My new Dollars and Sense cartoon is up!

D&S editor Amy Gluckman writes:

Women who came of age 20 or 30 years ago in the United States may be forgiven our surprise that the whole work-home-motherhood thing continues to be so fraught. Surely by now, many thought, women would not be sweating it—at least no more than men do. Wrong! The media can take some of the credit, for, among other things, continuing to play up the alleged mommy wars between “working” and “stay-at-home” moms. At a more basic level, many people (well, men) still seem to think homemaking and raising kids is basically a “Ten-Year Nap”—the (tongue-in-cheek, we hope) title of a current bestselling novel on the subject.

There’s also some interesting stuff about what happened to Japanese divorces when the laws about pension allocations to ex-spouses changed, but you’ll have to click through to read that. :-)

From the Dollars and Sense blog:

Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative sent us this link to a recent article in Slate magazine. The article cites the curious phenomenon that professional baseball players are much more likely to be born in August than July. The author theorizes that August babies aren’t naturally better at baseball — they’re just older than their peers, because Aug. 1 is the normal cut-off date for youth baseball leagues.

The author concludes that this structural benefit for the August-born is a “small advantage can have an impact that lasts a lifetime.”

Which reminds me of this old cartoon of mine:

From Tapped, Dana advises pregnant workers to give written notice… of pregnancy:

That’s one of the lessons in Sue Shellenbarger’s latest Wall Street Journal column, which reports that pregnancy bias complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose 14 percent last year to 5,587, a 40 percent increase from a decade ago. One woman in the publishing industry was fired while she was pregnant, supposedly for poor performance, yet those issues had never come up prior to her pregnancy. She wanted legal redress, but couldn’t prove in writing that her bosses actually knew she was expecting. So consider sharing your big news over email.

Shallenbarger also writes that many American women, until they get pregnant, have no idea that they are entitled to no paid leave under current law. Indeed, a study from Harvard University last year found that of 168 nations worldwide, the United States is one of only four whose government doesn’t require employers to provide paid maternity leave. The others are Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

Dave Sim is one of the greatest living cartoonists, and his work has been very influential on my own approach to cartooning. Over the decades he’s also become an extreme, extreme anti-feminist. In a recent discussion on the Sequential Tart website, Dave wrote:

The last I heard roughly 80% of the women in our society work outside the home at outside the home jobs…forty years ago only 20% of women worked — most of them in a period between graduating from high school and getting married and then getting pregnant. Sixty years ago maybe 6% worked.

Since the run-up from 20% to 80% was largely unimpeded…

The point about percentages is really my best attempt at the collapsing of what I have to say to white dwarf size. We are definitely plowing forward to 100% of one and 0% of the other … Used to be 6% became 20% is now 80%…where do you THINK we’re going? … I don’t think it’s a good idea and I don’t think we’re well served in not examining it.

My response to Dave:¹

Dave, you’re basing your stated argument here on some factual errors. If your main concern is that we’ll be in trouble when we reach 100%, then I’ve got good news for you: It’ll never happen. In fact, we’ll never even reach 80%. Or 70%.

In the USA, about 59% of women are in the paid labor force, including both women actively looking for paid jobs, and those who currently have paid jobs.

Forty years ago, in 1968, about 40% of women were in the labor force, not 20% as you stated. Sixty years ago, in 1948, about 33% of women were in the labor force — not 6%.²

So, at least in the US, women didn’t used to do paid jobs as little as you’re claiming, and they don’t currently do paid jobs as often as you think. But can’t we say you’re correct about the overall direction of the trend, even though you’re mistaken about the specific numbers?

No, you’re mistaken about the trend too — because the percent of women in the paid labor force isn’t climbing anymore. It’s leveled out. Fifteen years ago, it was about 58%; in 2001, it peaked at 60%; and in 2005 (most recent year I’ve seen data for) it was at 59%. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics is predicting (based on demographic changes, economic changes, etc) that it’ll still be about the same in 2025. (That’s only a guess, of course, but it’s the most educated and well-founded guess anyone has at this point.)

So there’s no need to worry about what happens when 100% of women are in the paid laborforce. It will never happen. Nor is that news that disappoints feminists, as far as I can tell. In recent years, the approach among feminists is to work for not only equal access to all paid jobs, but also for more respect and economic security for people who do unpaid caring labor.

(By the way, did you know that men are working less than ever? In 1950, 86% of men had a paid job or were looking for one; today that’s gone down a bit, to 75%. The statisticians expect that number to keep dropping, to a predicted 69% in 2025. A bit of this change is due to a small, growing number of men having the freedom to stay home and take care of their kids, if that’s what they want).

