themselves, but nearly every time I’ve brought a mother-specific issue to the attention of a group of activists who are mostly childless, I have rarely been turned down, moved on or ignored.
Mainstream feminism wants to help mothers. There are many mothers already within mainstream feminism. The key to a better relationship between those who have had children and those who haven’t is an awareness, sensitivity and mutual respect for the issues each face and willingness to get involved in campaigning for changes that don’t directly benefit or effect us at that particular stage of our lives.
I know so many wonderful, intelligent, passionate, community-minded women who want to change our world for the better, make it a more humane, equitable and accepting place for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society. Some of them have children, some of them don’t. Some of them call themselves feminist, some of them don’t. Do we need the labels, presumptions and stereotypes? Of course not. But what we do need is unity, cohesiveness and enough of us willing to organise together to affect (nay, demand) the changes we so desperately need. Can we do that when we have a tainted name, no official strategy, and not enough women willing to put themselves on the front line? I fear we don’t.
That’s why I’ve started Fertile Feminism: in the hopes we can find a way to bring parenting issues to the forefront of the feminist agenda (which, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t involve exterminating men or eating babies for breakfast) and, in return, help fortify and revolutionise the movement that already exists — for all women, everywhere.