Congratulations, sisters, we've finally reached that day in the year when we've caught up to what our brothers earned last year. Now we can start trying to catch up on this year.
Yup, since we earn on average 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, it takes us several months extra to earn what a man earns every year, putting us farther and farther behind. And then there are those raises that are based on what we're currently earning. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many women are in poverty and especially why so many old women are poor.
But sorry, if you're a single mother, you've got a few more months of catchup, since you only earn 60 cents on a man's dollar.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Breastfeeding not a feminist issue?
Annals of unsurprising news: Someone has finally studied the economic impact of breastfeeding and found, you guessed it, breastfeeding for a “long” time—anything more than six months—hurts a woman’s earnings. This via Slate’s Hannah Rosin, of “The Case Against Breastfeeding” fame, who correctly notes that the impact of breastfeeding on women’s earnings should be an obvious question, yet none of the breast-feeding literature mentioned it until now.
Like Rosin, I’m glad someone finally studied the question. It is maddening the way that the “breast is best” campaign treats the decision whether to breastfeed as if it occurred in a vacuum, as if it were solely an individual mother’s responsibility, rather than a social one—whether to create a society that enables breastfeeding or not. To push breast-feeding “as if it only affects an infant's health, and not the woman's life or position in her family, and her workplace” is wrongheaded. It’s also, by the way, an anti- or at the very least non-feminist move.
So Rosin’s right that not all efforts to push breastfeeding are feminist. Perhaps that’s all she means by her zinger of a last line: “Breast-feeding now loses its free pass into the feminist cause.” But she seems to imply much more—that breastfeeding isn’t a feminist issue at all.
It’s interesting to consider the history of the original breast-is-best-ers: the founders of La Leche League, who thought of themselves as early feminists and sought to wrest control of mothering back from the experts. At the time their movement arose, medicine typically assumed that mothers knew nothing about the business of mothering and that the female body was a defective object. Edwina Froehlich, one of the founders, was told by her doctor to forget about trying to breastfeeding because, at 36, she was too old. That she did so anyway must have been tremendously empowering. A friend of mine told me she once looked at her plump, six-month-old, entirely breastfed, child and thought proudly, “That’s all me.” Consider that no one but a nursing mother is ever indispensable to anyone. The inventors of formula sought to dispense with her.
As the La Leche League founders saw, breastfeeding is an issue about women's power. That makes it a feminist issue.
Yet the La Leche League founders were all Catholics housewives and they wrote in their breastfeeding manual as late as 1981, “Our plea to any mother who is thinking about taking an outside job is, ‘if at all possible, don’t.’ ”
That’s hardly a feminist position, precisely because it assumes the male-dominated standards of the work world, rather than questioning them. But that’s just what Rosin seems to be doing. There is, currently, a conflict between the demands of work and the needs of mothers; surely any feminist worth the name thinks it’s the work world that needs to change, not mothers.
Like Rosin, I’m glad someone finally studied the question. It is maddening the way that the “breast is best” campaign treats the decision whether to breastfeed as if it occurred in a vacuum, as if it were solely an individual mother’s responsibility, rather than a social one—whether to create a society that enables breastfeeding or not. To push breast-feeding “as if it only affects an infant's health, and not the woman's life or position in her family, and her workplace” is wrongheaded. It’s also, by the way, an anti- or at the very least non-feminist move.
So Rosin’s right that not all efforts to push breastfeeding are feminist. Perhaps that’s all she means by her zinger of a last line: “Breast-feeding now loses its free pass into the feminist cause.” But she seems to imply much more—that breastfeeding isn’t a feminist issue at all.
It’s interesting to consider the history of the original breast-is-best-ers: the founders of La Leche League, who thought of themselves as early feminists and sought to wrest control of mothering back from the experts. At the time their movement arose, medicine typically assumed that mothers knew nothing about the business of mothering and that the female body was a defective object. Edwina Froehlich, one of the founders, was told by her doctor to forget about trying to breastfeeding because, at 36, she was too old. That she did so anyway must have been tremendously empowering. A friend of mine told me she once looked at her plump, six-month-old, entirely breastfed, child and thought proudly, “That’s all me.” Consider that no one but a nursing mother is ever indispensable to anyone. The inventors of formula sought to dispense with her.
