CurrentMom

Post-Election Bliss

Therapy Tuesday
photo by: miscellaneaarts

I, like many people, are ready for the election to be over. Not beause we feel so strongly about a candidate, but because it means the end of the awful barrage of ads. As if my TV and radio talking to me about what Questions I should vote for or oppose or which candidates I should vote for (but more likely, why I SHOULDN'T vote for one) weren't enough, now, I'm getting calls and voice mails. We use our land line so infrequently, and I dread the notification of a voice mail...it just means that a robocall has left a message.

The other piece that is frustrating is the negativity of these campaigns. Recently, I had to explain to my 5-year-old about the ads as we were listening to the radio on the way to school.  He wanted to know who I would vote for in a Senatorial contest in another state. I had to share that I didn't get to vote for either candidate and I tried to impart a lesson on being kind.

Many Americans vehemently dislike the way our election cycles trend so negative. Sadly, there is a reason for this, and the basic truth is negative ads are far more effective than positive ones. Recently, the American Psychological Association published an article about the science behind political advertising. Apparently, people are more likely to remember negative ads than positive ones. Ads based upon fear are compelling and ads that rely on "good feelings" ensure that you are comfortable with the choice you've already made.

No matter how hard we might try, it is hard to escape this election cycle. So for all that can, please vote, whether it be for Obama, Romney, or someone that you write-in. Let your voice be heard--and hopefully, things aren't too close where we need to wait longer to decide what the end point looks like!

Karen Kornbluh: Helping Us All "Have It All"

Work Wednesday

As soon as I started reading and blogging Anne-Marie Slaughter's much-discussed Atlantic Monthly piece on working moms, Why Women Still Can't Have It All, I thought about Karen Kornbluh. Actually, I thought about Ambassador Karen Kornbluh.

For those of you who missed The New York Times' recent profile about her, Ambassador Kornbluh (or Karen as most people call her), has served as the United States' chief diplomat to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)for the past three years. At the OECD, she's made gender issues - along with work on the Internet economy and corruption - an important part of the organization's economic and social development agenda. (Karen will be stepping down from her position later this month to return to Washington, D.C. and her family, but the OECD's Gender Initiative will continue.)

Apart from her Ambassadorship, Karen is well-known in Washington as a technology policy expert, an innovative thinker on work/family issues and a passionate advocate for better policies for working families. She's held important policy positions at the Federal Communications Commission and the Treasury Deparment, and served as Policy Director for then-Senator Barack Obama from 2005-2008 where she wrote his 2008 Party Platform - the one that included ideas like health care reform. Outside of government, Karen founded the Work and Family Program at the New America Foundation, where she argued for reforming institutions to better meet the needs of two-income “juggler families,” a term that she coined in her own Atlantic Monthly piece, The  Parent Trap, published nearly a decade before Anne-Marie Slaughter's article.

And Karen is also a mom who has struggled with work/family issues herself. That's why I thought that I'd really like to know what Karen thought about Slaughter's article and other work/family issues. I'm grateful that she not only agreed to chat with me, but to allow me to share her thoughts with you. Here goes: 

CurrentMom [CM]: So, everyone's talking about the Anne-Marie Slaughter Atlantic Monthly article on working moms and having, or perhaps, not having it all. You've been thinking and writing about work/family issues for more than a decade, and penned your own article for the Atlantic Monthly in 2003 about two-income families, what you termed “juggler families.” As an about-to-be former high-ranking State Department official yourself, what do you think of the article and the debate that’s ensued?

 

Karen Kornbluh [KK]: I love Anne-Marie’s article. It caused this “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment – the educated class admitting in public what is so true but usually only talked about in private: It’s hard to get an A in parenting when you’re balancing your career and your family. I was so impressed that she opened up and put her power and prestige on the line to show that a lot of our assumptions are outdated.  Her eloquence and honesty have forced a real conversation about these issues.

 

CM: I liked that she took on outdated assumptions too, and thought she nicely showed those assumptions at work by explaining that in Washington, if a person steps down from a powerful government job to “spend more time my family,” it’s assumed that they’ve somehow failed.  What assumptions resonated with you?

 

KK:  I think the main outdated assumption is what Joan Williams [Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law and author of the prize-winning book, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (Oxford, 2000)] calls the “ideal worker” norm.  The assumption that the ideal worker has no other responsibilities. That you can measure loyalty by the number of hours you spend in the office.

