Posts tagged work
Ladies, please: less greedy, more breedy
8
In the news today we are treated to the kindly ‘advice’ of one well-meaning (male) OB, in which he encourages women to become “better at resolving the conflict” between career and family and have their children when they are biologically meant to, between age 20 and 35. Instead of picking apart everything that’s wrong with this advice, let’s turn it around and say what should have been printed but was (as always) completely ignored. [Note: The article's text has been partially copied and pasted with wording changed for satire. Italics indicate text I have added. Copyright of the original article remains with the author].
“The message that ages 20 to 35 are the best for a woman to have a child should be taught to all genders in schools and governments alongside education about the realities of and societal need to support teenage pregnancies and contraception parenthood, the leader of the UK’s maternity doctors has said.
Dr Tony Falconer, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), warned against the pronounced trend towards older motherhood discouraging women from having children in their most fertile years by making it difficult for them to be mothers and work/go to school and said women and couples politicians and business leaders have to become “better at resolving the conflict” between their careers profits and family plans decency as human beings.
“It’s never our responsibility business[as doctors men] to tell people women when they should have their family, because there are all sorts of patriarchal constraints and societal pressures,” he told the Guardian in his first major interview since taking up the post in October.
But he added: “There’s no doubt that between 20 and 35 is the time to have your children. We are building up a difficulty for ourselves as a society by people’s expectations capitalism’s sexist limitations that they women will would be prudent to wait until they are older. That’s a very complex issue (and one few men in power care about), but it is a problem.”
His views on what he sees as the increasing problem of women waiting to have children society forcing women to choose between or compromise on matters of family and career could cause controversy.
But Falconer said there is strong evidence that women who leave starting a family until they are 35 industries that refuse to place any value on or make provisions for employees simultaneously undertaking pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and parenting will have reduced fertility credibility and so find it harder to conceive hire and keep employees, even more so once they hit 40 men are required to more fully participate in childrearing.”
Now that, my friends, would actually be a radical concept in a progressive newspaper. Telling us we should have our babies earlier isn’t news, it’s recycled sexism with a big dollop of duh.
The psychology of motherhood: nature or nurture?
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As someone who firmly believes that many of the alleged psychological differences between the male and female sexes can be attributed to cultural reinforcement of popular myth, bad or ethically-questionable science and a healthy dose of plain ol’ sexism, it’s hardly surprising that I am instinctually repelled by claims that girls are ‘hard-wired’ to like pink things and be terrible drivers or that pregnant women and new mothers have diminished mental capacity and memory, otherwise known as ‘baby brain’.
On the other hand, as an advocate for mothers and someone who acknowledges and has experienced first-hand the powerful effect of hormonal changes on a woman’s mind and body, I do not deny that biology and its many processes may play a role in shaping who we are and how we live.
But just how much credence should we give to the idea that having children brings with it an overwhelming and inevitable shift in how we think? Is the psychology of motherhood subconsciously learned and culturally-ingrained or is it simply a case of biological design, wherein mothers are destined to expend more brain power on their offspring than on themselves or the world around them? Is ‘baby brain’ part of human evolution or a convenient theory to explain why women still undertake the psychological burden of parenthood, making them supposedly more naturally suited to be caretakers than professionals?
If you ask a group of mothers whether they felt less sharp or had bad memories while pregnant and within the first several months of each of their children’s lives, many will answer with a resounding ‘Yes!’ Anecdote after anecdote about forgetting a phone number known for decades or struggling to remember what that large rectangular thing in the kitchen that chills the perishable food is called soon follow. Mothers who work outside the home also sometimes report not being able to focus on their jobs because they are so busy thinking of and organising all the many things that need doing in relation to the household and children.
While I’m sure these things are true and that many women do indeed experience some element of memory loss in pregnancy and in the early years of parenting, I have to wonder if there isn’t another (series of) explanation(s) other than a decrease in mental acuity. After all, some women report not experiencing this phenomenon at all.
So is ‘baby brain’ just a stereotype perpetuated to remind women that their focus should be on their foetus or child, or an inescapable truism? Let’s look at the evidence.
