ursula ([info]ursako) wrote,
@ 2005-11-21 16:34:00
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Entry tags:politics

This isn't meant as an affront to or attack on any one person, but this article describes perfectly the problem with smart, capable, well-educated women leaving the workforce to raise children.
I myself hope to have a stay-at-home husband to look after the Ursula, Jrs I will eventually spawn. I mean, what with all that time, he should be able to keep things clean and look after the kids and still make sure he looks good while he serves me my warm, delicious dinner when I get home, right?


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[info]patzerhabiba
2005-11-21 11:23 pm UTC (link)
That sounds like a nice arrangement...

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[info]knish
2005-11-21 11:52 pm UTC (link)
i feel like maureen dowd has released a really asstwitching talking point into the world, and things (like your post and the referenced article) that should be ordinary become wildly controversial and... unnatural.
-jpz

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[info]ursako
2005-11-22 08:48 am UTC (link)
Yeah... I don't know what's going on there. Frankly, it's like Sex and the City attacked the brains of so many journalists that suddenly, when it comes to women, gossip is news. "I heard about this one chick whose boyfriend made her get a Brazilian before he'd sleep with her- it's a TREND!! Let's write an article!!"
Never mind that the whole post-feminist, what're-you-talking-about, we're-equal-and-that's-why-I-stay-home-and-raise-the-kids mindset was getting weirdly normal, which might be why screeds like these seem radical again.

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[info]dkingsbury
2005-11-22 08:29 am UTC (link)
Linda Hirshman is right on. May your goals be realized!

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[info]lobsterbox
2005-11-22 09:40 am UTC (link)
I think the automatic assumption that a woman making at least as much as her husband in a job she finds fulfilling will leave her job forever to take care of children and vacuum (I especially like the "Where's the butter?" reference) is whack. Wiggety whack. On the other hand, I can think of few things I'd like less to be than a high-powered Wall Street broker, or to be away from my own children for extended periods of time when they're just wee grubs. I don't want an elite job, which is why I leave it to women like you to go to law school.
I don't know what the answer is, unless workplaces allow things like parents with kids in slings so that arguments about care become moot (sp?), but I resent the thought that I have to choose and, with all due respect to the article's authors, I don't think assertions that all women who stay home with their children are hurting themselves are very helpful. Is a man who stays home with kids hurting himself, too? Who can we get to sign on for this, then?
I think the article makes reference to it, and it's an old feminist saw anyway, but it IS important to deal with the gendered nature of such chores. This old-fashioned thinking says that men work and women stay home. Therefore, the only way a person can have worth and personal fulfillment is by becoming a doctor/lawyer/broker, assuming the male role. The (female) drones stay home. That doesn't make for much choice or a gradient of grays, and while I don't agree with all the assertions made by the authors, I think articles like this are useful for confronting us with these questions and asking us to think about our notions of what's "normal".

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[info]ursako
2005-11-22 09:59 am UTC (link)
There's always this question of whether it's desireable for women to subscribe to these mores of what is still an essentially male power structure. Still, if women profess to want equal representation in the board rooms and Supreme Courts and so on of the world, the fact that the majority of married women from appropriate educational backgrounds are dropping out of the workforce to raise kids becomes a problem; we're stuck with the Condi Rices and Harriet Myerses of the world. I think it's important in the same way that voting is important- if you're okay with having whoever win the House and the Senate and the White House, fine, don't vote. And frankly, for people who don't have those positions available to them in the first place, it doesn't matter, because they're never going to be a Senator or a President anyway. I think the point of the article is that the women we most NEED to be staying in the workforce and getting into these positions of power choose not to, thereby weakening the cause of women as a whole. I'm no fan of the Ivy League or of the financial/political elite, but if they're going to be the ones running the show, I know I want more of them to be women.

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[info]lobsterbox
2005-11-22 10:52 am UTC (link)
Word. And I would hate to think that women who would most want the jobs running things nationally would be pressured into leaving their jobs because, well, that's just how we roll, not because they want to.

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Serendipity
[info]ni_q
2005-11-22 12:06 pm UTC (link)
Page 1 of the NYT business section this week is a big article on gender equality in the workforce. As measured by the difference between the number of female workers and the number of female decision makers, advertising agencies are number one, and zero ad firms are on the list of "Top 100 workplaces for working mothers".

Interesting stuff. Maybe MoDo and that goofy article about how suddenly all these Yale grads want to be homemakers has stirred up the conversation.

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