This week my colleagues at the Council on Contemporary Families released a briefing paper, “Families and the Current Economic Crisis,” examing the maelstrom of financial dilemmas facing Americans today, along with the far-reaching human impact. The report is available at www.contemporaryfamilies.org. Here’s a quick rundown of the different effects of the current economic crisis by age, race, and gender:

Gender

Men and women are affected by the job market cuts differently. In the recession of 2001-2004, women lost jobs at a higher rate than men. Today the reverse is true. From November 2007 through April 2008, men lost 700,000 jobs, especially in traditional “family-wage” occupations such as manufacturing and construction. Women, by contrast, gained almost 300,000 jobs, since female-dominated fields such as health care have remained strong. No one is “winning” any gender battles here, though. The pay gap between men and women had been narrowing for several years, but this past year it began to widen again. And in families where women have become the main providers, the results are mixed. Some families report increased respect by husbands and children for women’s economic contributions. But men who have a strong identification with the “male breadwinner” role experience a decline in marital quality when their wife begins to bring in a larger share of family income.

Age

Thirty million Americans are over age 65, and with the average social security payment set at $1,079, there is not much of a margin to cover rising medical, prescription, food, and gas bills. Since more than a third of retired Americans help their children financially, according to a recent AARP poll, their financial troubles may trickle down to their children and grandchildren as well. The AARP reports that the majority of baby boomers (aged 44-62) say they are struggling to make ends meet. Sixty percent have cut back on extras and 25 percent report having trouble paying their mortgage. Young adults aged 25-35 have their own issues. Many are still paying off student loans, and 35 percent are not saving for retirement at all.

Race

As is so often the case, African Americans and Hispanics are at higher risk both for job loss and foreclosure than are whites. Studies consistently show that even where black and white families earn the same yearly income, African-Americans have much lower levels of accumulated wealth, largely because their mobility has been more recent and they did not inherit homes or assets from earlier generations. More than half of all mortgages granted to African Americans in 2006 were sub-prime. In fact, a family living in an upper-middle class African American neighborhood is twice as likely to have a sub-prime mortgage as a lower-middle class white family. Hispanics were also over-represented in the sub-prime housing market. Given the continuing residential segregation in America, foreclosures on such homes will disproportionately affect African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods.

For more information, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History and Family Studies, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA (coontzs@msn.com; 360 556-9223).

This just in, via Patti Binder: As part of the 3rd Annual New York State Day to End Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, Girls Education and Mentoring Services (GEMS) has reserved a limited amount of complimentary tickets for guests that are still interested in attending the screening of VERY YOUNG GIRLS. Email Makia Kambon at Makia@gems-girls to reserve one of the complimentary tickets today.

Screening of VERY YOUNG GIRLS &
Youth Leadership Panel
Friday, June 20th at 6:30pm

6:30pm: Hear directly from the members of GEMS as they discuss their leadership role in the movement to end CSEC. All attendees will receive a copy of GEMS White Paper on Youth Leadership in the Movement to End Commercial Sexual Exploitation, funded generously by the Ms. Foundation.

7:30pm: Attend a special screening of the SHOWTIME/Swinging T documentary VERY YOUNG GIRLS. This documentary highlights the experiences of the girls that GEMS serves. This compelling film provides an opportunity to hear the girls’ tell their own stories in their own words. Co-sponsored by the Fordham Institute for Women and Girls.

Tickets for Screening**:$25 General Admission
$10 Students/ Non-Profits

Click here to RSVP and purchase tickets online.

Join me at the next Woodhull Nonfiction Writers Retreat, where I’ll be teaching a day on writing nonfiction book proposals. If you register now, there’s a Special Early Bird Rate. Here’s the scoop:

Women are underrepresented as nonfiction authors and opinion writers. In a long weekend of writing instruction and one-on-one critique from expert instructors Kristen Kemp, Catherine Orenstein, and Deborah Siegel, participants gain fundamental knowledge of Op-ed pieces, features, book proposals, and pitching ideas.

Substantial discounts are also available to alumnae and members. To register, click here. For more info, email Elizabeth at ecurtis@woodhull.org.