First, there’s a question of whether our brains literally shrink during pregnancy. According to this news report and associated study (though a very small one, with only 9 participants), the late stage of pregnancy does seem to cause individual brain cells to decrease in volume, though not in quantity. One theory is that this may be because the body is busy pumping extra blood and other fluids around the body and to the foetus and the associated reproductive organs. Another study found that pregnancy “adversely affects ability to recall previously seen spatial locations” due to hormonal changes and concludes that pregnant women will likely have diminished capacity to perform certain cognitive tasks because of said changes.
However, this does not necessarily explain anecdotal reporting of memory loss or lack of focus. The authors of the above studies themselves conclude that their findings are speculative and the sample sizes were very small.
A much larger, more comprehensive study performed in Australia earlier this year concluded — after studying 1,241 women both before and after they had children (and comparing them to those who never had children at all) — that having a baby does not adversely affect memory or cognitive abilities. The head researcher said:
“Part of the problem is that pregnancy manuals tell women they are likely to experience memory and concentration problems — so women and their partners are primed to attribute any memory lapse to the ‘hard to miss’ physical sign of pregnancy.
Pregnant women may also shift their focus away from work issues to help them prepare for the birth of their new baby, while new mothers selectively attend to their baby.
But she said this shift should not be labelled a ‘cognitive deficit.’”
In the same article, a senior midwife notes that the physical and emotional stresses of pregnancy, coupled with lack of sleep and the shock of a major life change, are the more likely explanations for any reported memory lapses or concentration difficulties.
Moving on from pregnancy, we have also generally accepted the idea that women’s abilities for systematization and concentration decrease (even if only marginally) in the months and years after birth. Couple this with the oft-spouted stereotype that women are hard-wired for empathy and we go from the idea of a brain-addled new mummy as dubious myth to a widely accepted cultural norm, in the form of ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’, et al.
Dr. Cordelia Fine, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of “Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference,” hits back at what she believes is the perpetuation of old sexism with new science. Dr. Fine attributes many of the studies’ stated outcomes to researchers using their own biases and belief in gender differences to influence not only the way the studies are conducted but how they are written. Knowing that the media do not generally dissect scientific studies at their core and instead take the best ‘plain English’ tidbits to create sensational headlines, some of these studies authors may be (wittingly or unwittingly) contributing to the idea that men’s and women’s differences can be explained by nature, not nurture.
In this New York Times review of Dr. Fine’s book, we see previous examples of biological differences used as rationale for all sorts of discrimination against women.
Experts used to attribute gender inequality to the “delicacy of the brain fibers” in women ; then to the smaller dimensions of the female brain (the “missing five ounces,” the Victorians called it); then to the ratio of skull length to skull breadth. In 1915 the neurologist Dr. Charles L. Dana wrote in this newspaper that because a woman’s upper spinal cord is smaller than a man’s it affects women’s “efficiency” in the evaluation of “political initiative or of judicial authority in a community’s organization” — and thus compromises their ability to vote.
Dr. Fine also examines the popular opinion that new mothers are ill-suited to return to work full-time and, if they do, how challenging they find it due to their hearts and minds remaining firmly in the home, even when they are at work. Her article in Neuroethics magazine, entitled “Will Working Mothers’ Brains Explode? The Popular New Genre of Neurosexism” is a must read for those interested in or concerned with the way women’s abilities are viewed upon returning to work after having a child.
So if we know that science is not always reliable and is, indeed, subject to societal influence, how do we know which studies to trust and which to throw out with the bathwater? When can we be sure that a woman self-reporting memory loss and a general feeling of being ‘a bit stupid’ is a neurological truth instead of an internalised stereotype?
The short answer is that we don’t and we can’t. If someone’s experience confirms previously-held views or theories, they will be hard-pressed to view it any other way. The longer answer is that we have to scrutinise these studies before accepting them as fact and learn to examine not only the source of the study and the possible motivations behind it, but what personal prejudices may influence the outcome. We must also question the use of anecdotes (even when they are numerous) that fly in the face of evidence-based research.