* * *

You also wrote “Since the run-up from 20% to 80% was largely unimpeded…”

Women’s labor force participation was about 20% back in 1900. The run-up since then has not been unimpeded; indeed, the legal right for women to own their own paychecks had to be fought for. As recently as the 1970s, “help wanted” classified sections in many newspapers were still divided into “women” and “men” sections. Open discrimination against female workers was legal until new laws in the 70s and 80s, and a lot of less open discrimination still goes on today. (Just last year the Supreme Court of the US ruled that women who are systematically paid less than male co-workers for the same work can only sue within a few months of being hired or getting an unequal raise — after that, the employer’s discrimination is free and clear of legal repercussions.)

* * *

I don’t think that feminists want 100% of women (or men) in paid jobs. What is it feminists want?

Well, I’m a feminist. What I want is for people to have as much freedom as possible to choose a mix of home life and work life that suits them, without having to lose economic security, and regardless of if they’re female or male. I think very few people really want to be at the job 40-60 hours a week for 40 or 50 years (although there are some, but most of us don’t have interesting, creative jobs); and very few people really want a life that consists of nothing but their home and family. (For one thing, kids grow up, so that’s not really a whole-life plan.)

Over the last century, the lives of women and men have gotten a lot more similar; women have more access to paid jobs, including decently-paid jobs, than they used to (although it’s still not where it should be, especially for poor women and women of color). Men are spending less of their lifetimes at jobs, and they’re freer than they used to be to prioritize time with their families if that’s what they want (although there are still too many barriers). Wage discrimination against women, and safety discrimination against men (especially non-white and immigrant men), still exists — but it’s gone down.

I think those are all positive trends, and — speaking for this one feminist — I hope they continue.

1. I posted this response on Sequential Tart, then edited it a little before posting it here. (back)
2. Citations: You can find simple info about women’s labor force participation by clicking here. You can find a more complex essay discussing this stuff, including predictions for where labor trends are going, by reading this essay, but it’s a pdf file. (back)

This cartoon isn’t by me; it’s by my pal Kevin Moore. Click on the panel to read the whole thing.

(Larger version can be viewed here.)

This is actually a cartoon from years ago, which I just redrew this week. Here, for comparison, is the original cartoon:

Read the rest of this entry »

1,000 service workers in New Zealand hospitals have gone on strike, and then been locked-out. Service workers are some of hte lowest paid workers in any hospital. In this case the workers have been trying to get one contract to cover orderlies, cleaners, and so on, at public hospitals throughout New Zealand. They’ve got agreement with the Hospital Boards, and all but one of the companies that subcontract this work, but one company, Spotless, is still holding out. Hospital workers at Spotless have gone on strike.

Any time 1,000 workers get locked out it’s important that we win. The fight for a single pay scale for service workers in the hospitals is an important one. Raising the starting rate of these low-paid workers to $14.25 an hour would be a great victory. But this is also a fight against contracting-out, and it’s a fight we have to win.

Theoretically businesses, and government organisations, contract out services. They contract a company to clean, or to perform a certain task. But in reality they’re contracting out employment.

Cleaning is a really good example of this. It’s a low capital industry, and large cleaning companies don’t get huge economies of scale. Companies get their printing done by a contract because they don’t print enough to justify having the equipment sitting around all day. It takes about the same amount of equipment to clean a hospital whether the equipment is owned by Spotless or the Hospital, and neither of them can use the equipment elsewhere. In fact, by contracting out companies, and government organisations have to pay extra, to cover the profit that any cleaning company is going to make.

So why do hospitals (or businesses or anyone else) contract out their cleaning? Because they can use the tendering process to drive down the cost. To win tenders, and bid lower than other cleaning companies, the winning company has to either pay their workers less, or get their workers to do more cleaning in less time.

Contracting out is so effective, because everyone can claim that they’re not responsible. The cleaning companies aren’t responsible, because they can’t afford to pay any more than they’re given. The hospital that contracts out its cleaning isn’t responsible because it’s up to the sub-contractor how much money to pay.

It’s a vicious way of keeping wages and conditions down, and the only way workers can fight it is by organising. Hospital workers in the SFWU have fought really hard to get this far. An agreement with the DHBs, and all but one of the contractors is a huge step forward. But it will be meaningless unless they can get Spotless to agree to the same terms and conditions, otherwise Spotless will be able to undercut other companies up and down the country, and wages will go on a downwards spiral again.