This week I was interviewed for a Page 6 story (by a writer I trust!) on divorce parties. Yep, word has gotten out that I had me one of those, and you can soon, gulp, read about it in the New York Post a week from this Sunday. In the meantime, here’s an interesting post from Rebecca Honig Friedman over at Jewess about Jewish women writing their own get (the Jewish divorce certificate). That would have been a nice thing to do, seeing as how my Jewish divorce experience was far more painful than the civil one, just because of the way it’s traditionally set up. What saved me? Bringing Daphne to the “unceremony” with me. Daph sat by my side and reminded me it was just a role in an ancient play. But that whole get experience was what prompted me to reclaim the ritual by staging a little ritual of my own invention which…well, more bout that on Page 6!

I’ve been going to lots of book parties lately. Lots and lots of book parties. And as a writer at someone else’s book party, one always take mental notes. Here are three of my latest:

1. Ask guests to please go home and write a 5-star review of your book on Amazon.com. You must ask in tongue and cheek tone, but, of course, you are deadly serious.

2. Have a gimmick related to your book. Best ever: heaps of ice cream and other bad-for-your-waist deliciousness offered at Abby Ellin’s book party for Teenage Waistland — oh, and the scale. Close second, even though it made me jumpy: the pink balloons at a party last week for The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World–And How to Reach Them (more on this new book soon!) which guests were asked to pop as a reminder that there’s more to marketing social change to women than making everything pink.

3. Wear a crazy fabulous dress because, really, when else do you get to.

What was the best/worst book party you’ve been to, those of you who frequent such things? (Note: I’m not looking for personal snipes here — just your thoughts about do’s and don’ts!)

Image cred

Yes, it’s true. I’m decking out in costume as a 1950s bride at my wedding–which is now 4 weeks away. I figure, if I’m going to be a bride, why not play the role? Though I’m not wearing white–it’s blue. And today my cousin Jen and I are going crinoline shopping. If anyone has ideas about where to find an inexpensive one, I’d totally appreciate the tip!

So here’s to the latest women about to be demonized in the media: Michelle Obama. My heart goes out to her, and so will my pen (or keyboard, whatevs). Meanwhile, check out this piece in Women’s eNews by Sandra Kobrin, “Michelle: Hold Your Head High; We Got Your Back.”

And by the way, for an expanded version of Courtney’s comments from yesterday’s forum on media coverage of the 2008 elections, do check out “Generation Y Refuses Race-Gender Dichotomy” in AlterNet today. An excerpt:

The million-dollar question: How, with a generation bent on individuality and multiplicity, do we confront racism, sexism and all the other insipid -isms that have been brought to light by this unprecedented campaign? To my mind, we must continue to use novel interventions — like the Women’s Media Center’s great montage “Sexism Sells, but We’re Not Buying It,” the brand-new blog Michelle Obama Watch, and the evergreen experts at Racialicious — to educate people. We must use humor — as my group blog Feministing often does, as the brilliant Sarah Haskins does on Current TV, as Ann Telnaes does through cartooning over at Women’s eNews. (Note: It’s not just the boys — John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the Onion crew — that know the power of a laugh.)

We must take our roles as media consumers dead seriously, calling television executives and newspaper editors on their misguided choices and celebrating them when they get it right. In an increasingly corporatized media landscape, it is your dollar, not your disgust, that will most readily get big-wig attention. Don’t buy sexist magazines, don’t tune into to racist radio, and don’t watch reductive, recycled infotainment being pawned off as news.

But most of all, it seems to me, we must continue to push for a deeper, more authentic conversation overall. We must let the mainstream media know that we don’t want to debate “reject” or “denounce” for 24 hours or go on witch hunts for Geraldine Ferraro or Samantha Power. We want to understand what these women were trying to say. We want to explore the real issues. We want to, as my co-panelist Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now so brilliantly put it, call into question the whole idea of empire. The debate shouldn’t center on the quandary: How can we make our empire more effective? But, do we want to be an empire in the first place?

And we must demand that our candidates rise to the occasion, as I believe Obama did so beautifully with his speech on race following the Reverend Wright controversy. He brought that conversation to a new level, and we are all better off for it. We need to continue to push for that kind of brazen truth-telling — about gender, certainly, about class, for sure. That’s what politics is supposed to be about — not partisanship or strategic spinning, but honesty and uplift. Call me naïve, but that’s what the young are supposed to be, right?

After yesterday’s live blogging frenzy, I’m late to the game today! But here’s a quick one, for those who love women’s basketball and Women’s eNews:

On Thursday June 26th, the New York Liberty will be facing off (is that what they do in b-ball? you can see how clueless I am) with the Indiana Fever, and 20% of all ticket sales will be donated back to Women’s eNews. If you go, you’ll also get a sneak peek at the behind-the-scenes action as the team warms up. For tix, contact Erin Dabe at 212/465-6289 or erin.dabe@thegarden.com, and use the code WOMENS ENEWS.