Having said that, I am not a proponent of telling other women how to rationalise their experiences or how to feel their feelings. If a woman thinks she’s hard-wired to look after her baby and to put the milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge when she is expecting, that is her truth and her prerogative. Likewise, I wouldn’t discount a woman who insisted she had zero cognitive dissipation and zero doubts about her abilities to perform her job or other duties just as well after she’s had children as she did before.
In my view, the prevailing idea of ‘baby brain’ is likely a combination of factors, some biological but mostly cultural. I’ll likely never know for sure if I’m right or not, as when it comes to nature versus nurture there are no cut-and-dried answers.
So what do you think? Or have you forgotten what we were talking about?
A depressing work of staggering ignorance
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Oh, the epic screed I could write about this article in the New York Times.
First, the good news: a major newspaper put an article about mothers in the workforce in the Economy section, not Life & Style or the Moms Like Me! section, where most news items about women go to die.
But before David Leonhardt and his sub-editors go patting themselves on the back too hard, I’d like to point out the major flaws in the story. Lord knows I’d like to point out all the minor ones too, but I haven’t got time for that tedious process today.
First, Leonhardt assumes that the three female Supreme Court nominees he holds up as examples of women being forced to choose between family and career actually wanted children. Unless he’s been privy to private conversations with these women on their reproductive choices, I’m afraid this is what one would call Lazy Journalism. Man, I hate that! It’s why I decided against a full-on career in journalism in the end — I’m way too slothful for all that fact-finding and high-energy truthfulness. But at $2 a pop, I expect the New York Times to put down its $4 single scoop of ice cream, get up off the sofa and actually, I don’t know, write articles based on something besides gender stereotypes. Is it just me?
Anyway.
Here’s where Leonhardt’s article simultaneously caught my attention and pissed me off: the ol’ It’s All Feminism’s Fault™ trick, number 323,982 in an infinite series.
The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It’s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.”
In many ways, the choice was shrewd. The feminist movement has been fabulously successful fighting for antidiscrimination laws that require men and women to be treated equally. These laws have not eliminated the blatant sexism of past decades — think “Mad Men” — but they have beaten back much of it.
As a result, outright sexism is no longer the main barrier to gender equality. The main barrier is the harsh price most workers pay for pursuing anything other than the old-fashioned career path.“Women do almost as well as men today,” Ms. Waldfogel said, “as long as they don’t have children.”
Did you hear that, “shrewd” feminists of yore? You screwed up because when you demanded equality in the workplace, you didn’t also make the correct “policy choices” to ensure that mothers wouldn’t get the shaft. IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!
Wait, what? You say that you weren’t in positions of power to make economic or social policies and that you did talk about these issues but were summarily ignored before resentfully being given the crappiest office in the building when you, as a senior manager, were finally removed from the typing pool where The Girls all sat? I think we all know that was a conscious choice on your part, Janet. [Note: Janet is the name of the 2nd wave feminist who participates in technically fictional but historically accurate role play situations in my head]
And was there any mention of the role men and their hundreds-years-old policies have played in women’s inability to break the glass ceiling? Was there anything in there about how if fathers took on more of the childcare and housework, women would be less likely to be pushed out of the labor force in staggering numbers? Was there even a smattering of meaningful analysis of gender roles, social pressure, paltry maternity leave, patriarchal attitudes and, yes, good ol’ workplace sexism?
Oh Janet, you were always a dreamer, weren’t you! I think it’s cute.
Full-time mother: occupation?
23A site called Full Time Mothers reported yesterday that a woman whose sole job is to care for her children was successful in convincing the General Register Office to allow her (and, presumably, any other women in her position) to use ‘full time mother’ instead of ‘housewife’ or ‘home-maker’ as an occupational title on her child’s birth certificate.
Karen, now full-time mum to four children said : ‘Although I appreciate that all mothers are mothers all the time, whether out in paid work or looking after their children, there is clearly a significant difference, which would affect all kinds of socio-economic analysis, between holding a paid job and arranging various forms of childcare, and taking care of your own children all the time as your only job.’
She continued: ‘It is important to me personally that my children’s birth certificates accurately reflect my occupation at the time of their birth, but surely it should also be important to the Office of National Statistics that all information gathered can be used to analyse the actual situation of our population.’