Contacting out can affect all workers. Although low-paid workers like cleaners are the most vulnerable, all sorts of jobs can be done on a contracting out basis. So it’s really important that all workers support the hospital workers in this battle against contracting out, and for one wage scale for all workers.

Or, what she said:

All amounts are in NZ dollars, so I don’t want to hear anything about how it’s a reasonable amount of money - because it’s not.

I read this in the New York Times yesterday, and it didn’t sit well with me. Here is a quote:

But on this day I’ve come not to bury Abercrombie. I am here to observe my daughter and her two friends make their way around a suburban mall to help me understand why shopping seems to have become an acceptable hobby, even an obsession, among some young girls. And to see how stores like Abercrombie and American Eagle Outfitters, as well as luxury brands, successfully court these young girls and turn them into customers.

This is why it bothered me:

1) It seems to be promoting the idea that girls are materialistic and superficial, and I don’t know that young girls are any more materialistic than boys.

2) These kids who don’t have a job or any money are getting designer clothes. Why would any parent pay for a 10 year old to have “Juicy Couture”? Why?

3) It is the most class biased piece of writing I have seen in a long time, and the author seems utterly unwilling to acknowledge that.

There are other things that I just can’t put my finger on since my brain is toast (always happens at the end of the semester). BTW, I love Juliet Schor, the sociologist mentioned in the article. Here is a really good article I have the students in my mass media class read on the politics of consumerism.

Go read it and tell me what you think.

Jean Kilborne, I hope you’re reading (I know she probably isn’t, but I figured I would give her a shout out anyways.). I’ve got some pictures you can add to your award winning films on misogynistic media.

First, we have last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, where the photo shoot consisted of simulations of murdered models. Jill mentioned it over at Feministe, and Jennifer at WIMN’s Voices has a much longer post, including this link to the actual pictures. The pictures also include the comments of the judging panel, which adds another touch of misogyny to the photo shoot. I saw the episode last night and dropped my jaw in amazement.

A few weeks ago the NYT magazine featured another blatantly misogynistic fashion spread. This spread included women in nooses and bondage. I was able to find the blogger Musings of a Working Mom who posted a few of the pictures on her site (You can see all of the photos here.). The photo from above is one example from the NYT Magazine.

I say we start a letter writing campaign. If you want to email the New York Times Magazine about their photo shoot. Here is the email: magazine@nytimes.com

America’s Next Top Model is sponsored by a few companies. One such company is Sprint. I found the name and email of some folks at Sprint. I’m not really sure exactly who one is supposed to contact, but you could CC an email to each of these folks:

Sprint Nextel Executive Services
866-398-4606
executive.offices@sprint.com

Director of Consumer and Business Communications Laura Lisec
Laura.m.Lisec@sprint.com

I had a hell of a time finding contacts for Cover Girl, but they also sponsor ANTM if you can find a contact. In fact, if anyone knows the right people to contact, feel free to tell me in the comments section.

Sometimes its hard not to laugh at these headlines because they are so obvious.  I guess it is nice to have some research to back up the obvious–hence this report from the American Psychological Association on the negative effects of media sexualization on women and girls.  First, they operationalize sexualization:

The provocative research included a study of published research on the content and effects of virtually every form of media, including television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the Internet. Researchers also examined recent advertising campaigns and merchandising of products aimed toward girls.

Sexualization was defined by the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls as occurring when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use.

Then later they lay out the negative effects:

• Cognitive and Emotional Consequences: Sexualization and objectification undermine a person’s confidence in and comfort with her own body, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety.
• Mental and Physical Health: Research links sexualization with three of the most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls and women—eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood.
• Sexual Development: Research suggests that the sexualization of girls has negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image.

The report also suggests families and health professionals take an active role in countering this trend.  They even suggest media literacy classes.  What is missing, unfortunately, is any direct accountability for media outlets.  The report does not suggest that media stop doing this; rather they suggest that we teach girls and young women how to cope with it. 

What do you think?  If we really wanted to take on patriarchal media capitalism, would it work, or should we focus more on teaching girls/women how to cope?  What kinds of actions could people use to get media outlets to change?  What about the good old fashioned boycott?  Is that dead?  What do you think?

Here is the link to the APA study.

Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and also blog for choice day.* The topic is supposed to be ‘why am I pro-choice’. It seems a little trite, I’m pro-choice because I believe women are people, I’m pro-choice because I want to decide when I have a child, I’m pro-choice because I have two younger sisters, I’m pro-choice because I trust other women to make choices about their own lives, I’m pro-choice because sex should be awesome, I’m pro-choice because of all the women who have died and are dying from illegal abortions, I’m pro-choice because of all the women who have died and are dying because they couldn’t get an illegal abortion, I’m pro-choice because parenting is a hard important job and must be voluntary, I’m pro-choice because I know how hard women fought in New Zealand to ensure women would have access to abortion.

It probably says a lot about my life that, for me, those things go without saying. I have met with people who oppose abortion and regarded them as slightly quaint (or hated them passionately depending on the circumstances).** I got over a guy I’d had a crush on for way too long when I discovered he wasn’t pro-choice enough for me.

What I want to say about abortion isn’t anything to do with what I think the laws should be.*** There have been two things I’ve written about frequently on this blog the first that access is as important as rights and that the right to choose has to also include the right to continue the pregnancy.

Brownfemipower has some great posts about the US National Advocates for Pregnant Women conference (which she’s at at the moment). What they really made me think about is how much abortion is normally treated as a stand-alone issue, and how counter-productive that is.

It’s all pretty irrelevant in New Zealand; I’d guess we have more women fighting other reproductive issues (social welfare, medical care, women in prisons, violence against women) than abortion. But if I wanted to change that, if I had the energy to start fighting back then I would try and work with people who didn’t just want to focus on abortion laws (although our abortion laws are a piece of shit and I will not rest till I have danced on the grave of every man who voted for them), but saw that almost all issues that effect women’s lives, effect reproduction. We won’t be able to make meaningful choices until we create a very different world.

*I must confess to finding this a tad annoying - abortion rights don’t begin and end in the US, but you get used to it.

**I once had a half hour argument about abortion on a peace vigil with an ex-nun.

*** Although for the record I’m really hard case about abortion law and don’t accept any legal restrictions for any reason, don’t ever think it’s anyone’s business but the woman whose making the decision, and think that if you don’t like decisions people are making to terminate their pregnancies you should change the conditions under which they make the decision, rather than tut-tut about the decision itself.

I’ve just finished Women Workers and the Trade Union Movement, by Sara Boston. It covers women in the trade unions (I know, what a surprise) in Britain in the late 19th century, and most of the 20th.

I really enjoyed reading it - it is so amazing to discover what people had been able to achieve by working together - these huge strikes and victories.

But my main feeling while reading the book was anger - over and over again women workers were being sold out by their male comrades. Men would complain that having women workers on a lower rate undercut their wages, and instead of getting pay equity and a rate for the job they’d try and keep women out. Sexism and misogyny was so deeply ingrained that male workers and trade unionists would act against their own best interests as workers in order to maintain their power over women.

Don’t get me wrong there were some really great examples of solidarity, and strength across gender lines, but not enough.

On the left, one of the most annoying arguments you hear is that if women (or anyone else) organize separately then it’ll ‘divide the working class’. If people paid any attention to history they’d realize it wasn’t the women organizing against sexism that were dividing the working class - it was the sexism and misogyny of men.

*She had the audacity to suggest equal pay at a National Union of Women Teachers conference.

Note for Comments: This is a pro-union thread. Please do not post right-wing criticisms of unions in this thread.

I’ve been looking through the UN’s “State Of The World’s Children 2007″ report (pdf link), which seems to concentrate mostly on children in the developing world. The entire report is well worth reading, or at least skimming the summaries included at the start of each chapter.

It’s clear the authors believe it’s impossible to discuss improving the state of the world’s children, without also discussing the state of the world’s mothers. The rest of this post is quoted from the summary of chapter two:

• A growing body of evidence indicates that household decisions are often made through a bargaining process that is more likely to favour men than women. Factors underlying women’s influence in decision-making processes include control of income and assets, age at marriage and level of education.
• According to data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, in only 10 out of the 30 developing countries surveyed did half or more of women participate in all household decisions, including those regarding major household spending, their own health care and their visits with friends or relatives outside the home.
• The consequences of women’s exclusion from household decisions can be as dire for children as they are for women themselves. According to a study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, if men and women had equal influence in decision-making, the incidence of underweight children under three years old in South Asia would fall by up to 13 percentage points, resulting in 13.4 million fewer undernourished children in the region; in sub-Saharan Africa, an additional 1.7 million children would be adequately nourished.
• A woman’s empowerment within the household increases the likelihood that her children, particularly girls, will attend school. A UNICEF survey of selected countries across the developing world found that, on average, children with uneducated mothers are at least twice as likely to be out of school than children whose mothers attended primary school.
• Men play a vital role in promoting egalitarian decision-making. Through simple and direct strategies, such as sharing responsibility for household chores and childcare, men can help combat gender discrimination in households and communities.
• Women themselves are the most important catalysts for change. By challenging and defying discriminatory attitudes in their communities, women’s groups can advance the rights of girls and women for generations to come.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

More than three weeks ago now, cleaners in Houston went on strike, in an attempt to get the big cleaning companies to negotiate a union contract. Most cleaners are paid on, or close to, minimum wage and don’t get sick-leave, paid vacations or health insurance.

you should Read these women’s stories

I’m going to quote from Idalverta Vega, not because her story is the most dramatic, but because it is one of the least.