 

I also liked the idea that Anne-Marie took on the idea that most average women can do it all.  

 

CM: Her “superwoman” discussion?

 

KK: Yes. And that she named names. That’s helpful. There have always been exceptional woman who can do it all. I don’t think it gives the rest of us an excuse but it does take some pressure off women to think that they can do everything.

CM:  The one thing I worry about Slaughter’s piece, though, is whether the topline takeaway for younger women will simply be you can’t have it all so you shouldn’t try. What do you think about that?

Women Still Get Paid Less -- Paycheck Fairness?

Family Friday 

It’s hard to believe, given the strides women have made in the workforce, but, yes, we still earn less than men. There are women in Congress, women chief executives like Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, or Virginia Rometty, CEO of IBM, and powerful women in the media like Oprah Winfrey. Yet 50 years after Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, woman who work full time still earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned by a comparable man. That’s just not right. A spotlight is falling on this issuethanks to a Senate vote expected this coming Tuesday on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

According to the U.S. Census, by age 65 the average women would have lost $431,000 over her working lifetime as a result of this pay gap. A report by Payscale says that college-educated women’s earnings start trailing off in comparison to men at age 30, when they start having children, and women’s pay stops growing at age 39, when their typical wage is at $60,000 per year. For, men however, pay stops growing at age 48 when their typical wage is at $95,000 per year. Since men and women generally pick different types of jobs that pay on varying scales, Payscale did an apples-to-apples comparison of what men and women make, all other factors held equal. This is what they came up with.

The male software developer median annual salary is $65,700, which is about 4 percent more than the median female value of $63,300. The Payscale report, however, seems to imply that women are not really that far off from men in the wages they earn and if they are, it’s only because they tend to pick lower paying jobs like teaching and nursing versus male dominated technology jobs. In reading some reader commentary from the report, some people think that women call in sick more often than men, leave their jobs after they get married and tend to come in late and leave work early more often to take care of their children. Some people say that men make more because “by nature” they tend to pick high risk and more dangerous jobs. 

However, the fact is women still make less than men despite what type of job they choose or how many sick days they take or how late then come in to work. To back this up, President Obama is supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act, designed to update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and help close the pay gap. 

What do you think? Do you believe women still earn less than men for the same work effort, and why?

 

Really? Never?

Work Wednesday

It's been a couple of weeks since the overheated media fight about whether Ann Romney, wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has ever worked—so by the rules of American elections, by now nobody will even remember what I am talking about. (And if you do, you'll be sick of hearing about it.)

But bear with me. For some reason, it's been hard to get the words "never worked a day in her life" out of my head. Not because they're inflammatory, but because I wonder how true they are, for Mrs. Romney and for most women today.

I'm not talking about whether parenthood is hard work. I think we all know it is, and that's a different argument. I'm talking specifically about working for pay. Think about your friends and family members who stay home to take care of their children. Do you know anyone who has literally never had a paying job?

I Am Woman...

Therapy Tuesday
Photo By: Horia Varlan

What makes a woman? This is a question that has been asked over time, and with each generation, the answer changes. Even within a generation. So what makes a woman unique these days?

Different people would have different answers. If we look at popular media, the answers range greatly. There is a great hailstorm of anti-woman sentiment. This is evidenced by recent legislation proposed in a variety of states that in effect, allow women to be second class citizens in the area of reproductive freedom. While these potential laws are spurned by the Religious Right, in essence, they put a potential person's life ahead of an existing person's life. These fights are around birth control (who should and should not provide it); what a physician can share with a patient (also dubbed as "wrongful birth"); and of course, abortion. Additionally, the TSA is selective in its training, as a recent agent made a nursing woman who wanted to bring her breast-pump with her on a flight, fill her empty breast-milk storage bottles prior to boarding. As if the baby with her wasn't sufficient proof. 

Across time, one thing that makes a woman special is the fact that she can carry a baby. In the 20th century in the United States, it was determined that she has the right to decide NOT to as well. What bothers me is how many female legislators are supporting these anti-women laws. Laws that might end up detrimental to their daughters, sisters, nieces, or granddaughters.

What do I do with my anger? I get active. I'll be marching with woman on April 28th in Washington to support a woman's right...to do what SHE wants to do, and not what some lawmaker deems OK. The right for her to choose based upon advice from her own medical professional, rather than a bureaucrat who has never seen the inside of a medical school or a human body.

Who's with me?