Nuf said.

HAPPY APRIL 15 everyone! So Americans tend to think we’re better off than families in most other industrial countries because we pay lower income taxes. Right? NOT! As CCF reminds us today, when we factor in the higher amount Americans pay for health care, child care, and education, the comparison is not always in our favor. Where do American families’ tax dollars go and what family “value” they get in return?

For every $100 in income tax:
* $32 goes to national defense
* $19 goes to interest on the national debt
* $15 goes to supplemental programs such as TANF, child tax credits, and
farm subsidies
* $14 goes to health
* $6 goes to education, employment, and social services
* $4 goes to transportation
* $2 goes to administration of justice
* $2 goes to environment and natural resources
* $2 goes to international affairs
* $1 goes to community and regional development
* $1 goes to agriculture
* $1 goes to science, space, and technology
* $1 goes to the commerce and housing fund

Even at their height, the financial benefits of the last decade’s tax cuts for middle class families never equaled the financial benefits that citizens of many other countries receive in the form of monthly child allowances, universal health care, subsidized parental leaves and child care, and college assistance.

In most of Western Europe, citizens enjoy the right to near-universal health care. They do not have to forego routine care for financial reasons, and are not financially wiped out by catastrophic health emergencies. In America, this occurs frequently enough that one-quarter of financial bankruptcies originate in medical problems not covered by insurance. What’s more, of course, every other industrial nation in Western Europe, and most of the rest of the world as well, provides paid maternity leave, and in some cases paid paternity leave as well. In Belgium, free early childhood education is available to all children starting at the age of 2 ½.

Now that’s some family values. But wait–before we all head off to Canada or Sweden, I think we’d better stick around to see how our election plays out. One can still hope for a president who truly values families, which I think both the Democrats running honestly do. Did anyone hear the latest about McCain calling his wife a c—? Family values starts at home, John. Remember that, dude.

Sadly I couldn’t be there. If anyone who was would like to blog about it here and tell us what it was like, send me an email at girlwpen@yahoo.com!

The Guardian has a great piece up today by Polly Toynbee, “Girlification is Destroying All the Hope We Felt in 1968.” By “girlification,” Toynbee means pink princessification. I love neologisms on a Tuesday morning.

The article comes on the heels of an announcement from the UK’s Office for National Statistics yesterday, which reported that UK women in their 40s earn 20% less per hour than their male counterparts. Explains Toynbee, “This is the motherhood penalty – and the more children a woman has, the wider the gap. Young women start out earning almost the same, deluded by beating boys at exams. Motherhood knocks most out of the running.”

The piece goes on to ask, “so, what’s new?,” noting that 2008 is a year for reflection for her generation of women (aka second wave): “What happened in 1968? What really changed? The year of riots saw feminism ignite too, a year hazed in an illusory miasma that nothing would be the same again – but of course it was.”

Depressing. But just in case you aren’t depressed enough, Toynbee reminds us too that only 24% of parliamentary seats in the EU are occupied by women, 20% in the UK; and that 90% of top EU company boards are men. Women dominate primary school teaching, men run universities. The UK has the largest pay gap.

On the upside, Spain’s new cabinet is 50% female. GO SPAIN! And for more on the connection between pinkification and the mommy gap, read the rest here.

On June 8, the new Tribeca Barnes & Noble will become a teen literary hotspot as Girls Write Now – which, I kvell, is featured prominently in yesterday’s New York Times – takes it over. Celebrity host Amanda Diva (Def Poetry Jam, HipHopNation, MTV2, Floetry), will turn the downtown bookstore into a showcase for a collection of powerful new poems, stories and essays that reflect an electrifying community of girl writers spanning often hard-and-fast lines of race, age, economics and geography in NYC. For those not yet familiar with GWN, they (we! I’m on the Advisory Board) are New York City’s premier mentoring and creative writing organization for teen girls.