“The children had Medicaid but they no longer qualify,” says Idalverta. She was told her husband’s income is too high, but says the money they make is not enough to pay for a health plan. “When my kids get sick I don’t take them to the doctor and I can’t take them to a dentist either. According to them we’re making ‘too much’ but it’s not true, the money is not enough–we can barely make ends meet.”

Idalverta and her husband are doing their best to make sure their kids have a brighter future. “All of my kids go to school. Sometimes they’re missing some supplies but we do what we can to provide them with what they need.”

Idalverta’s 18-year-old son would like to go to university, but the family can’t afford to send him. Like many other young men and women growing up in working-class neighborhoods, he felt he had few options. “He signed up for the Army so that he can study. But they’re saying he’ll be shipped off to war–it makes me very nervous,” she says.

Winning a good contract would mean many things for Idalverta’s family. “We’d be able to live better. Someday we’d be able to buy a house. That’s one of my dreams-being able to own our home.”

“Everyone comes to this country searching for a better life. Many never make it — they die on the way in the desert,” says Idalverta. “We will go out and march again if it’s necessary. We have to continue the struggle.”

This is a vital feminist struggle, and the cleaners of Houston need your support. Houston Jantiors page has suggestions about how to Get Involved and Labourstart has an e-mail campaign.

The Labour government is obviously committed to doing something about the wage-gap between men and women - they’ve released a study. This study compares the wages in male dominated industries, such a building and painting, with wages in female dominated areas, like hairdressers and caregivers. This research does show that wages in male dominated industries and female dominated industries tend to have similar start rates, but after five years workers in male dominated industries earn over 45% more. However, the conclusion the Minister of Women’s Affairs comes to is ridiculous:

I have a theory that if women knew more about the potential earnings and career opportunities in some of these trades more traditionally occupied by men, their choices might be different. We quickly realised however that there was a dearth of information about what young people earn in different trades and occupations. So the Ministry commissioned a piece of research on ‘Wages & Training Costs in Male- and Female-dominated Trade-related Occupations’ and I thought this was a good opportunity to release the findings, because I think they are relevant to any young woman making decisions about her career, something that has always been a priority for the YWCA.

If only women had realised there was a wage gape earlier sooner then we would have solved it long ago!

There are some structural reasons women don’t go into male dominated industries. It’s not like girls and boys emerge fully formed at 18 to decide what to do with their life. My all-girls school did not have a wood-work department or a metal-work department - there was nowhere within the school was there anywhere where you could learn these sorts of skills.

Being the only women in a male dominated situation is often an extremely unpleasant experience. One of the way men have continued to dominate the male dominated trades is to act in a hostile way to any woman who enters. I haven’t personally organised in male dominated trades, but I know women who have, and women who know the female apprentices. Not everyone has a hard time of it - not every male-dominated worksite has a misogynist atmosphere, but enough do that it’s not easy - and for many women the risk may not be worth the pay-out.

Knowledge is the last problem that needs to be solved. But even asking the question “why aren’t more women painters?” ignores the more pressing question “why aren’t caregivers paid more?” If we’re going to look at the wage-gap we have to look at the low-wages.

For the government to tut-tut about women only being 8% of the modern apprentices is hypocritical. When they set up the modern apprenticeship scheme it didn’t cover hair-dressing, or any other traditional female trade. They could have included female trades in modern apprenticeships, but they didn’t - that’s the reason this scheme is male dominated.

But the bit about that speech that most enraged me is that they studied caregivers. The government is probably the funder for at least 80% of caregivers employed in this country. If they wanted to do something about the wage gap, then getting pay-equity for caregivers would actually be a really good start.

The wage-gap is complicated, I’m aware that I’ve only covered a few of the many ways in which sexism, misogyny, and capitalism work together to screw women over, but I’m fairly sure I’ve got a better grasp on it than Lianne Dalziel does.

Note on comments: I’d like the comments to focus on the reasons we don’t have pay-equity and how to achieve it.

