Feminists Don’t Bake Bread

Samincittagazee asked for some more links about mothers in the workplace, though.

Professor Mama - Bitch PhD talks about many of the things did in her comment.

I also want to point out that most of the discussion, especially by academics, is presuming that people with kids are married. This isn’t always the case. Even if you wanted to be a hard-line asshole and say that anyone with children who divorces deserves to be punished by not being able to hold a job (because, you know, why should the workplace accomodate people’s choices?), do you really want to say that if someone’s partner drops dead? Not to mention that it is totally fuzzy thinking to conflate the issue of children with the issue of relationships–though obviously they often overlap, for lots of reasons. Being part of a couple does make it easier to parent, assuming your partner isn’t a complete asshole; even in couples, women with demanding jobs often end up pulling more than their fair share of parenting hours, because it’s a lot harder for men to ask for time”off”; because we’ve all–including the kids, which is important to note–internalized the “mama first” bullshit; because a commuter marriage is a lot harder to have when there are kids involved; and of course because “relationships” includes relationships with one’s kids.

People are not brains on sticks. People have lives. Whether it’s partners, parents, kids, pets, buddies, whatever, we all need time to get the hell out of the office. Yes, culturally, we say “kids come first” (though “family” parking spots notwithstanding, that is largely lip service–it’s nice to lessen the chance that my kid’s going to get hit by a car in a lot if he tears himself out of my hand while I’m carrying shopping bags, but it doesn’t really make up for the fact that the big-ass grocery store is a shopping environment designed to try kids’ patience so that inevitably they’re going to tantrum or run off before you get all the way through the store, and then everyone will glare at you for being such a “bad parent”).

Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity? - I really really really cannot recommend this link enough.

I’m not a parent. I do not play one on t.v. I have no desire to be a parent, so I have no concept of the realities of being a “working” mom (because, you know, stay-at-home moms don’t work *eyeroll* <-- this is sarcasm). Blue Milk puts it all into perspective, by comparing her "get out the door to work and then get back home" checklist to that of her husband.

Find ticket and swim against stream to get through the one ticket gate that is large enough to fit a stroller through it.

Walk 15 minutes to the daycare.

Sign Anais in, fold up stroller and put it away.

Put daycare bag away in her pigeon hole, get a tissue to wipe her tears.

Settle Anais in, try and get her calm enough to stop crying, greet the carers.

Leave and walk 15 mins to work wondering why I have to start my day in heartache and he is oblivious.

Come in, sit down at my desk, feel hungry and wish I’d had breakfast, wish I could get to work earlier, feel exhausted, listen to inane jokes about my ‘long weekend’ (gentlemen, its not a long weekend if you don’t get paid for it and you don’t get to rest during it).

The whole thing makes me hurt just to read.

Work killing the family, report says

Research has found a strong link between long and unpredictable work hours and the breakdown of family and other relationships.
Australia is the only high-income country in the world that combines very long average working hours with a high level of work at unsocial times - during weeknights and weekends - and a significant proportion of casual employment.
These work patterns are making employees unhealthy,putting relationships under extreme stress, creating angry,inconsistent parents, and reducing the well-being of children, says the report by Relationships Forum Australia, titled An unexpected tragedy.

Working moms, stay-at-home moms, the so-called “mommy wars”, are not as simple as the media keeps trying to make them out to be. I have a lot of thoughts on that.

[See comments to this post on LJ]

A Third Gender in the Workplace.

Mothers are still treated as if they were a third gender in the workplace. Among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had children, women’s earnings approach 98 percent of men’s. Many women will hit the glass ceiling, but many more will crash into the maternal wall.

Here’s a Mother’s Day card from a study just published by Shelley Correll in the American Journal of Sociology. Correll performed an experiment to see if there was a motherhood penalty in the job market. She and her colleagues at Cornell University created an ideal job applicant with a successful track record, an uninterrupted work history, a boffo resume, the whole deal.

Then they tucked a little telltale factoid into some of the resumes with a tip-off about mom-ness. It described her as an officer in a parent-teacher association. And — zap — she was mommified.

