SO EXCITED bout this: Girls Write Now will be featured some time this week on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams reported by national correspondent Amy Robach. Tune in or set your DVRs to see some familiar faces! And please spread the word!
NBC Nightly News airs daily at 6:30 PM Eastern/Pacific, 5:30 PM Central. Check out your state’s local listings.
For a great summary of last week’s panel, Women’s Economic Equality: The Next Frontier in Women’s Rights, hosted by Legal Momentum (and starring Heather Boushey, Linda Hirshman, Mimi Abramowitz, and Irasema Garza), check out Kyla Bender-Baird over at The REAL Deal.
I’ve been rather quiet around here these past few and am soon to jump back on the horse (or in the saddle, or however that phrase goes). Just wanted to throw out a quick one, courtesy of the CCF listserv, from today’s WSJ:
Money Matters Can Make or Break Marriages by Jeff D. Opdyke
Even in the best of times, couples regularly argue about finances. But at this juncture, when so many Americans are feeling stung and frustrated by a weak economy, a housing-price collapse, and a stock-market crash, it’s particularly critical that newlyweds — and even long-time spouses — are on the same page when it comes to money.
Sigh. Note to world: though Marco’s job situation is still precarious, we are going strong, in our 9th month of marriage. I chalk it up to open communication, giving each other lots of space in which to unfold, and of course our kitten, Tula, who keeps it real.
I’ll be offline for the next few days, observing Passover and eating lots of matzah. I have no idea who “Matzah Woman” is (not in the Hagaddah, last I checked), but I just had to post this. Image cred here.
May all beings, everywhere, be free!
So this just well may be my favorite annual report out there, and it’s just out now: Unconventional Wisdom: New Data, Trends, and Clinical Observations about Equality in American Family Life and Gender Roles
In it, experts from the Council on Contemporary Families review key recent research and clinical findings on gender and equality. In preparation for the Council on Contemporary Families’ Twelfth Anniversary Conference at the University of Chicago at Illinois, April 17-19, 2009, CCF surveyed its members about their “most important or surprising research results and clinical observations related to topics being considered at the conference.” The resulting report provides a snapshot of what some of the nation’s leading authorities are seeing in their research and clinical practice. Check it out:
1. Does marital quality decrease when couples need to negotiate the division of household chores and child-care?
Researchers and clinical psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan report that marriages suffer most when couples fail to talk through these thorny issues. On average, having a child leads to a long-term decline in marital satisfaction. But couples who have more egalitarian relationships can avoid these problems, first when they jointly plan for and welcome the birth of a child, and second, when they minimize the tendency to slip into more traditional gender roles after the child’s birth. Still, the closer couples move toward equality, report conference presenters Marc and Amy Vachon, the less likely they are to focus on quantifying who does which chores. Good to know, huh?!
2. Women feel more work-family conflict than men, right?
Not any longer. A just-released report from the Families and Work Institute, “Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home,” shows that as men have increased the amount of time they spend with young children over the past 15 years, they are now experiencing more work-family conflict than women. Welcome to our world, dudes.
3. What’s happening to the traditional double standard?
It’s been to a great extent reversed in middle school, according to researcher Barbara Risman. Forty-five years ago, studies showed that the school culture was suppressing girls’ natural talents and aspirations by the time they entered middle school. At age 10 or 11, girls stopped speaking up in class and even started “playing dumb” to attract boys. They often chose not to compete in sports or to develop their bodies for fear of being teased as tomboys. Risman’s new study of middle-school children in the 21st Century shows a remarkable reversal of this pattern. Being a top-flight athlete is now considered part of the “ideal” girl package, and girls are very willing to compete with boys in the classroom. Today it is young boys who are afraid of showing off how smart they are and who feel they have to suppress their interest in certain activities for fear of being taunted as “gay.”