Karen felt strongly that ‘housewife’ or ‘home-maker’ were not adequate descriptions of her daytime occupation, since her main activity during the day is caring for her young children, not cleaning the house, as this gets done in the evenings when the children are asleep, not unlike ‘life-before-children’ when the couple tackled domestic chores after returning from their daytime jobs.
Karen explained: ‘ You could easily define yourself as a house-wife or home-maker and in fact not have any childcare element in your day at all!’
While I agree with much of what Karen says, I’m still uncomfortable with the term ‘full-time mother,’ for exactly the reasons she mentioned in the first paragraph. We’re all mothers, all the time, no matter where we are or how many hours we spend caring for our children. Would a different term be more suitable and less dismissive of those women who do work outside the home? I know I personally hate ‘housewife’ and ‘home-maker’ too. Stay-at-home mum isn’t much better. Could ‘Primary care provider’ or ‘At-home parent’ be a valid alternative? Does it even matter?
I’m interested to hear your opinions, whether you work solely at home or also in a paying job. What do you think?
Reply turned post: What is ‘work’?
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I left this rather long comment on Catherine Redfern’s post on The F-Word, which was about the Conservatives’ proposed tax break for married couples but quickly turned into a bit of commentary on whether the ideal of one parent at home with the children is harmful to women. In the post, Catherine included a poster from a 1947 magazine encouraging women to “try to free yourself for work” to help the economy and wondered if, with the idolisation of motherhood, the reverse would soon be true — posters extolling us to stay at home where we belong.
While I understand and agree with Catherine’s dislike of the tax break for married couples, which, as she rightly says, would be largely irrelevant and, even worse, ignores the diversity and complexity of modern families, I do take issue with the idea that one parent (usually the mother) being at home with the children is undesirable, unattainable or even unnecessary. Is it, as it stands, an unfair and flawed system that puts women at a disadvantage? Yes. But I don’t think the answer is simply making working outside the home unavoidable and staying at home some kind of insult to the sisterhood (not that this is what Catherine insinuated; this is what many stay-at-home mothers have told me it feels like).
It’s such a complex issue and one that I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve been reading this fascinating analysis of the value of ‘women’s work’ in economic journalist Ann Crittenden’s 2001 book The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued. I’m only halfway through and it has already challenged and altered the way I’d been approaching the solution for the modern mother’s dilemma of combining work and family. I still have lots more reading and thinking to do on the subject but I’m seeing things from a slightly different angle for the first time in ages and it is wholly refreshing. I’ll be doing a review of the book once I’m finished with it.
My comment on The F-Word post is below [altered slightly for clarity].
I have to say, it can be a bit tiresome hearing all about how incredibly privileged and wealthy those who stay home, even part of the time, must be — I stay home with my children and work a part-time job from home (as do many of the working and middle class women in my area who can’t afford full-time child care but must work to some extent, though not many are able to do their jobs from home and instead work nights or weekends) and while there are undoubtedly some privileges in that, they certainly aren’t economic. My caring labour is worth absolutely nothing in economic or social terms because what I do is supposed to be a ‘labour of love,’ not worthy of compensation. There’s an awful lot of talk about how important raising children is and how motherhood is so great, blah blah blah, but talk is cheap when actions belie the opposite.
When I do re-enter the ‘proper’ workforce my skills will be considered outdated, unpolished and worth even less than they were before. I will earn much less over my lifetime than a man, a woman without children and those mothers who returned to work when their paid maternity leaves (if they got one) were up. I’ll be more at risk for poverty when I’m retirement age as my pension will have suffered greatly in the years when I was ‘not contributing’. While I might be privileged in staying home with my children now, I am paying a ‘mummy tax’ that will have a knock-on effect for the rest of my life. Again, that’s not to say I’ve got it rough because lord knows I’ve got it easy compared to so many women working their fingers to the bone night and day, but merely to point out that even those of us ‘privileged’ enough to stay at home are paying for it one way or another.
One can’t put raising children or managing a household on one’s CV as it is seen as irrelevant. And it will continue to be seen as irrelevant, even undesirable, as long as only labour that falls outside of the domestic sphere is treated as “real” work. Women who stay at home ARE working. It’s just that our contributions to society aren’t counted in economic terms, even though they are great.
