So here’s an email I received yesterday that made me laugh–and then made me want to cry. Read it, and you’ll see what I mean. (Picture sold separately.)

A BREAKTHROUGH FOR WORKING PARENTS!!!

At last, working parents can stop feeling guilty and start enjoying their family lives without giving up their jobs:

*A pregnant woman can now take leave from work six weeks before her baby is due and stay out ten weeks after the birth, all at full pay, with return to her job guaranteed.

*Fathers can take up to 11 days off after the birth of a baby, also at full pay. The parents can then share up to three years of leave time without risk of losing their jobs, and will receive a stipend if they are staying home with two or more children.

* Family-friendly policies don’t stop after parents go back to work. Work hours are now set at 35 hours per week, and all workers receive twelve national holidays and five paid weeks of vacation

* A national preschool program is available to all children ages 3-5. It requires teachers have a master’s degree and pays those teachers a living wage.

IS AMERICA A GREAT PLACE FOR FAMILIES OR WHAT?

APRIL FOOL! Those benefits are available to families in France, not the U.S.

-In Belgium, working women are entitled to four weeks maternity leave at 82 percent of their salary, and 11 more weeks at 74 percent. Belgian workers are entitled to 20 days paid vacation time and 10 national holidays. They also get up to 10 days of fully-paid leave each year to care for sick family members.

-Canada offers Employment Insurance for both maternity and paternity leave, allowing a couple to take up to 50 weeks leave, which can be divided between mother and father, at 55 percent of pay, up to a maximum of $435 per week. In addition, Canada’s Universal Child Care Benefit pays families $100 per month for each child under age six.

BACK TO REALITY

So what’s the real story about the U.S.?

* Of the 20 richest countries in the world, only Australia and the U.S. have no national law requiring paid maternity leave. Parents are eligible for only twelve weeks unpaid leave, the shortest amount of leave time of all Western industrialized countries. Furthermore, employees are not guaranteed unpaid leave unless their employer has over 50 workers within 75 miles of the parent’s worksite and the employee has worked for the company for at least 12 months. Of workers eligible for leave who do not take it, 78 percent say that is because they can’t afford to take time off without any pay.

*The U.S. is the only Western industrialized nation that does not mandate paid vacations. On average, we work nearly nine full weeks longer per year than our peers in Western Europe.

This funny yet sad wake up call brought to you by my friends at the Council on Contemporary Families.

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Here’s a recap of the intergenerational feminist panel I spoke on last week at The New School, organized by Ann Snitow. (Thank you, Kristen, for that incredibly thoughtful write-up!)

Check out the guest blog Debbie and I did for our favorite gal, Marci Alboher, who runs the Shifting Careers blog over at The New York Times. An excerpt:

DS: I’m noticing that the younger women in our audiences frequently talk about a lack of mentoring at nonprofit organizations. The older women we talk to—the college professors, the nonprofit execs—tell us younger women expect too much from them. Why do you think there seems to be such a disconnect in expectations at this point in time?

CM: I think we were a generation told, “You can be anything!” and we mistranslated it as “I have to be everything.” Our outlandish expectations of our mentors are just a reflection of our outlandish expectation of ourselves. The hardest thing is to find balance between going for your wildest dreams and having reasonable, healthy goals. Any advice?

An often savvy reporter, Sharon Jayson, had an interesting piece in USA Today last week (March 25), which comes to my attention today courtesy of CCF. In “Boomers’ Hope: That the ‘kids’ are all right”, Jayson documents that a growing number of baby boomer parents are worried that their young adult children are lacking direction and motivation – and they may just stay that way. From the CCF summary:

These young adults aren’t slackers; they often have jobs to pay the rent and are seemingly on their own. But these parents worry that the close relationships they’ve cultivated with their children may have stifled their self-sufficiency. Others think young people may be caught in a vicious cycle, created by economics and fueled by parents. Having options is something young people expect, according to Richard Sweeney of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who conducts young adult focus groups for colleges and corporations. “The bigger the choice, the more likely they are to postpone,” he said. “They don’t want to make a bad choice.” Having too many options – and the “anything is possible” mantra boomers inculcated in their children – may have backfired for some young adults, agreed Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College and author of “The Paradox of Choice.” “I think this is a major problem – this inability of people to pull the trigger because they’re worried there might be something better around the corner.”

I totally hear this from the late-twenties and thirty-something folks I’m interviewing for my next book. But I have to question these assumptions a bit. I’m the kid of Boomers and was massively indecisive in college, but grew out of it in my early twenties, only to hit a bout of indecision mid-grad school (to the tune of “should I stay or should I go”) in my late twenties. My thirties have been filled with growing certainty. I think decisiveness comes with age.

But regardless, what’s the alternative? I think about this as I begin to shift from thinking of myself as the daughter to myself as the parent. How do next-generation parents instill the dream of anything-is-possible with the reality that one must choose?