Moms were seen as less competent and committed. Moms were half as likely to be hired as childless women or men with or without kids. Moms were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-moms. And, just for good measure, they were also judged more harshly for tardiness.

“Just the mention of the PTA had that effect,” says Correll. “Imagine the effect of a two-year absence from the workforce or part-time work.”

Happy mother’s day, to all and sundry who are still on Sunday and celebrate it on this date.

*sigh* I can’t even think of what to do about that - moms deserve better.

ETA: gentlespirit reminded me that:

Just to put it out there–that seems to be more in the corporate world. In teaching primary school, and I imagine any profession that brings one in close contact with young people, mothers are often given more respect and credence. (With strong union contracts pay is based upon position, time, level of study and such, no arbitrary raises, really.)

In addition to struggling with my age, and language barriers, I often receive remarks such as “as a mother….” or “wait until you he your own children.” Things I have said have been dismissed with “she’s not a mom” and people who do not know have asked if I have children as a means of judging what I say.

I am not saying that the treatment described in the study you posted is appropriate; I am rather appalled. I am saying that I feel it deals with a select part of the job force. Just saying “workplace” is hardly clear.

[view comments on LJ]

First People of Colour SF Carnival
Hosted by Seeking Avalon on June 15th
Submission Guidelines
Submission Form
Contact Willow if you would like to host.
Its brand new, so link everywhere!

For those of you who don’t know what a Blog Carnival is:

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title,a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted,often with the editors opinions or remarks.

(And as long as I’m here, the 14th Feminist SF/F Carnival will be on May 30th and the next Carnival of Feminists is on May 16.)

I’m growing even more fond of the podcast for 51 Percent, which every week includes a story about women’s contributions to science. I found this one very interesting, and the great advantage of spending all day typing when people talk is that I can transcribe it rather than make y’all go listen.

The good doctor wore three inch lifts in his shoes, carried a parasol and travelled the world with a milk goat. And he had a lousy temper. But James Barry earned the highest rank a doctor could achieve in the British Army.

No one ever claimed Dr. James Barry was pleasant. After graduating from medical school in Edinburgh in 1812, he joined the British Army, and was appointed Medical Inspector in South Africa. He began making trouble immediately. He criticized local officials for the inadequate water system. And he insisted it be upgraded. He served from India to the Caribbean, from the Africa to Canada, advocating for better sanitary conditions and nutrition for soldiers. He also urged more humane treatment of lepers, prisoners, and the insane.

Dr. Barry travelled in the company of a poodle named Psyche and a black manservant named John, who provided him with six towels each morning, to “accentuate” his uniform. More than once people accused him of having “homosexual” affairs. Barry performed one of the first successful Caesarean sections in the Empire. Women said he was a most considerate birth attendant. In the Crimea he was the only person cocky enough to reprimand Florence Nightingale. He was bombastic, opinionated and tactless. But he was entertaining, and maintained friends in high places. One supporter claimed Barry was the finest doctor he’d ever know, but absurd in everything else.

Dr. Barry died in England in 1864. The woman who prepared his body discovered that the good doctor was female. James Barry’s real name is thought to have been Miranda Stuart. She took on the male persona to gain entrance to medical school in 1809, when it was practically impossible for women to become physicians, let alone enter the military. For the next 56 years Miranda Stuart pretended to be a man… and was, in fact, a top rate physician.

I really find this story quite interesting on so many levels. I’ve seen a few pictures of the good doctor - here’s a good one with added stories about people who actually met him - and I’m torn as to whether everyone involved just “played along” with the “Oh, yes, Dr Barry is a man”, or if people were genuinely fooled. There’s an implication of both in various stories I read about Dr Barry, including in the idea that he would have gotten into the army if people had realised he was a woman in the first place. I somehow suspect not, at least in the time period, but I’m not a military historian and someone may come along and correct me on that.