As if the Source hasn’t had enough problems, now beleaguered Source owners Raymond “Benzino” Scott and David Mays have lost a major lawsuit brought by for Source editor Kimberly Osorio. There is some dispute over the amount of the damages, and it was a little unclear from initial reports exactly what charges the defendants were guilty of. The New York Newsday said the suit did not award Osorio damages for sex discrimination, but they did find that she was fired in retaliation for making sex discrimination claims. Here is a quote from Newsday:

The jury rejected Osorio’s claims that she was subjected to sexual discrimination when she worked at the magazine from 2000 until 2005, becoming the magazine’s first female editor-in-chief.

But it concluded she was fired in retaliation after she made her sexual discrimination claims, complaining of a workplace in which pictures of G-string-clad women hung on the walls and an X-rated movie was shown in the mail room.

On Tuesday afternoon, Osorio expressed satisfaction with what she believed was a $15.5 million verdict, and her lawyers painted it as affirmation that sexual discrimination should not be tolerated at any workplace, despite the jury’s rejection of that claim.

“I definitely hope this has an impact on the attitude of hip-hop toward women,” said Osorio in a news conference. “It was very hard for me emotionally. There was a lot of harm to my reputation.”

I’m waiting for the final outcome, but I think this is a landmark case that sends a signal to some of Hip Hop’s head misogynists. Many women love Hip Hop, but we don’t have to take this sort of brazen anti-woman bigotry. Moreover, the two former owners continue to tarnish their own reputations.

Editor’s Note: Of course, this case is not just about Hip Hop. Sex discrimination is pervasive in many workplaces, but this is one of the first big cases in the Hip Hop industry.

Admin’s Note: This is something I have been wanting to post for a while, but I was inspired by a big old blog fight among feminists this past week. The fight started in a debate over bikini waxing, but the larger issue is social class and standards of beauty and femininity. I was on the outskirts of it, so I missed much of the controversy, but I just had to get my two cents in now that I finally figured out whats going on. My primary exposure to this debate was over at Bitch|Lab’s spot. I left this comment on her blog, which basically sums up my feelings about the femininity issue:

I’m completely and utterly tired of hearing the word choice bantered around like it is the be all and end all of feminism. A week long moratorium on the word would be nice. It might get some folks to think outside the box.

In my experience people who talk about choices are the people who have the most choices to talk about.

The rhetoric of choice erases any sort of meso or macro level understanding of constraints on human behavior. It’s this overly individualistic mentality that drives me nuts.

I’m also tired of graduate students complaining about how poor they are, especially when so many of them have the money to travel abroad, have nice cars, and have an alcohol and weed budget in excess of $50 dollars a week. (If you fit this description, you ain’t poor.) Hell, I wasn’t poor in grad school (well not in my PhD program). I got paid $18,000 a year for a grad student stipend and managed to carved enough adjuncts together to make $30,000. Having grown up without indoor plumbing in Appalachia, I felt like I was in hog heaven. I was even able to buy a condo and a car.

My friend told me about leg waxing in grad school (people in southern Ohio just don’t do such things), and she said it was relatively affordable only $30-50 every 6 weeks. I remember thinking that I could get a pack of 15 razors, for $10.

Yes, this is an all over the place rant, but reading the post will address where the slightly unrelated thoughts are coming from.  I also think people may like to follow the discussion on this post over at Rachel’s Tavern since the discussion over at my place always seems be different from the one here at Alas.

A Little Piece of My Social Class Story

I have experienced a great deal of class mobility in my life, and I am the poster child for the idea that getting a good education can move you up the class ladder. For me this worked in two ways, through my mother’s education and through my own. See my mother’s family is the quintessential white working class family. Almost all of the stereotypes about working class white people apply to them. Unlike her 6 siblings, my mother managed to get a college degree. To this day, I don’t really know how she financed it. My Dad, on the other hand, came from a GI bill middle class family. My grandfather was able to go to college thanks to the GI bill, and he became a chemist, which allowed my grandmother to be a homemaker who raised 4 children. When her children left home, my Grandma went to college and started a career as a teacher. Even though they didn’t grow up well to do, my grandparents were vaulted into the middle class, and my father benefited from it.

It took a long time for my parents to enter the middle class because they came of age in the economic recession era of the 70s and early 80s, so most of my childhood, we were poor and our neighborhood was even poorer. (For those who don’t know, I grew up in Appalachia, southern Ohio to be precise.) But, we had an ace in the hole my Mom’s college degree. After years of substitute teaching, my mother finally got a full time teaching job in the mid-1980s (I think with a pathetic starting salary of $17,000.). Once my father’s income from a small business was added in we were over the $20,000 dollar mark right around the time I finished high school.

