August 27, 2009 @ 6:48 pm | Category: family/relationships, gender/feminism, work
Unfortunately many feminist have not been able to reconcile motherhood and its demands and a full functioning human being. This is evident in the recent essay by Katie Rophie, a diehard feminist, regarding her shockingly loving relationship with her new baby. Some feminist are besides themselves of how to explain this lapse. It’s worth remembering that many, if not most feminist, are perfectly content being mothers and the implication of that relationship. They will also say that they do not want to be reduced to this as the defining relationship of their lives. The discomfort has been fed by liberal feminist’s love affair with the marketplace and the subsequent society’s denegration of value formally associated with women, cooperation, self-sacrifice and benevolence. Liberal feminism is married to the marketplace and its value. Interesting these are the values some radical feminist reject and associate with masculinist values of competition, individualism, and ruthless capitalism. Roiphe is discovering how women managed to survive in their subordinated position for centuries, the power of life giving love.
Why can’t we to get beyond is this dicodomy between motherhood and work? Women, like men, have been created for two God given purposes, relationships and creative work. They are NOT mutually exclusive. It is historical fact that women of excellent talent and potential have been systematically denied the opportunity by family, church, and state to give the world their best whether it’s in science, education, theology, art, music, you name it. That is why people can still ask, why are there no great women composers? It’s not natural, its prescribed.
Nevertheless, women have flourished in areas allowed to them including mothering, nursing, religious work, and some teaching. Let’s have more of everything and cut out this motherhood vs work vs feminism debate.
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May 23, 2009 @ 7:41 pm | Category: community, work
I found this story in the New York Times to be telling of the mental state of America. A former facility of Bethlehem Steel has been converted to a $743 million Sands casino and enjoying a lucrative opening. We have come to believe that the main component of success is luck. Instead of work, thrift, community support, access to opportunity and perserverance, it all comes down to a cosmic numbers game. No wonder we’re depressed and can’t invision a hopeful future.
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November 28, 2007 @ 2:06 pm | Category: body, work
The other day I walked by a nail salon, and through the window I saw an Asian man on his knees messaging the feet of a white affluent woman. My instant reaction was how demeaned that man must feel. I must confess, I am not one taken to manicures, pedicures, facials, and wax jobs done by perfect strangers. I have only felt comfortable with one massage therapist simply because she really enjoys her work, and has economic independence to go with it. It’s hard for me to enjoy this luxury when the worker can hardly speak English, but insist her name is Jennifer. It feels exploitative.
Many of my feelings and gut responses are confirmed by this New York Magazine article. The author explores the booming business of Salon treatments and the workers who provide the bulk of the work force. What use to be a luxury for the few, or a shared experience among friends who gave each other facials at home, is now perceived as a need to sooth our stressed out lives. There are many things to unpack here. Our need for human touch, our willingness to have strangers in intimate proximity, and our sense of entitlement. On the other side, it’s the workers. Mostly female, poor, immigrants with few choices. The article goes as far as comparing it to prostitution. The answer for us who are in a position to indulge ourselves is simple. Get a grip! The answer for the workers is more complex. People need to work to feed their families. I am not sure bigger tips would help when the operators of these establishments can change the pay rules overnight and defraud the worker. How do we make this body work pay while allowing the workers to keep their dignity?
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September 5, 2007 @ 9:47 am | Category: family/relationships, work
Read this article in U.S. News about how mothers are rejecting both the full-time career and the soccer mom model. It’s about time that we recognize something that has been going on for all of women’s history. Very few women have had the opportunity, or the inclination, to be full-time homemakers. Most women prefer to nurture their families and be industrious. Except for the upper classes, historically most have worked on the farm, or in a cottage industry, and when they could get away with it they ventured right out into the market place with their wares. The key to success is based on flexible expectations on what makes a good mother, more egalitarian marriages and general community support. Maybe now we can stop reading articles about the mommy wars.
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August 16, 2007 @ 10:49 am | Category: family/relationships, work
My friend Susan just sent me this story in The New York Times about how little domestic relationships have changed. While women have negotiated a better position in the work place, the responsibilities at home remain virtually unchanged. Due partly to self-inflicted expectations and, partly to ingrained gender habits, women finds themselves overburden with domestic responsibilities, and longing for a good old-fashion wife. While women’s lives have changed in some major ways, men’s lives seem to be what they were in 1950. Underlying all this is a untenable work/home split and employers disregard for the family responsibilities of their workers, male or female.
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April 23, 2007 @ 7:30 pm | Category: spirituality/religion, work
Here is a post at Salon.com about a new study showing that one year out of college women earn less than comparable men. It gets worse as we move along. The study was published by The American Association of University Women. Besides structural gender discrimination, women do seem to accept less and put up with more. Why? Maybe, it’s because we don’t think we are worth it. I have heard this more than once from women. This wouldn’t be so completely disastrous if it wasn’t for the fact that our self-doubt affects our spiritual lives. Maybe, we feel that we aren’t even worth much to God. In doing so we are in danger of heaping lies on the love of God and condemning ourselves to tentative lives. Overcoming the plague of self-doubt is one of the many battles we must wage in order to become wise people and one that I explore in my new book Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus.
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February 11, 2007 @ 6:08 pm | Category: work
One of the things women do different is business. See this interview with Margaret Hefferman author of How She Does It from NPR Market Place. This is the type of story which highlights the importance of women creating their own businesses. In my prior career I saw women start ventures that allowed them to create alternative working styles; businesses that allowed them to be engaged at home and on the job. On the downside, which this interview points out, women continue to doubt themselves. They don’t trust what they know or know how good they are. I address this plague of self-doubt in my forthcoming book Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus.
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December 4, 2006 @ 4:28 pm | Category: work
The work ethic is going in the wrong direction for women and other living things. See this article in the Boston Globe.
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August 28, 2006 @ 3:55 pm | Category: family/relationships, gender/feminism, work
Just when we thought we had worked out a liveable arrangement between work and family we get another article about why it’s detrimental to marriages for women to have careers. Forbes‘ article on marriage and career is sure to stir up some old feelings. What always bugs me about these pieces is why it’s not detrimental for men to be obsessed about their careers and why we seem to relegate this to the “private” choice arena. American culture continues to offer a untenable split between home and work. In that offer, women pursuing high-power careers lose with more divorce, fewer children or none at all. Men lose as human beings when male success is defined as careerism and estrangement from domestic life. Men are rewarded for such behavior and they may even manage to gain a trophy wife to boot. Bottom line is we aren’t willing to change the way we work or challenge our notions of acceptable female or male behavior. This area of our lives is in desperate need of new ideas instead recirculating old ideas about women and men.
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July 26, 2006 @ 7:45 pm | Category: gender/feminism, work
A new book by trial lawyer Linda Hirshman, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, sounds like a step back for not only feminism but women. Emily Bazelton at Slate offers a review. Apparently, Hirshman’s solution to women’s problems is to work harder at their careers. In my perspective, the problem worldwide is that women work too much, not too little. Take a look and think about it.
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