A very important person in my life gave me a copy of the DVD “Tipping the Velvet”, which tells the story of a woman in Victorian England who started her career as a woman dressed as a man (and yet still obviously a woman), realised she was a lesbian, and dealt with all the social stigmas of it. (One scene that really stuck out was “It’s not like you had real sex - that requires a man.” I wish I could believe such things weren’t said anymore, but I’m not as naive as I used to be.) There’s a lot going on in the miniseries (and even more going on in the book, I’m sure), but one of the things that stuck out to me was that there were many many women shown as dressing “like a man” while not convincing anyone they were men, while simultaneously there were other women who were actually managing to bend their gender enough to “pass” as male when they wanted to.

Is this anyone’s particular area of study or interest that they can recommend some books or websites on the subject?

[Note: This is a slightly rewritten version of an entry I wrote in my LJ on 10 March 2005. Anna made me, so yell at her if you don’t want to read repeated material.]

I’ve become rather burnt out on Queer Literature in recent years. Not that I don’t still love to read about boys loving boys and girls loving girls and either loving both, but I’m starting to feel a bit … ghetto-ised, I suppose. It’s not that I want Queer Literature to go away, it’s that I want more gay characters in “mainstream” lit. And on TV. And in movies. And fuck, in songs, in advertising, in the street, in every part of everyday life. But I’ll limit myself to books, and the general media to some extent, because if I get started on the rest I’ll just never shut up.

(more…)

An Australian senator has caused a storm of protest for describing a female politician as “deliberately barren” and therefore unfit to govern.

Bill Heffernan said Labor Party deputy leader Julia Gillard did not understand the public because she had no children.

He has since apologised for the “inappropriate” comments, first made last year but repeated again this week.

Analysts say the incident will be an embarrassment for his close friend, Prime Minister John Howard.

Mr Howard has made it clear he does not support Mr Heffernan’s comments.

“The question of whether people have children, whether they marry and have children, is entirely a matter for them and I do not think it should be a matter of public comment,” Mr Howard told reporters.

Nappy knowledge

Mr Heffernan first questioned Ms Gillard’s childlessness last year, when he queried whether the deputy Labor leader could fully understand her voters because she did not have her own family.

In Wednesday’s edition of The Bulletin magazine, he voiced similar remarks.

“If you’re a leader, you’ve got to understand your community,” the 64-year-old senator said.

“One of the great understandings in a community is family and the relationship between mum, dad and a bucket of nappies,”he added.

Ms Gillard, 45, dismissed Mr Heffernan’s views as old-fashioned.

“The reality is that modern women know all about modern women’s choices. Mr Heffernan is a man stuck in the past,” she told reporters.

---

What do you think about the senator’s comments that a childless female politician is unfit to govern? Can a woman understand people better if she has children? Are children a help or a hindrance to success in a woman’s life? Send us your comments.

Via: BBC

I’m so conflicted on this report.

First - yay, the whole thing is being condemned rather strongly from various places. Woo hoo! Women politicians should be judged on their merits and not on their relationships or the number of children they don’t have (or do have).

On the other hand…

It’s 2007, and once again - I don’t want my damned flying cars, I want my female politicians to be taken seriously. That Heffernan felt that it was okay to say this in the first place says something in itself.

That the BBC thinks that the question should be “Can a woman understand people better if she has children?” say something in itself.

Not:

- Should discussions about the family status of politicians be part of political rhetoric? Do politicians have a right to a private life?
- Can any politician understand people better if he or she has children?
- Does having children make anyone understand people better?
- Should Heffernan’s remarks be enough to call into question his understanding of his own constituents?

There are probably a lot of other questions that I’m not thinking of that should be asked in response to this.

Why the heck are they asking if children are a help or hindrance to success in a woman’s life? What, men’s lives are not affected by children? What, women’s success is only measured without considering if raising children *is* the success? It’s not like it’s an easy job, for crying out loud.

Deliberately barren? Would she somehow be okay as a politician if she’d found out she was unable to have children because of some medical reason?

[Oh, man, and this doesn’t even get into stuff about lesbian and gay couples who don’t have children…. I have no idea if they can adopt in Aus.]

Yay, the politicians are condemning the remark. Think of the positive. Think of the positive. Think of the positive….