4. But the double standard is still alive and well in college, says Stanford University researcher Paula England.
While women have gained some sexual freedoms, they risk harsher judgments than men do if they proceed beyond “making out” in a hook up. And when activity does progress beyond making out, there is a striking “orgasm gap” between males and females-it is worse than the sex gap in pay! “Men get more than their share of the orgasms while women get more than their share of the bad reputations,” notes England, who is currently interviewing students across the country about changing sexual practices and norms.
5. In another finding, sexual health researcher Adina Nack discovered that women who are diagnosed with an STD ultimately develop improved sexual communication with their partners and are better able to discuss their own needs and wishes as well as insist on safe health practices.
In still more data-driven observations from family experts, you can learn about important and surprising research on family, gender, economics, and sexuality from the past year. The report is available here.
WANT MORE UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM? CHECK OUT CCF’s CONFERENCE “Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality” — I’ll be there! Here’s more:
The Council on Contemporary Families 12th Anniversary Conference,
“Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality: How Far Have We Come?” (April
17 and 18, 2009 at the University of Illinois, Chicago) includes the
following panels, presenting new research and best practice findings on
these timely topics:
*Work-Family Balance for Women and Men
*Gender Convergence in Families and Intimate Relationships
*Gender in the Next Generation
*The Marriage Go-Round – A Special preview of his forthcoming book with Andrew Cherlin
*Women, Men and Equality: What the Election Taught Us
You’ll hear Jeremy Adam Smith discuss his study on role-switching
between husbands and wives, including interviews with dads forced into this
position by lay-offs. At a time when men have experienced more than 80
percent of layoffs since 2007, we have a growing number of families with
stay-at-home dads and breadwinner moms. The entire work and family panel
offers fresh perspective on families in a time of recession.
In the “Next Generation” panel, noted psychologist Diane Ehrensaft will
discuss the growing phenomenon of children telling their parents
that they are not the gender stated on their birth certificate or are
not able or willing to play within the culturally defined binary boxes
of “girl,” “boy.” They might be transgender; they might be gender
fluid; they might be a “Prius”-a hybrid half boy-half girl; or they
might be a “gender smoothie”–a synthesized blend of male/female.
What do we know about how parents can best handle these situations?
For a detailed conference program, visit www.contemporaryfamilies.org.
Accredited journalists seeking complimentary registration should contact
Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, Council on
Contemporary Families: coontzs@msn.com. Phone: 360 556-9223.
Check out this article in the LA Times, Recession Hits Male Workers More, which offers all sorts of theories about the big gender split we’re seeing:
A bona fide “man-cession” invites all sorts of social theories: Maybe women are cheaper to keep on the payroll because they tend to make less. Maybe women are better communicators, which helps shield them from the ax. Maybe women feel they have more to prove, so they get retained for trying harder.
To hear economist [Mark] Perry tell it, two factors far outweigh those theories.
This recession started with a crash in the housing market, and construction is about as male-dominated as it gets: 88%, Perry says. Manufacturing also took a dive: It’s 70% male. The male bastions of the financial-service sector got whacked too: Testosterone-heavy trading desks ain’t what they used to be, post credit crunch.
Meanwhile, practically the only major sectors holding their own are education and healthcare, which run 77% female combined. “Those differences account for quite a bit of it,” Perry said.
The other big difference: higher education.
Since 1981, women have earned far more bachelor’s degrees, collecting 135 for every 100 awarded to men, Perry said. At the master’s level, the “degree gap” is an even wider 150 to 100. Because unemployment among college graduates stands at 4.1%, less than half the rate of high-school grads, those sheepskins count.
And with so many more men getting pink slips — a misnomer, these days — women will make up a rising share of the labor force.
The article goes on to cite our friends Catalyst and others, noting that even with women making such dramatic gains, their numbers in business leadership are hardly skyrocketing. Turns out neither higher education nor the economic devastation of traditional male strongholds are making all that much difference when it comes to cracking the glass ceiling. Yet.