I have also benefited greatly from my own education. In spite of going to a low income school and having high school guidance counselors, who were incompetent, I went to college. My parents did a tremendous job of picking up the slack for my less than stellar school. I had the advantage of having a teacher mother, and a father who got me hooked on National Public Radio, sometime around kindergarten. I am not dissing my teachers, but they were expected to perform without many resources that other schools had.

I really noticed the social class gap in junior high and high school after I managed to get myself into this program at Northwestern University (thanks largely to John Smith the county gifted education coordinator and my teacher for the gifted class Mrs. Evans). The program was wonderful, and I got to be around other nerdy kids. However, it would not have been possible for me to go to this program, if I didn’t get need based scholarships (I believe from the University and a local foundation.). When I got there, I quickly realized I was the poorest kid around. In fact, one of the teachers decided that I had a self esteem problem (which is very far from the truth) when I noted that the other kids were way ahead of me. I never thought that I was slow. I knew that these kids were from rich suburbs around Chicago, Detroit, and Columbus, and they had schools with many counselors, AP classes, and all of the other advantages that wealthy people had (Most of the kids were also Asian Americans which was another interesting aspect of the camp that I should probably write about someday.). Truthfully, I thought I was pretty damn smart because I was in the same place as these wealthier gifted kids, and I had fewer resources. In fact, one of the things that angered me the most was when I saw other students getting a year’s worth of high school credit for taking these courses and the guidance counselors at my school said that they couldn’t do this because “it had never been done at our high school.”

The Northwestern program along with my other outside of the classroom experiences motivated me to get great grades in high school, and sometime around 10th grade, I started my college search. To make a long story short, I got into the University of Detroit Mercy with a full scholarship, and subsequently earned assistantships, which paid for my master’s degree program at Bowling Green and my PhD at the University of Connecticut. I had to pay small sums for fees and books, but somehow I managed to get a PhD and not pay any tuition. I was happy to earn scholarships, because I was worried that my parents were not going to be able to help me finance my education. (I suppose one of the more ironic twists to this story is that my father’s business took off while I was in college, and my parents moved into a very comfortable middle class status.)

Tying it All Together–My Feminism and My Social Class

Each step in my education has marked a step up the class ladder. With every degree that I earned, I helped buffer myself from poverty. Moving up the ladder like this, gave me a different take on social inequality and ways of fighting it (i.e. socialism, feminism, anti-racism, heterosexism, and so on).

I don’t personally blog much about feminism and body hair or high heels, and I’m not going to put down people who do. However, I do worry that we need to stop framing everything in the language of choice, as it frequently, implies a smorgasbord feminism, where everything is laid out and we just pick from it. When I was young and we were poor, my concern wasn’t about choices I made, it was about opportunities–the opportunity to go to college, the opportunity to play sports, and admittedly, the opportunity to get out of southern Ohio and find a place that had a shopping mall, more than one TV channel, and good schools. Now that I have a middle class job and live in a county that is one of the wealthiest in the US; I have many more opportunities, and with those new found opportunities I get to make choices–whether or not to buy a designer handbag, whether or not to get digital cable and high speed Internet, whether or not to go to dye my hair, and whether or not to live in a wealthier community or a poorer community. Hell, I even get to choose which mall to go to or which gym to be a member of. Having many choices is the product of having many opportunities, and having many opportunities is the product of being a privileged class/group. This is something I have to remind myself all the time, and the best way to do it is to go back to high school and elementary school when my choices were more limited.

Endnote: I appreciate anybody who took the time to read this looooooong post.  I pledge to myself and my readers that I will try to post more short and fun posts. I have been producing long treatises lately. LOL!

This was going to be a tale of two protests - since I went on two protests today. But two protests in one day is tiring, so I only have time to write about one of them, more tomorrow.

Clean Start for Cleaners

Today is international anti-poverty day (a concept I find a little weird - today we’ll have international anti-poverty day - tomorrow we’ll go back to ignoring international poverty). The Clean Start for Cleaners campaign organised rallies in Australia and New Zealand today, which is appropriate because to be a cleaner is to live in poverty.

All around the world Cleaners are mostly immigrant and indigenous women. Despite the fact that cleaning needs to be done everywhere, everday and it is completely devalued. The union rate for commercial cleaners is just 70 cents an hour above minimum wage. Cleaners work two or three jobs to get their hours up and have no security of employment. Subcontracting makes it so hard for cleaners to fight for better wages and conditions, because the employer can always hire someone else.