From Soundbites to Solutions: Bias, Punditry, and the Press in the 2008 Elections, jointly sponsored by the WMC, The White House Project, and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education

Panel II – How the Media Influence and Reflect Political Realities, moderated by Geneva Overholser, Director of the School of Journalism at the U of Southern California

Overheard, here at the Paley Center:

William Douglas, White House Correspondent: “I look at this campaign season so far and I’m both encouraged and discouraged about how we’ve covered it. It’s because we’ve had two such historic candidates. Speaking from the mainstream print journalism world, I think we’ve done ok. We’ve actually written about issues that we haven’t had the opportunity to look at durnig previous campaigns, in large part because the candidates have been traditional candidates. We’ve looked at race and gender somewhat differently than we have in the past, because we’ve had to.”

Juan Gonzalez, Columnist, New York Daily News: “I’ve been extremely disappointed by the shallowness of the approach to all these issues. It’s been seen as conflicts between campaigns, between individuals. There’s been far less focus on the institutional, and on what these two candidates are actually going to do….In the foreign policy arena, for instance, the media has failed to differentiate between the candidates’ different attitudes toward American empire. Do the candidates urge the American people to have a smarter empire, or to end this domination over people of the world? I look forward to seeing how we improve our coverage during the general election.”

Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director, Annenberg Public Policy Center: “‘It was a charming speech. There was no stridency to it. Maybe she has a new speech writer.’ We need some consciousness raising here if a commentator feels it’s ok to deliver those three sentences!”

Chrisitane Anamapour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN: “To think that in this country, this supposed beacon of democracy, you can be sexist in reporting without accountability, is astonishing to me. Even in places like Iran, where there’s an Islamic fundamentalist revolution, the number of times people have said to me ‘Well, we have more women in our Parliament than you in America have in your Senate.’ And in Europe, people say to me the same. Women have been breaking those barriers outside the US for a long, long time in some countries that you in the US have believed to be benighted and backward….”

Pamela Newkirk, Associate Professor of Journalism, New York University: “When I left the daily media 15 years ago, I wrote about the impact African Americans have had on mainstream American media. I found that race matters, and what we learned on this campaign is that gender matters for sure, but let us not forget that race still matters. With the nomination of Barack Obama, there’s a perception out there that we’ve overcome race. But both of these areas still have a long way to go. Bill O’Reilly called for a lynching party for Michelle Obama, but last I checked, he still has a show.”

The first panel, “Candidates, Campaigns, and the Politics of Bias,” is underway. Overheard here at The Paley Center:

Celinda Lake, Political Strategist and President of Lake Research Partners: “Polling shows the voters feel 2 to 1 that the media has been unfair to Obama in terms of race, and that the media has been hardest on age, vis a vis McCain. There’s not as much sense of unfairness around gender.”

Dr. Susan Carroll, Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women in Politics: “The media failed to educate the public about ways that gender considerations affected HRC’s campaign. For instance, research shows that women are seen to be less qualified to hold public office than men, even when they have more credentials and experience. So HRC made experience central to her campaign. But by emphasizing this, she ceded the issue of change to Obama. But it was something she had to do to counter negative ingrained stereotypes. The media didn’t acknowledge this.”

Dr. Ron Walters, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland: “The race comments from Bill Clinton, HRC, and Geraldine Ferraro—I don’t believe all that was an accident. It was a strategy by Obama’s opponents. Obama’s campaign hoped it would go away, but it didn’t. Fox news made sure it wouldn’t, by bringing Rev. Wright into the picture. And other networks jumped right in.”

Courtney Martin, author and columnist for The American Prospect, and feministing.com blogger: “There’s been a 109% increase in youth voters in this election. That’s profound. Youth are excited about this election, but they are not excited about partisanship. Chalk it up to Facebook, chalk it up to our tendency to see ourselves as individual projects, but we just aren’t into party politics.”

Patricia Williams, Columnist, The Nation, and Professor of Law, Columbia University: “Again, we see in this election, all the women are white, all the men are black. Race was gendered and gender was raced in this primary. Michelle Obama, Asian men, and others were left out of this conversation entirely.”

Up next: Panel II…