As the La Leche League founders saw, breastfeeding is an issue about women's power. That makes it a feminist issue.
Yet the La Leche League founders were all Catholics housewives and they wrote in their breastfeeding manual as late as 1981, “Our plea to any mother who is thinking about taking an outside job is, ‘if at all possible, don’t.’ ”
That’s hardly a feminist position, precisely because it assumes the male-dominated standards of the work world, rather than questioning them. But that’s just what Rosin seems to be doing. There is, currently, a conflict between the demands of work and the needs of mothers; surely any feminist worth the name thinks it’s the work world that needs to change, not mothers.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Balance this
This is one of those stories that makes my eyes roll so hard they nearly pop out of my head: “A business class at George Washington University aims to teach young women how to balance their careers with their personal lives," reads the promo for an NPR program.
I hoped for a moment that this was a case of media distortion and the class was really something else entirely. Nope. Professor Kathy Korman Frey describes balancing work and family as “a real entrepreneurial experience,” and says “so much of work-life balance is really practical, so it’s really teachable.” For example, one “time-management” assignment is for students to examine their daily schedules for a 24-hour day and “find an extra hour.”
There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to start. How about with the fact that NPR and a prestigious university found it plausible to discuss the topic of work-life balance as an individual dilemma without once mentioning the political context that creates the dilemma, namely the American absence of social supports for parenting? Or that it never occurred to NPR to invite a guest who might mention these political questions, such as, oh, say, a feminist?
As the NPR host actually (sort of) noted, this class is home ec for the new century. Instead of learning to make potholders or jello molds, these future Suzy Home-and-career-makers learn how to “find an extra hour” and how to “locate and hold on to good childcare.” (It’s so hard to find good help these days.)
I’ll tell you how to hold on to good childcare: Create a nationally subsidized system of childcare centers that pay workers living wages. Treat childcare as a fully tax deductible and refundable business expense. And for balancing life and work, few things work so well as paid family leave.
The NPR program was weirdly vague. Just what “work-life” balance might mean wasn’t made clear. It appeared merely to mean being really busy, especially as the professor described the issue as affecting even her busy but childless students. Nowhere was there any reference to the specific, crushing difficulties faced by parents in our society—difficulties which for most mothers are desperate economic problems—let alone the specific historical and political facts that created these difficulties.
The insidious thing about the class is that it responds to a profound social problem in such a way as to silence potentially political discontent.
Balance this, George Washington.
I hoped for a moment that this was a case of media distortion and the class was really something else entirely. Nope. Professor Kathy Korman Frey describes balancing work and family as “a real entrepreneurial experience,” and says “so much of work-life balance is really practical, so it’s really teachable.” For example, one “time-management” assignment is for students to examine their daily schedules for a 24-hour day and “find an extra hour.”
There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to start. How about with the fact that NPR and a prestigious university found it plausible to discuss the topic of work-life balance as an individual dilemma without once mentioning the political context that creates the dilemma, namely the American absence of social supports for parenting? Or that it never occurred to NPR to invite a guest who might mention these political questions, such as, oh, say, a feminist?
As the NPR host actually (sort of) noted, this class is home ec for the new century. Instead of learning to make potholders or jello molds, these future Suzy Home-and-career-makers learn how to “find an extra hour” and how to “locate and hold on to good childcare.” (It’s so hard to find good help these days.)
I’ll tell you how to hold on to good childcare: Create a nationally subsidized system of childcare centers that pay workers living wages. Treat childcare as a fully tax deductible and refundable business expense. And for balancing life and work, few things work so well as paid family leave.
The NPR program was weirdly vague. Just what “work-life” balance might mean wasn’t made clear. It appeared merely to mean being really busy, especially as the professor described the issue as affecting even her busy but childless students. Nowhere was there any reference to the specific, crushing difficulties faced by parents in our society—difficulties which for most mothers are desperate economic problems—let alone the specific historical and political facts that created these difficulties.