All these points were made at the rally, of course. Plus some interesting facts I didn’t know (90,000 workers got a pay increase when the minimum wage went up -60,000 of them were women - low-wages, poverty and capitalism are all feminist issues). The most powerful speakers were cleaners themselves. There is no service recognition for cleaners, so two women who had cleaned for forty years were still only getting $10.95 an hour. Another woman spoke angrily about always being blamed for being a burden on the tax-payer because she got government assistance - even though she worked over 40 hours a week - she is blamed rather than the employer who won’t pay a living wage.

One of the women also talked about being involved in previous cleaning struggles, and strikes. It must be so hard to have struggled and won, but seen the victory slowly eroded over the last twenty years. Particularly as you’d know that if anything was going to get better you need to fight that fight again.

Now I have some problems with the Clean Start campaign - most notably that no-one really understands what its principles are (and last I heard these principles haven’t actually been translated into the first language of many of the cleaners). But I was really glad to be at this rally, in support of the cleaners.

(Part of my good feeling towards this protest is because I left before Ruth Dyson - (minister of labour) spoke. I needed to get to the other protest, and if you’ve heard Ruth Dyson say once that she’d like to change things, but she can’t - you’ve heard it once too many times).
Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Every so often, friends or family members tell me about opportunities for freelance work. Some of the suggestions - the ones that could help me build a writing career - would appeal even if I was childless and working full-time. Others - training to be a translator or proofreader, for instance - probably wouldn’t. But they’re not supposed to: their biggest selling point is that I can work from home while caring for my daughter.

Before I was a parent, it sounded like such a good idea. Rather than having to choose between going out to work and staying at home with my hypothetical child, I could combine both. No need to wonder whether my baby was safe and contented - a glance across the room could put my mind at rest. No need to worry that I was financially dependant on someone else - I would have the security of my own income source.

What I didn’t realise - what I had to learn from firsthand experience - was how intensive the job of looking after a small child is. In my vision of parenthood, the work consisted mainly of physical chores such as washing clothes and preparing meals; in practice the physical work is the easiest part. In addition to the chores, taking care of a child requires a level of concentration that doesn’t sit well with an attempt to build a freelance career.

While my daughter’s awake, she wants my attention. If she doesn’t have it, she quickly realises this and makes sure she regains it by letting out a cry that’s virtually impossible to ignore. For short spells, if I’m doing something I don’t need to think deeply about, I can block out the cries; shutting them out effectively enough to finish an essay is beyond me. And even if, by some miracle, she’s too absorbed in her play to miss my attention, I know she could wriggle into difficulties at any moment. Watching her out of the corner of one eye, constantly alert for the early warning signs that she’s about to need my help, pretty much prevents me concentrating on whatever it was I wanted to write.

That only leaves the times when my daughter’s asleep to work on my freelance projects. And here the problem boils down into one that’s familiar to any woman who does paid work: the second shift. Whether I work on freelance projects or not, I need to spend a certain amount of time on my daughter and associated chores. Trying to add freelance work to the mix means effectively trying to do two jobs at the same time - with exhaustion the predictable result.

But although this arrangement has the same disadvantages the working mother suffers, it doesn’t offer the corresponding advantages. My freelance projects will be speculative, at least initially, so the dream of financial independance remains just that. And, by not going out to work, I’m isolating myself with no colleagues and no potential change of scene. It seems I’ve combined the worst of working with the worst of staying at home.

I’ve heard some people make a success of freelancing with children. I don’t know whether they have money in the bank, contracts in hand, or just a partner willing to subsidise them until their projects get off the ground, but it seems they have something I’m missing. For me, working from home is all problems and no solutions. I’m thinking of training as a teacher instead.

Just to add another data point to the discussion in Rachel’s post…

It seems likely that part of the reason for the decline in men’s LFPR (Labor Force Participation Rate) is the general increase in women’s LFPR over the same time period. Obviously, more women working in the paid labor force means that more husbands will have the option of being supported by their wives. This is not a bad thing in and of itself; it’s only problematic if there’s an increasing trend of households in which women do all the work (paid and unpaid) and men do little or none.

UPDATE: Half Sigma writes:

I respect these guys who are enjoying their leisure instead of working. They haven’t let themselves be brainwashed by conventional middle class values which say that every man has to work otherwise he’s a loser.

As long as the guy isn’t financing his leisure in an abusive or unfair way, I agree.