It all reminds me of this image I once read in a Sylvia Plath novel–that of a young girl sitting under a tree full of ripe fruit, starving. Which all, of course, comes back to a certain book we all know now called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. (Just had to throw that in…)

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Just wanted to share a bit more about a new 2-session workshop I’m teaching this month with fellow writer Alissa Quart. There are still a few slots open, so if you are interested, please either shoot me an email (girlwpen@yahoo.com) or simply register this week, over at the Woodhull site! I’m really excited for this one. Here’s the description:

FINDING YOUR SUBJECT, FINDING YOUR VOICE
A Seminar in Personal Nonfiction
April 13 11am -3pm, April 17th 6-9pm
NYC – locale TBD

So many of us want to put our ideas or personal experiences down on paper, but don’t know how to find our medium or shape our raw material into stories. In two intensive sessions, we will seek to find the topic, style and genre for that which we most wish to express. We will start by asking ourselves questions about what we have experienced in our lives. What’s notable about us and what are we experts in? What are our motives for writing? What specific goal are we hoping to achieve by writing about our lives? After taking a hard look at our interests, work and life experiences, we will figure out whether they will intersect with an audience, what sort of audience, and how to position our ideas and ourselves in order to reach that audience. With this accomplished, we will build out our best article, essay, blog, or book ideas. By the end of the class, each student will have either a story pitch, an outline for a short article or an oped, a start on a personal essay, or an idea for a book or a blog. These written frames will serve as the culmination of our in-class exercises, group conversations, and at-home writing in between the two sessions.

In order to get a better sense of voice, story and topic in non-fiction, we will read a selection of modern essay writers (among them Joan Didion’s Goodbye To All That, a selection from Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, Mary McCarthy, Luc Sante and Jonathan Lethem). In order to get a better sense of blog personae, content, and voice, we will look together at range of blogs with strong personal voices and discuss. For those who decide to create their own blogs as a means of personal expression, we will create them on-site, along with names and domains, learning about blog style, purpose, and community along the way. We will discuss how blog writing differs and overlaps with more traditional forms of personal writing as well.

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Two quick links to share this morning:

A guest post I wrote with Courtney for Marci Alboher’s New York Times blog, Shifting Careers, titled “Notes from an Intergenerational Conversation.” Court and I chew over how generational issues are affecting women at work. We hit on topics from fashion to mentoring and “entitlement.” Comments over there most welcome!

And a recap of the intergenerational feminist panel I spoke on last week at The New School, organized by Ann Snitow. (Thank you, Kristen, for that incredibly thoughtful write-up.)

This is not a pic from a Dr. Seuss book but rather a shot of MIT’s Ghery-designed Strata Center, where this weekend’s Women, Action Media conference took place. In addition to my posts on the Hillary panel (here and here), I wanted to share additional highlights, for those who weren’t able to attend. Some summaries, as filtered by other bloggers who were there:

Hugo Schwyzer on Helen Thomas’ keynote from Friday night and on a handful of the Saturday panels–“Breaking the Frame: Revitalizing and Redefining Reproductive Rights Media Coverage,” “Beating the Old Boys’ Club,” and “Sex Workers and Media Representation.”

Jessica Valenti at feministing on the session called “Battling Backlash: Strategies for Fighting Back, Rising Above and Making Progress”

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon on the “Breaking the Frame” session. (I poached the photo of the Strata Center from Amanda, btw.)

I know there’s a site that live-blogged the whole darn thing and if I find it, I’ll let you know. If anyone finds it first, please post the url in comments. And if you were there and blogged about it, send us your links in comments as well!

Well, I’m back in NYC after a month of traveling for Women’s History Month talks and both my cat and my fiance seem to still recognize me, so all is well. Phew! April is all about book proposal writing for me, so I will definitely be trying to practice what I preached at the session I moderated at WAM! this weekend, on Writing Book Proposals. Can’t wait to read the books those in that audience are going to write one day, as I heard a ton of great ideas. Folks have been asking where I’m teaching next, so I thought I’d post the Spring workshop roster again here:

April 7 – Breaking into Anthology Writing (with me and Daphne Uviller)
MediaBistro @ NYC

April 13, 17 – Finding Your Subject, Finding Your Voice: A Seminar in Personal Nonfiction (with both me and Alissa Quart)
Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership @ NYC

April 26 – What You Should Know about Blogging and Why
Council on Contemporary Families Conference @ University of IL, Chicago

May 10 – Writing Nonfiction Book Proposals
Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership @Ancramdale (Retreat center)

June 7 – Strategic Blogging for Organizations, Women’s Centers, and Feminist Experts
National Council for Research on Women Annual Conference @New York University

Continuing where the post below left off: I asked the panel on media coverage of Hillary here at WAM! to comment on the age divide among women around the election–and how it’s being framed in the MSM–and it seems to have sparked some rather heated (YAY!) conversation. Here are snippets:

-An African American woman declares herself undecided, but poignantly voices her desire to hear more about Obama’s policy positions. “Inspiration, words, great. But what do you stand for?” she says.

-A young white woman speaks from the heart about her feelings about Obama, then asks, “As a feminist who is supporting Obama, what can I do to continue to combat sexism?”