The insidious thing about the class is that it responds to a profound social problem in such a way as to silence potentially political discontent.
Balance this, George Washington.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Ominous news on child poverty
A new report on child poverty [PDF] by the research organization Child Trends makes for disturbing reading. Its findings—among them that child poverty has been on the rise since 2000—are especially ominous in the current economic crisis.
If one in five U.S. children were poor in 2007, and 8 percent were in deep poverty (below 50 percent of the poverty level), how many more children are now suffering all the consequences of poverty documented in the report? If a society accepts such high levels of child deprivation in good times, how much child misery will it tolerate as times worsen?
Even as poverty was rising and deepening (and as elements of the social safety net, such as welfare, were being dismantled), families were becoming less likely to use the social programs for which they were eligible. Maybe there’s a silver lining in that. The solutions seem clear—more outreach to inform families about safety net programs and streamlining of the application processes. Also, as the economic crisis ripples out to affect more and more people, perhaps awareness of safety net programs will grow.
Given its shocking findings, the solutions Child Trends advocates are tepid. Though the report notes that childcare is a major drain on poor families’ income (23 percent of low-income two-parent families and 40 percent of families headed by single mothers spend more than half their income on childcare), its suggestion is merely to continue existing childcare subsidies and “assess whether more funding is needed.” Other suggestions (such as encouraging marriage and discouraging single motherhood or redoubling efforts at child-support enforcement) ring of last century’s political debates (the child-support enforcement proposal seems particularly tin-eared in this economy—can you squeeze blood from stones that have already been laid off and foreclosed on?). Nor is there mention of current proposals to transform the conditions that make childhood (and parenthood) such a predictor of poverty—such as paid family leave or federally mandated paid sick leave.
While the report concludes that its findings “underscore the need to resume efforts to reduce child poverty,” readers will have to seek elsewhere for systemic proposals to reduce child poverty, let alone eliminate it.
For more warnings about what the economic downturn may mean for children, go to the Center for Budget and Policy Priority’s page on poverty and see especially the graphs about children at the bottom of the page.
If one in five U.S. children were poor in 2007, and 8 percent were in deep poverty (below 50 percent of the poverty level), how many more children are now suffering all the consequences of poverty documented in the report? If a society accepts such high levels of child deprivation in good times, how much child misery will it tolerate as times worsen?
Even as poverty was rising and deepening (and as elements of the social safety net, such as welfare, were being dismantled), families were becoming less likely to use the social programs for which they were eligible. Maybe there’s a silver lining in that. The solutions seem clear—more outreach to inform families about safety net programs and streamlining of the application processes. Also, as the economic crisis ripples out to affect more and more people, perhaps awareness of safety net programs will grow.
Given its shocking findings, the solutions Child Trends advocates are tepid. Though the report notes that childcare is a major drain on poor families’ income (23 percent of low-income two-parent families and 40 percent of families headed by single mothers spend more than half their income on childcare), its suggestion is merely to continue existing childcare subsidies and “assess whether more funding is needed.” Other suggestions (such as encouraging marriage and discouraging single motherhood or redoubling efforts at child-support enforcement) ring of last century’s political debates (the child-support enforcement proposal seems particularly tin-eared in this economy—can you squeeze blood from stones that have already been laid off and foreclosed on?). Nor is there mention of current proposals to transform the conditions that make childhood (and parenthood) such a predictor of poverty—such as paid family leave or federally mandated paid sick leave.
While the report concludes that its findings “underscore the need to resume efforts to reduce child poverty,” readers will have to seek elsewhere for systemic proposals to reduce child poverty, let alone eliminate it.
For more warnings about what the economic downturn may mean for children, go to the Center for Budget and Policy Priority’s page on poverty and see especially the graphs about children at the bottom of the page.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Two (or three or eight) embryos no better than one, IVF study says
Timed perfectly in the still-buzzing hullabaloo over the octomom, a new study has cast doubt on the American practice of implanting multiple embryos when doing IVF, in the hopes of upping the odds of a successful pregnancy. The study found that implanting multiple embryos at a time didn’t increase the odds, and of course it does increase the costs and the dangers brought by multiple births.