A just quick note on Amanda Diva: talk about crossover. This accomplished poet, journalist, singer, rapper, and radio & television personality is also a scholar, with a Master’s degree in African-American Studies. For more, check out DivaSpeakTV.blogspot.com and Youtube.com/ImAmandaDiva.

See you there!

June 8
4-6PM
Barnes and Noble
97 Warren Street, NYC

A podcast of our panel at Central Michigan University (“WomenGirlsLadies: A FRESH Conversation Across Generations”) is now live. And we’re taking the conversation next to Harvard this Friday, so if you’re in the area, please do come!

April 18, 3-5pm
Harvard Hall 20
For more info, please contact the Harvard College Women’s Center. We’ll also be posting notes from the road over at WomenGirlsLadies.

(The photo, L-R: Tara Sathoff-Wells, Central Michigan University Director of Women’s Studies; the four WomenGirlsLadies–Gloria Feldt, me, Courtney Martin, and Kristal Brent Zook; and my new dear friend, CMU Professor Jill Taft Kaufman.)

Hi, Laura Mazer here. As Deborah mentioned, I’m a longtime editor and book consultant, and I’m very happy to be joining the crew over here in the girlwithpendom! Deborah has asked me if I’d answer some questions for her readers, and I will do my best. Starting with this first one Deborah has tossed out, which is a great one: What do editors really look for in book proposals?

Well, let’s start out with the obvious: gorgeous writing, a fascinating book idea, more gorgeous writing. But of course. However, before I let those things get me invested in your book, I’m going to want to know 4 things:

1. Are you a Mac or a PC? Or, what’s your authorial sensibility, your creative look and feel? Consider: Your proposal is your client deliverable. Are you going to give it to me single-spaced, Times New Roman 10, no subheads, no cover page? I get word-wall weary really, really fast, so I love when authors take it up a level—by boxing essential facts and impressive quotes, using subheads to draw attention to important sections, and writing in a voice that represents the book’s narrative itself. If I see that a writer has put creative energy into the complete development of her proposal, I’ll know she understands (though she may not actually celebrate—fair enough) that to succeed in our contemporary marketplace of ideas, it takes more than interesting words, or smart words, or important words, or gorgeous words.

2. Is your bio degradable? Your author profile can be even more important than your pitch and your writing sample. It tells the reader if you’ve been test-driven in the marketplace. Have you been published before, either with a previous book or in magazines, newspapers, or visible blogs? What’s the big picture of your career: Is your book topic a whim or a cause? Can you articulate your expertise and your ideas in an accessible, reliable manner? Impress me with whatever you’ve got that’s impressive about you—even if it’s not directly tied to your subject. Show me you’re worth investing in.

3. What’s your mantra? What’s your “thing,” your sexy sell, your elevator pitch, your conceit? Put it right there at the top of your proposal in three sentences or less, in a way that can make me think right away: “Yeah, sure, I see that! Cool.” If you can nail your book description, really Ezra Pound it into the ground, you’ll have a much better chance of hooking an editor’s attention from the get-go. Editors—and agents, for that matter—have scary-big piles of manuscripts to review, so it’s not likely they’ll stick around for Vague or Complicated. And yes, go ahead and get your Hollywood on, you can definitely compare your book to others, as in, “It’s like Eat Pray Love but set in Canada and drawn as a graphic novel.” “It’s like Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish but funny and with a sub-theme about CIA corruption.” Etc.

4. Where’s the ammo? We eds need big guns. In other words, some serious data points supporting your project’s creative and monetary potential. Your editor is probably going to have to champion you and your book to a whole lot of people before she can offer you a contract, so give her as many selling points as possible. What comparative books have performed well, proving this is a popular topic? How big is your target readership, and how will your publicist reach those readers? Examples: If you’re writing a parenting book, include a complete list of parenting magazines, websites, specialty baby stores, and other outlets that reach your audience. If your book is a sci-fi novel, include a complete list of all sci-fi conferences where your readers will congregate. Think like a marketer, and help your editor to do the same on your behalf. (Here’s one more tip: Make it clear you’re willing to pound the pavement to promote your book. Plenty of authors go AWOL after the book ships to the printer, and that’s a drag for the marketing department, which is counting on you to be out there advocating for your work.)