-Betsy Reed (from the panel) notes, “There’s a sense among older women that younger women are abandoning the cause. And younger women are saying to older women, ‘You know, we have more complex political identities.’ The difference in voting may be portrayed as a catfight, but it’s bringing a lot to the fore. “

-Carol Hardy-Fanta brings up the troubling news of that new report about the high percentage of Obama supporters who say they will vote for McCain if Obama doesn’t get the nomination.

-My Woodhull colleague Elizabeth Curtis “outs” herself as a young woman who is supporting Hillary and questions the assumption that younger women are voting for Obama and older women for Hillary without backing these statements with any research. [Note from GWP: The stats from SuperTuesday and Junior SuperTuesday do show it…] She notes the lack of coalition on the side of the Dems. And she asks the question that I think is THE question: “What we can start to do–right now-to work together to ensure that the Democrat will make it to the White House?”

-Carol Hardy-Fanta notes that there have been more Democrats coming out to vote than Republicans–twice as many, it seems. If that continues, the Dem has a chance. She calls upon us to respond to friends who make those inane “I’m going to vote for McCain” comments by calling them on it.

YESSS. And my own thoughts on this are expressed in the Washington Post oped I coauthored the other week with Courtney. If I weren’t working like hell on my book proposal, I’d be tempted to write another one. But for the moment, instead, I’ll just have to be satisfied with calling defectors losers.

I HEART WAM! And it’s been such a pleasure to meet bloggers–Jill and Holly from Feministe, Amanda from Pandagon, Hugo Schwyzer–and many other folks I’ve long admired. Always grateful to make connections new and old. I’ve finally dragged my computer out and am live blogging here from the final session, “Cleavage, Cackles and Cookies: Analysis of News Coverage of Hillary Clinon and the Presidental Election.” So here we go:

Allison Stevens of Women’s eNews is moderating and offers out the following statistics, via a recently released report from The Center for Media and Public Affairs (a non-partisan org that tracks coverage):

84% of on-air comments about Obama have been positive
43% of on-air comments about Clinton have been positive

What gives?

Barbara Lee, social activist and philanthropist, frames the convo with a look at the difficulty women governors–her expertise–have in getting elected. She notes that voters give female governors high marks. Once voters have seen women governors in action, they LIKE them. But it’s the getting elected part that’s hard. Voters have doubts about whether women are capable of leading at the highest levels. They must be perceived as both competent and likeable–not an easy feat. There’s also “hair, hemlines, and husband” phenomenon–everything about a woman candidate has to be just right. Once in office, female govs exceed and redefine voter expectation. But here’s the upside: The higher standards are producing women governors who excel in the eyes of the voters. And while voters demand more from women, they also give them great credit.

On Hillary, Barbara restates the obvious:

“The media coverage–particularly cable tv pundits and talk show hosts–has been maddening. Rarely, has the historic nature of her campaign been celebrated. Rather, it’s been demeaned.”

Carol Hardy-Fanta, Director of UMAss Boston’s Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, reruns clips of the news coverage of Cleavagegate and Hillary’s Cackle, calling attention to the throughlines. A thought: News stories about Al Gore’s sigh, John Edwards’ hair, and Hillary’s cackle–initiated at Republican headquarters?

Since Cookiegate back in 1992, Hillary has had to straddle different and changing ideas about women. Back then, the break with the past was seismic. Until Carter’s campaign, Presidents’ wives didn’t sit in on Cabinet meetings. Hillary was the first President’s wife who came from having a major career. She was trapped between an outdated past and an uncharted future. Since then, she’s faced all sorts of double standards. Most recently, she’s been accused of using a “mommy strategy” to soften her image.

Additional obstacles include this: Since 9/11, citizens willingness to vote for a qualified woman candidate for Prez has actually decreased.

Betsy Reed, Executive Editor at The Nation, refers to the “tsunami of misogyny” we’ve seen–it’s a “breathtaking amount of venom.” According to the race playbook and the gender playbook, blacks are seen as traitors, while women are seen as weak. Betsy also addresses ways that Hillary’s gender and Obama’s race have helped them in their campaigns.

Alison asks: What does this campaign mean to future female candidates and future candidates who are people of color?

Carol Hardy-Fanta: “Hillary started off as the one to beat. She had name-recognition, money, the establishment, and a popular former President behind her. She had the ‘unassailable lead.’ She was the first woman who had wiped away the large structural barriers to a woman becoming a nominee. She made some mistakes, but compared to John McCain’s mistakes? If Hillary can’t even get the nomination, I don’t think we’ll see another woman run and win until my daughter is a grandparent. And what of the fact that Reverend Wright gets so scrutinized while McCain gets a free pass on Pat Roberston endorsing him?”

Betsy Reed: “It’s unfortunate that Obama has not been able to call out the sexism that Hillary has experienced. He hasn’t called out some of the racism that he’s experienced. It’s as if the very accusation is suspect somehow. We need to figure out a better way of talking about these things, and waging protest when appropriate.”

Ok, off to ask a question for the panel, so am signing off for now….

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