Our Wild Western approach to fertility treatment contrasts with the more regulated European model, which it appears not only has safety and cost-containment to say for itself, but also effectiveness. The elephant in the room, of course is our insane employer-based healthcare system. Here’s hoping that studies like these encourage Obama and others, as they seek to reform our healthcare system and contain its out-of-control costs, to look at placing limits on the number of embryos that can legally be implanted at a single go.
So far, even as discussion of cost-containment is getting lots of play, I haven’t heard discussion of birth practices. Yet the American love of technology has spectacularly played itself out when it comes to birth, turning a basic human rite of passage into a miracle of science. Not, in fact, quite such a miracle, if you look at what we have to show for it: rates of maternal and infant mortality, premature birth, and complications that are nothing to brag about. Talk about win-win: changing our birth system to something less medicalized would contain costs and improve health. And regulating reproductive technologies by limiting embryo implantation would be one step in this effort. For starters, it would likely bring our out-of-control C-section rate down significantly.
I’m also fascinated by the sociological implications of our IVF practices. America has been engaging in a living social experiment: What does a dramatic rise in the incidence of twins (and triplets) do to a society? I hope some brave sociologist plans to study the phenom, even as it may be coming to an end. Historians may someday speak of this era’s children as “Generation Twin.”
Our Wild Western approach to fertility treatment contrasts with the more regulated European model, which it appears not only has safety and cost-containment to say for itself, but also effectiveness. The elephant in the room, of course is our insane employer-based healthcare system. Here’s hoping that studies like these encourage Obama and others, as they seek to reform our healthcare system and contain its out-of-control costs, to look at placing limits on the number of embryos that can legally be implanted at a single go.
So far, even as discussion of cost-containment is getting lots of play, I haven’t heard discussion of birth practices. Yet the American love of technology has spectacularly played itself out when it comes to birth, turning a basic human rite of passage into a miracle of science. Not, in fact, quite such a miracle, if you look at what we have to show for it: rates of maternal and infant mortality, premature birth, and complications that are nothing to brag about. Talk about win-win: changing our birth system to something less medicalized would contain costs and improve health. And regulating reproductive technologies by limiting embryo implantation would be one step in this effort. For starters, it would likely bring our out-of-control C-section rate down significantly.
I’m also fascinated by the sociological implications of our IVF practices. America has been engaging in a living social experiment: What does a dramatic rise in the incidence of twins (and triplets) do to a society? I hope some brave sociologist plans to study the phenom, even as it may be coming to an end. Historians may someday speak of this era’s children as “Generation Twin.”
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Discrimination straight up, nothing reverse about it
“Reverse discrimination” being an oxymoron typically used by bigots with a sense of entitlement, I expected to read of such a case when I saw this headline: “Prosser couple claims reverse discrimination.”
Turns out, by my lights, Charlene Honeycutt and Charles Weems were discriminated against. They live together and had until 2007 received healthcare benefits through Weems’ employer, Batelle Labs. The couple considered marrying, but that would have cost Honeycutt, a widow, her Social Security benefit from her dead husband. In October 2007, Honeycutt was just finishing up radiation treatments for breast cancer when Batelle informed its employees that it would no longer offer opposite-sex domestic partner benefits.
The discrimination seems pretty clear. It’s too bad that Honeycutt and Weems (and their lawyer) have chosen to call it “reverse discrimination,” implicitly blaming gays for Battelle’s misbehavior (quite the “What’s the Matter With Kansas" moment). There’s nothing reverse about it. It is part of the web of injustice woven by a) our employer-based healthcare (non) system and b) patriarchy (not unrelated systems). They’re being punished for not being married.