On that note, I’ll sign off. Readers: Send me your questions in comments! I want to hear what you’re thinking about.

Cheers til next time,
Laura

I just wanted to send a shout out to all the commenters on Samantha’s guest post on Friday, “Feminist Awakening at 14, and to those who cross-posted! I’m hoping to coax a few more posts from Sam, because, as I think ya’ll agree, she’s dynamite (as are the other writers of Writopia Lab). Sam’s post was picked up around the blogosphere, and I wanted to share tidbits from the commentary:

Nancy Gruver, at orb28 blog: “Samantha’s post reminded me that, even if teenagers can’t vote yet, they can still have a big impact on politics by speaking up.”

Gloria Feldt, at HeartFeldt Politics Blog: “It’s always intriguing to learn how political opinions are formed, and this young women clearly has a mind of her own–and better yet, she talks publicly about what she believes.”

Patti Binder, of What’s Good for Girls blog: “Stand up and shout it from the roof tops– your message, your voice needs to be out there!”

El Profe of Political Observations: “An extraordinarily well thought-out piece filled with sensitivity, nuance, intelligence and hopefulness for the recovery of our browbeaten nation. Samantha is a person of insight. New voices such as hers are what will be needed in the world that she is inheriting. Bravo Samantha.”

So Sam…when can we at GWP expect your next piece?! Your readership awaits 🙂

The WGLs as a group do not support the same candidate, but I just had to share this post from 14-year old feminist Samantha French, over at my blog today, Girl with Pen. It begins:

As we all know, the buzz around America’s college campuses is Barack Obama and how he represents change for America. According to the media, he has overwhelming appeal to the country’s so-called “youth.” And it’s true. The phrase “yes we can” is being inhaled faster than pot brownies and Jell-O shots at a frat party. However, what the media seems to be consistently ignoring is the opinions of the country’s real, good old-fashioned, disenfranchised youth: high school students. Who are almost unanimously pro-Hilary.

OK, so I’m dreaming.

As a female freshman in Bard High School Early College, one of New York’s more liberal high schools where nearly two-thirds of the student body are females, there is not huge support for Hillary, which makes me sad. Many people at Bard, both male and female, support Obama because they are “tired of the Clintons” (a notion which they have obviously been fed by their parents. Think about it: the last time a Clinton was in office they were eight at the very most).

At first, I agreed with them. My dad’s a die-hard Obama supporter and so are a lot of my friends. But the turning point came for me when I saw how upset and truly devoted Hillary was to the race after her defeat at the Iowa caucus. The moment that the cameras revealed her sad eyes, I realized that I was seeing in her something rarely seen in any presidential candidate: a human being. While my father continued to be very pro-Obama (re-recording Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock,” titled, I Want Barak,)—and put pressure on me to agree with him—I felt a connection with Hillary after that night.

Sam is a student at Writopia Lab, a writing enrichment program located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You can read the rest here.

Samantha French, age 14, is a student at Writopia Lab,, a writing enrichment program located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She’s written an incredible piece for Girl with Pen and though it’s longer than the usual fare and I still haven’t figured out how to do jumps (help, anyone?!), I’m publishing it in full because it’s just so well written. Go Sam. Did I mention Sam’s 14?! Here she is. -GWP

As we all know, the buzz around America’s college campuses is Barack Obama and how he represents change for America. According to the media, he has overwhelming appeal to the country’s so-called “youth.” And it’s true. The phrase “yes we can” is being inhaled faster than pot brownies and Jell-O shots at a frat party. However, what the media seems to be consistently ignoring is the opinions of the country’s real, good old-fashioned, disenfranchised youth: high school students. Who are almost unanimously pro-Hilary.

OK, so I’m dreaming.