Saying that a child would be better off with one-to-one or small group care (which doesn’t have to be a parent) isn’t judgmental, it’s a pretty indisputable fact. That so many families are forced to put their children into cheap, large-group care where they aren’t given the individual attention they deserve (even though the care may be adequate for its purposes) is not acceptable or at least desirable. If women are expected to be proficient consumers and workers as well as primary caregivers, we need much better caring systems, heavily subsidised by the state, and with much better-paid and trained workers, along with more flexible working options for both parents. Don’t forget that one of the demands of the second wave movement was free 24/7 child care. We seem to have let that one fall by the wayside, leaving individual mothers in the lurch to fight that battle on their own.
Counting on men to step up the plate and start doing an equal amount of childrearing and housework hasn’t worked so far and, short of an economic and social revolution, doesn’t look likely any time soon, no matter how many baby steps have been made. Men are also constrained by long-established economic pressures and gender stereotypes. I fear that placing all of our hopes for change on fathers’ ability to break though rigid societal structures is going to leave us, and our children, waiting in the wings for a very long time. We can and should work towards a more equitable division of household and caring labour, not to mention an overhaul of gender stereotypes, but it has proven to be a slow, arduous process. In the meantime and in concert with those efforts, we should be working to value (both societally and economically) women’s work as primary caregivers and essential parts of our communities. We should make it easier for women to work, yes, but we should also make it easier for them (or their partners) to stay at home when their children are young if that’s what they want. And there’s nothing ’1950s housewife’ (read: derisory) about that.
This is not a whisper
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A few weeks ago I discussed women’s bodies in the workplace and how our biological and social needs were never truly integrated, even when we were finally ‘allowed’ to work. I said:
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.
I also said:
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.
…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.
Finally, I concluded that:
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.
Essentially, I was arguing that we can’t ‘fix’ the current system or try to force our way into existing frameworks because those systems and frameworks don’t serve our needs or our lives, which is what author Hilary Mantel says in today’s Guardian as well. What both of us are trying to say, I believe, is that moulding ourselves to fit a system designed without our bodies, our wants or our priorities in mind can do us harm. It does do harm to women the world over, every day. Being forced to delay children until our 30s and 40s in order to establish successful careers is harmful. Being denied educational and professional opportunities if we choose to have children in our teens or 20s is harmful. All this analysis of feckless, fertile teen mums and desperate, over-achieving 40-somethings undergoing IVF sends one clear message and it is this:
You can’t win.
You can’t win because the perfect time to have a child, according to current advice, is in one’s mid-20s to early 30s. Unfortunately for us, that also happens to coincide with the prime years for establishing a career and moving up the ladder, or pursuing further education. Taking long ‘career breaks’ (because, as we know, having and raising children is not considered ‘real work’), even if short-term, harms our long-term financial and professional potential. Women who take career breaks at this time in their lives rarely end up in senior positions, earning as much and on the same par with similarly-aged male colleagues. If we want to have even a chance at joining their ranks we have two choices — don’t have children for another 10-15 years (or at all) or have children but get back to work quickly by placing them in care, the provision and management of which will be made preposterously difficult given the restrictions of the working environment.
Each of these ‘choices’, of course, has negative consequences. Risking infertility or having to pay someone else most of your salary to care for your child in the first years of its life are not ideal options, though they are the ones we have to live with in the here and now. Without truly flexible academic and professional accommodation and without access to affordable, quality childcare and meaningful, fairly-waged part-time work, we are getting nowhere. Giving dads a bit more paternity leave or giving mums a bit more money for their leave, while a nice gesture, is pointless in the end. It’s an adhesive, cartoon-faced bandage for a gaping, bleeding shotgun wound of a problem. No matter how many smiley-faced plasters we stick on it, the wound will ooze and fester without first extracting all of the detritus and cleaning it up. Putting superficial fixes on a wound of this size only masks the rotting infection underneath.