Although the modern nuance of offering same-sex partner benefits adds a wrinkle, Battelle is quite clear that marriage is being enforced: “’The company only extends medical benefits to same-sex domestic partners because they "have no other legal way to obtain health care benefits,’ [Battelle spokesperson Staci] West said.” That is, marital status is the proper way to deliver benefits—not, say, as a right of citizenship (or of simple humanity). People should get married, and if they fail to do so, they lose their claim to benefits. Those who can’t get married are a special exception.
There’s also the unsurprising fact that Battelle was looking to save money by denying benefits to anyone it could by law or social code get away with not insuring. That's called capitalism, and it's one of the many reasons delivering healthcare via employers is bankrupt.
None of this is the fault of gays, though the “reverse discrimination” language suggests they’ve hogged an unfair share of some scarce resource. However, the movement for “marriage equality” does bear some blame. It contributed to the social acceptability of Battelle’s behavior by furthering the idea that marriage is the ideal and the proper unit for allocating social rights and benefits. Time was when, instead of demanding their right to the benefits allocated through marriage, gays questioned the institution of marriage altogether—and I for one mourn that earlier incarnation of the movement.
And then there’s the issue of Social Security, a system designed to support the primacy of the male breadwinner and which discriminates against working wives and single women (see my earlier post).
I would agree with marriage equality advocates that the state of Washington’s domestic partnership law, which grants many of the rights of marriage to same-sex couples and opposite sex couples over the age of 62 is no solution. Now, when 40 percent of babies in this country are born to unwed mothers, most women spend most of their lives unmarried, and we are on the brink of overhauling the employer-based healthcare system, is hardly the moment for the state to renew its enforcement of marriage.
Turns out, by my lights, Charlene Honeycutt and Charles Weems were discriminated against. They live together and had until 2007 received healthcare benefits through Weems’ employer, Batelle Labs. The couple considered marrying, but that would have cost Honeycutt, a widow, her Social Security benefit from her dead husband. In October 2007, Honeycutt was just finishing up radiation treatments for breast cancer when Batelle informed its employees that it would no longer offer opposite-sex domestic partner benefits.
The discrimination seems pretty clear. It’s too bad that Honeycutt and Weems (and their lawyer) have chosen to call it “reverse discrimination,” implicitly blaming gays for Battelle’s misbehavior (quite the “What’s the Matter With Kansas" moment). There’s nothing reverse about it. It is part of the web of injustice woven by a) our employer-based healthcare (non) system and b) patriarchy (not unrelated systems). They’re being punished for not being married.
Although the modern nuance of offering same-sex partner benefits adds a wrinkle, Battelle is quite clear that marriage is being enforced: “’The company only extends medical benefits to same-sex domestic partners because they "have no other legal way to obtain health care benefits,’ [Battelle spokesperson Staci] West said.” That is, marital status is the proper way to deliver benefits—not, say, as a right of citizenship (or of simple humanity). People should get married, and if they fail to do so, they lose their claim to benefits. Those who can’t get married are a special exception.
There’s also the unsurprising fact that Battelle was looking to save money by denying benefits to anyone it could by law or social code get away with not insuring. That's called capitalism, and it's one of the many reasons delivering healthcare via employers is bankrupt.
None of this is the fault of gays, though the “reverse discrimination” language suggests they’ve hogged an unfair share of some scarce resource. However, the movement for “marriage equality” does bear some blame. It contributed to the social acceptability of Battelle’s behavior by furthering the idea that marriage is the ideal and the proper unit for allocating social rights and benefits. Time was when, instead of demanding their right to the benefits allocated through marriage, gays questioned the institution of marriage altogether—and I for one mourn that earlier incarnation of the movement.
And then there’s the issue of Social Security, a system designed to support the primacy of the male breadwinner and which discriminates against working wives and single women (see my earlier post).
I would agree with marriage equality advocates that the state of Washington’s domestic partnership law, which grants many of the rights of marriage to same-sex couples and opposite sex couples over the age of 62 is no solution. Now, when 40 percent of babies in this country are born to unwed mothers, most women spend most of their lives unmarried, and we are on the brink of overhauling the employer-based healthcare system, is hardly the moment for the state to renew its enforcement of marriage.
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