As a female freshman in Bard High School Early College, one of New York’s more liberal high schools where nearly two-thirds of the student body are females, there is not huge support for Hillary, which makes me sad. Many people at Bard, both male and female, support Obama because they are “tired of the Clintons” (a notion which they have obviously been fed by their parents. Think about it: the last time a Clinton was in office they were eight at the very most).

At first, I agreed with them. My dad’s a die-hard Obama supporter and so are a lot of my friends. But the turning point came for me when I saw how upset and truly devoted Hillary was to the race after her defeat at the Iowa caucus. The moment that the cameras revealed her sad eyes, I realized that I was seeing in her something rarely seen in any presidential candidate: a human being. While my father continued to be very pro-Obama (re-recording Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock,” titled, I Want Barak,)—and put pressure on me to agree with him—I felt a connection with Hillary after that night.

A “conversation” with a boy in my English class the next day clinched it for me. At 9:00AM, the morning after Hillary’s Iowa defeat, I came into my English classroom and sat at the table, looking around at my fellow students, their tired eyes skimming the pages of the New York Times or finishing up homework at the last minute, some finishing their Dunkin Donuts coffee.

Suddenly, I found myself in a debate with other kids about the caucus the previous night and who was for whom. Our teacher was quick to join in, turning it into a discussion which lasted for a good part of the class. The conversation turned to the obvious gender/race issue and one boy was quick to raise his hand when the question of what we thought about a female president came up.

“Well,” he said. “Because she’s a woman, it’s likely that she won’t really be able to perform her duties at ‘that time of the month.’”

Hold on. Rewind… OK, what did he just say?

The girls in my class instantly reacted with high-pitched comebacks and shouting. My friend stood on her chair and said rather loudly, “OH MY GOD COULD YOU GET MORE UN-P.C. PLEASE?” Another girl shouted: “I get my period too, but I come to school every day! I walk up and down stairs!” There was so much noise that I could barely get what I was saying out, so I stood up on my chair and screamed: “SERIOUSLY JUST SHUT UP. I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY AND IT’D BE NICE IF YOU ALL COULD HEAR ME!” The class instantly became silent.

“OK, so,” I took a deep breath and sat back down. “Hillary is probably post-menopausal so that is a completely invalid argument.” A chorus of agreement sounded from the girls.

The boy, who was recovering from all the screaming, replied defensively. “Well, it was my grandma who said that about Hillary.”

“And your grandmother’s how old?”

“80-something.”

“Your grandmother grew up in a society where women were seen as housewives and probably the last time she went through a menstrual cycle was in the 1970’s when women were still fighting for their rights!”

It was the moment that those words came out of my mouth that I realized I was totally pro-Hillary. Everything my father had instilled in me about Barack Obama melted away. Though I still care about the policies presented by each candidate, it ended up coming down to something bigger. It became about realizing the importance of taking a feminist stance in modern America and how important Hillary’s campaign is to feminist history. Not only do I agree with her healthcare policy and her method to get out of Iraq, but I also feel that she is hugely inspiring.

Since my “feminist awakening” as I guess you could call it, I have signed up for Hillary’s website and watch coverage of her rallies. Just today, I watched a video of a rally of hers in North Carolina where Hillary spoke to a huge audience of predominantly women. When she was taking questions, a young boy told her that both of his grandparents had died of heart disease. He asked her what she planned to do to prevent that from happening. She smiled warmly and promised the boy and the rest of the audience that if she were to be elected she would fight for equal health coverage and protection from such diseases. It is moments like that that make me feel that Hillary would be an amazing president; I believe her historical commitment to health care together with her maternal, relatable qualities would benefit America greatly.

My friends try to convince me to switch to being pro-Obama, and though I may sway a little at times, I’ll get an e-mail from the Hillary campaign or read an article about her and it reminds me of why I love Hillary so much: she has a genuine connection with the people. She is kind of like a mother-figure in that she is very compassionate and approachable, but also very powerful

My generation has witnessed turmoil and corruption during Bush’s terms as president. What we need now is a bad ass mom (with a bad ass track record) to whip this country back into shape.