Eventually, the infection will spread and what little good the bandages did will be for nothing. We will be pushed out of the workplace again, unable to operate within the male-structured system, or continue to rely on luck and technology to have children later in life. The poor, the working class and even much of the middle class (i.e. most women), for whom talk of career breaks and IVF isn’t even relevant or possible, will continue to have children at their reproductive peak and be punished for it by being priced out of decent housing, higher education and training, and quality childcare. They will also continue to have the blame for perceived societal breakdown lain at their feet, convenient scapegoats for a system that set them (and all of us, including our children) up to fail.
I am not being dramatic at all when I say we need radical, revolutionary change. Asking the men behind the curtain very nicely and calmly if we can have this or that concession, only to see if taken away again with budget cuts that deem “women’s issues” unimportant in comparison with military spending or lining bankers’ pockets has proven ineffective. The overwhelmingly white, male, middle-class parliamentarians will pay lip service to equality and fairness, sure. They’re not stupid and know they need our votes. I’m sure many of them do know the system is unfair and would like to change it. But when push comes to shove, people protect themselves, their own families and their own jobs and interests first, we know that. We all know who is doing the shoving and who will be shoved. An increasingly hostile, ‘anti-PC’ segment of the public who feel threatened by challenges to their long-standing privileges also contributes to this climate of intolerance, narrow-mindedness and unwillingness to change on any substantial level.
No one is giving anything to us. Wringing our hands and writing moving essays or angry blog posts is not enough. As far as I’m concerned, it’s time for battle and we need more soldiers. I’ve had enough. And though I understand completely that not everyone feels so passionately about it, or thinks we can actually change anything, or even has the desire to, I can’t help but feel completely, helplessly angry when I know that if we really could get a million women to rise, we’d finally be noticed. If, like our sisters of the first and second waves have done before us, we sat down, refused to move, refused to accept the status quo or meek little promises of incremental change, we would be an undeniable force to be reckoned with. We are 52 per cent of the population. We vote. We live here. We matter. And I, for one, am tired of playing it down and carefully explaining and ‘being reasonable’ and keeping my voice down.
I’m fucking angry and I want you to be too.
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?
The chicken or the egg: Paternity leave and gender roles
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So as you probably didn’t hear (because I’ve not seen it covered anywhere within the feminist blogosphere – sigh – and only given marginal press within mainstream media), Labour announced a couple days ago quite radical changes to the maternity and paternity leave laws, which will apply to children due on or after 3 April 2011 (provided they win the next general election).
Right now in the UK, a woman who gives birth to or adopts a child while in paid employment* is entitled to nine months’ paid maternity leave (most of which is on the Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) of £123.06 per week; only the first six weeks is paid at 90% of one’s regular salary) and then three further months unpaid, with her partner being eligible for two weeks’ paid paternity leave, also paid at the SMP rate. Some employers pay more on top of that but many don’t so it can be assumed that this is what the majority of employees who take maternity or paternity leave will earn.
The proposed changes would give a woman the option of returning to work after six months, transferring the remaining three months of paid leave over to her partner. Her partner would then have the option of taking a further three months’ leave from his or her** job, unpaid. The total leave would still amount to 12 months (9 paid, 3 unpaid) but would be more easily split between them. In theory, this would give female breadwinners and those who would like to return to work after six months the ability to go back sooner without having to put their babies into non-familial care. It would also give men who earn less than their partners or who want to be more involved in their child’s care in the first year an opportunity to stay at home for 3-6 months without losing their jobs.
That’s the bare-bones of it and how it’s laid out on paper. However, whether and how it is taken up in practise is another matter entirely. Let’s run this through a reality check.
First, let’s look at the various combinations that could be employed with this new legislation. One reality is that some women won’t be able to afford being on the SMP rate at all (a more likely situation for single mums) and so will return to work even sooner than six months. This change does not help her at all, sadly. Another likely scenario for many people will be for the mother to stay at home for the full nine months until the unpaid portion of leave kicks in, which she may or may not take depending on the family’s circumstances. This may be due to personal choice, social conditioning/pressure or practical reasons (such as financial concerns or breastfeeding).