(Thanks to Catalyst for the heads up!)
My latest at Recessionwire.com is now up: A Security of Her Own. In this one, I unveil my current plans for dreaming big…and face up to the fact that, given our respective industries, if financial stability is going to happen any time soon, it might be up to me.
So check this out:
Tonight at 6:30pm, Legal Momentum and Cornell University are bringing together leading lights Linda Hirshman, Heather Boushey, Mimi Abramowitz, and Irasema Garza to discuss the next frontier in women’s rights: Building Economic Equality and Security in a Time of Crisis. This panel event is free and open to the public. Register here.
Cornell University ILR
16 East 34th Street, 6th Floor (between Madison and Fifth)
New York, NY 10016
I sadly cannot go but if any NYC-based GWP reader is interested in attending and either liveblogging for us or doing a post about it tomorrow, we’d all be thrilled!
More:
The current economic crisis has thrown the long-term impacts of women’s economic inequality into relief. Although women make up nearly half the workforce, they hold the vast majority of minimum and below-minimum wage and part-time jobs. Now, more than a year into a recession that has claimed millions of jobs in traditionally male-dominated industries, women are emerging as the de facto breadwinners, often struggling to support their families on low-wage salaries. While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the FY 2010 budget promise major changes in labor and employment, it is not at all clear that these programs directly address the unique impact the recession is having on women.
The “Women’s Economic Equality: the Next Frontier for Women’s Rights†panelists will give an overview of the current economic landscape for women and families; will review policy initiatives to address the challenges confronting women; and set forth the case for a significant change in focus for the women’s rights movement toward an agenda focused on economic equality and personal security.
If you want to liveblog or post on this for us, please post a comment here or email me at deborah (at) girlwpen (dot) com. Thanks!
Check out our own Miss Courtney Martin’s fearsome post at American Prospect last week and tell us what you think! I’m sensing this is gonna be fodder for our next Women, Girls, and Ladies event –which, by the way, is at the very same Sackler Center for Feminist Art (June 20 – Save the Date!) where the event Courtney writes about here took place:
The End of the Women’s Movement
(For liveblogging of the event she refers to — by moi — go here.)
So I loves me a campus visit, but my visit to Framingham State College on Monday — though exhausting! — took the cake. Heartfelt thanks to superorganizer Virginia Rutter and her amazing crew: Lisa Eck, Bridgette Sheridan, the Gender Interest Group, English, History, Psychology, Sociology, Academic Affairs, President’s Office, Wellness Center, and Women’s Empowerment, with special kudos to students Chelsea Hastbacka and Ashley Barry.
The day started with a first-run lecture/discussion called “Gender Shakeup at the Recession,” in which I got to play professor once again. I talked a bit about my personal experience with layoff, and national trends, and then had students go through two media pieces chock full of gender stereotypes (that DABA article from the New York Times from January and my dear co-blogger Joe the Trader’s piece at Recessionwire called “Gendernomics”). The students really got it, and I learned from the things they noticed as well. We talked about why the return to these traditional notions and self-presentations of gender now, and it’s something I sense I’ll be writing about more and more…
Then, a Sisterhood, Interrupted talk in a church — I got to say words like “ass” and “bitch” in a church! Hey, they’re in the section of my book that I read from; not like I planned it or anything.
Next up, a blogging workshop. And finally, a wrap-up with the faculty Gender Interest Group and the kind of discussion that made me really miss academia. As a freelancer out here who straddles academic and non-academic worlds, it was grounding and re-energizing to be among engaged students and engaging faculty for a whirlwind day of thinking, discussing, and mulling.
The feminist group on campus — who call themselves “Women’s Empowerment” — played a big role in getting me there, and they, together with the faculty I met, are the lifeblood of feminist consciousness on this campus. As always, the sight of young people coming to — and questioning — their feminism inspires me to no end. Thank you, FSC, for reminding me why I do what I do! You keep me going, you really do.