But a woman who takes her six months’ leave and then decides to return to work after this period of time (because she is the higher earner or because her income, though less than her partner’s, is needed, or simply because she wants to) now has the option of putting her 5-6 month-old baby into care or transferring the remainder of her leave entitlement over to her partner (if she has one). In families where it is financially possible for the father to take a 3-6 month financial hit after the mother already has as well, without any severe consequences, this is potentially great news. But in a family where unpaid or reduced-pay leave for the father (even for ‘only’ three months) is not an option, does it seem likely that the male partner will be willing or able to take over the childcare duties for those three months? Will he even want to? Or will it “make more sense” for the woman to stay at home for the three remaining ‘paid’ months, as she has done for the previous six, especially if she is paid less, is breastfeeding and/or already has a daily routine and support system in place?
Though I do think that there are certainly couples out there in which the woman either needs or wants to return to work after six months and the father would be willing, perhaps even eager, to be the sole care provider for his child for at least three months, I don’t think as many men will take it up as one might expect or hope. First, there is the social stigma to deal with. A man wanting to look after his baby in theory faces the reality of having to ask for the leave from his employer and then explain to his colleagues why he will be gone. For most men, caring for children is still widely viewed as ‘women’s work’ and taking on a role almost exclusively performed by women can be viewed as a threat to his status, both socially and professionally; if not by him then certainly by at least some of his peers.
A man who looks after his children is often viewed as a bumbling, inept ‘helper’ to the mother, doing her a favour or humouring her for the sake of the ‘easy life’. Fathers I’ve spoken to (including my own husband) have told me of the times they’ve taken their children out in public without the mother present and gotten comments about how great he is for “taking them off mum’s hands,” or “giving mum the day off” as if that’s the only reason he would be solely responsible for them — as a favour to his wife or partner. Heaven forbid he actually wants and is able to look after them by himself! Some dads even report being asked if they’re divorced and on a ‘weekend pass’ with their children.
The social conditioning that men (and all of us) have been subject to sends the strong message that fathers are the second-string, the back-up team, only needed when mum isn’t around for some (usually selfish) reason. Even then, fathers aren’t expected to perform as well at parenting as their female counterparts. I’ve heard many a story of other women rushing in to offer to make a cake for a single dad who is supposed to contribute to the school’s bake sale, or telling a stay-at-home dad that he doesn’t have to take part in the snack rota at playgroup because he “has his hands full already.” The message to men, from all sides, is that parenting is not really their area of expertise (or at least, combining parenting with household responsibilities isn’t) and that just keeping the children alive and fed and the house standing is all that is expected of them.
The second hurdle in encouraging men to take this option is financial. If a man is the higher earner (as is the case in the majority of partnerships), it will be much more difficult and sometimes even impossible for him to collect SMP wages instead of his normal salary. Of the small proportion of families who would be able to do this, few within that group would be able to function without any income at all on his part, if he were to take the final three months unpaid. It isn’t clear from the wording of the new legislation but I’ve read from other sources that if a couple wants the father to take his three months at SMP but cannot afford for him to take the final three months unpaid, they lose the option for the mother to take it, effectively shortening their total entitlement to just nine months instead of twelve. This is supposedly to encourage more fathers to take at least their three months at SMP.
Again, it sounds good in theory, giving a bit of incentive for men to take the paternity leave they are entitled to, but I remain doubtful that the incentives will be enough to overcome the social and financial hurdles that a lengthened paternity leave presents. Until the social stigma of men caring for children and performing domestic duties is broken and until women receive equal pay and opportunities at work, free from gender discrimination, paternity leave and maternity leave will remain quick fixes for a much wider, more complex problem that is endemic in our society.
**Paternity leave applies to female partners of women who give birth or adopt but for the sake of simplicity and because heterosexual relationships that produce children are more prevalent, I will be using ‘he’ to signify the partners of new mothers
Women’s bodies, men’s work (part 1)
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Vered at MomGrind recently wrote a post in which she relayed a conversation she’d had with friends about whether displaying cleavage is acceptable, inspired by some of the more ‘daring’ outfits worn by female celebrities at the Golden Globe awards. In the course of this conversation, it emerged that there seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to cleavage: Cover It Up, Sister and If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It. The first is generally thought of as the more conservative, repressive option and the second as more liberal and empowering.
Now, this may seem like a trivial issue to some but to me it is actually a great example of a real division within the feminist community and the public at large. Why? Because each school of thought on cleavage has two conflicting ‘sides’ supporting it; supporters who are, in many ways, diametrically opposed to one another. The Cover It proponents are usually either quite socially conservative and rank modesty as an important virtue in their personal morals (often on religious grounds), or they are quite liberal-minded, socially progressive people who think that while breasts are of course natural and an inherent part of women’s bodies, covering up is essential if they are to to get ahead and be taken seriously, especially in the workplace. Many feminists, particularly those of the Second Wave who had to fight to get into the workplace at all, fall into this category (though this is just a generalisation based on observation, not a hard-and-fast fact or attempt to pigeon-hole anyone).
Those who are in favour of the Flaunt It approach almost always think of themselves as neo-liberal, open-minded and supportive of sexual expressiveness and, again, includes many self-proclaimed feminists, especially those of the younger generation, or Third Wave. They think women should be able to wear whatever they want, however they want and whenever they want. They will defend a woman’s right to be ‘sexy’ and ‘feel good about herself’ and exclaim loudly that breasts are nothing to be ashamed of. This is all well and good. I support that view, in theory. However, within that ideology lurks dangerous territory; a faux-liberalism in which supporting women in their quest to be ever-sexier and conform to modern beauty standards is actually harmful, reinforcing the link that ties a woman’s body and perceived attractiveness directly with her feelings of self-worth and her abilities.
A perfect example of this is those What Not To Wear and How To Look Good Naked shows on television that purport to accept and even glorify women of all shapes and sizes, but which really, at their core, are just showing these women the tricks of the trade for getting as close as possible to the beauty ideal and giving them a patronising, ‘there, there love’ pat on the head about the parts of themselves that come up short. What’s so progressive about taking a woman who has had three babies (with the saggy tummy to prove it) and giving her a corset to wear underneath her clothes instead of the less acceptable methods of telling her to starve herself or have surgery? It’s not as bad as the latter, obviously, but it’s still not true acceptance. Every woman knows that no matter how proud she is of her ‘curves’, she must try to minimise and detract attention away from the parts of her considered less desirable and that don’t meet the criteria of perfection. Drawing attention to your large breasts because you know they will focus eyes away from your ‘thunder thighs’ isn’t exactly Body Confidence, is it? But I digress. Back to cleavage…
The other, oft-quoted caveat of some within the Flaunt It school is that it’s okay to show off your breasts, but only if they are of an acceptable size and appearance. If you are relatively young, of at least average weight and without any obvious disabilities, you will be encouraged to use your breasts to attract a partner and garner praise. At Mardi Gras? Show us your tits! At a club? Show us your tits! On the beach? Show us your tits! But if you’re not any of these, or with any other ‘affliction’ marking you out from the sexually available vixens, woe betide you. Wrinkled or exceedingly freckled? Ew! Naturally very large and/or ‘saggy’? Tuck ‘em back in! Too small? Who are you kidding! Pulling up your shirt to breastfeed a baby? Jesus, we don’t want to see THAT! So, still, the message is that ‘flaunting it’ is acceptable but only if you fall within the range of what is considered worthy of flaunting. If you are not pre-approved by the pornulation and empowerfulization committees for hawtness (be it because of your age, shape, weight or race) you won’t get your Dove blue ribbon award for not hating yourself quite as much as you used to.
Even the language we use to describe how we feel about our breasts is telling: Women with small breasts will talk about not feeling as feminine or ‘womanly’ and being unable to ‘fill out’ tops and dresses, while women with large chests, like a commenter on Vered’s post, say that men talk to their breasts, not their faces, and that normal clothes look “pornographic” on them, suggesting that large breasts are equated with not being taken seriously and sexual promiscuousness, which is a common and long-held prejudice that we’re just supposed to accept as the norm.
This leads me to the issue of women’s bodies in the workplace, the main crux of this discussion, for which a second post is forthcoming. I don’t want this sucker getting too long — brevity is not my strong suit and I’m trying to work on making posts more manageable and easy to read. Watch this space!
And in the meantime, tell me your thoughts and experiences with cleavage and body image. Are you a Cover It Up sort of person or a Flaunt It believer? Do you think showing off our bodies is empowering, harmful or a combination of the two?