One of my favorite things about what I do is when I’m able to bring other women into the fold. Blogging is contagious, and it is a joy beyond measure to see feminists find their online voice.

And so I am thrilled – THRILLED! – to formally introduce a new blog on the block: PursePundit. The host pundit over there, Jacki Zehner, is a frequent commentator on women’s success in the workplace, women and wealth, investing, and philanthropy. And she knows from whence she speaks–she was the youngest woman, and first female trader, to be invited into the partnership of Goldman Sachs.

Jacki’s since been recognized not only as a “Wall Street Trailblazer” but as a “next-generation role model” for women navigating the complex constellation of work, family, civic service, and social activism. Jacki’s work is informed by her own journey from humble beginnings to Wall Street success. She learned early on the power of the dollar working as a cashier in her father’s grocery store. An impassioned philanthropic visionary committed to the economic empowerment of women, she now serves on the boards of The Women’s Funding Network, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, The Center for Work Life Policy, and more. I met Jacki when she was on the board of the National Council for Research on Women, where I used to work.

Like me, the gal’s a bridger. These days, through multiple platforms, Jacki leverages her access and expertise by bridging knowledge across corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. I learn things from this wonder woman daily. Visit www.pursepundit.blogspot.com for musings on “markets, money, and changing the world” and I guarantee, you’ll learn from her too.

I’m equally thrilled to announce that Girl with Pen (aka me) and PursePundit will be teaming up on a number of projects around women’s economic empowerment and financial literacy this year. Our first collaboration has been a series of posts on the crazy market events of the past week, over in the Business section at Huffington Post. In case ya missed them, they are here, here, and here. More on our emerging partnership, soon. In the meantime, please help me welcome my new favorite blogger friend, a woman who inspires the heck out of me and has one of the largest hearts of anyone I know.

So as part of my participation in the Women’s Media Center’s new Progressive Women’s Voices Project, I’ve been reading up on polls and found something* very interesting to share. Did you know that more men may think our nation is ready for a woman president than women do?

Historically, women and men have felt almost the same about their willingness to vote for a woman from their party if she were qualified for the job. Acccording to survey data from the years between 1958 and 1969, both women and men said they would consider voting for a such a gal, but the men were actually more positive: 50-53 percent of women and 55-60 percent of men answered “YES” when asked whether they would vote for a woman if she were their party’s nominee. Today, of course, post-women’s movement, those numbers have spiked. According to a CBS/New York Times Poll in January 2006, 92 percent of respondents said they would vote for a woman from their party if she were qualified for the job.

But now get this: That same year, 2006, when asked about the U.S. public’s readiness to elect a woman head of state, much smaller percentages said they thought the country was ready (92 percent versus 55 percent in the CBS News/New York Times Poll). And when you analyze these responses by gender, the men come out on top: 60 percent of men versus 51 percent of women think the country is ready for a female Commander in Chief.

So, ladies, what gives? I asked Ruth Mandel, Director of the Center for American Women in Politics, this question. Her answer was telling. Apparently, the same holds true for African Americans (though I have yet to see the actual data). The group that is historically on the outside of the presidency feels less sanguine than the in-group about the public’s readiness to see a member of the out-group at the helm.

Is this some form of internalized oppression, to use a word from back in the day? Or are the out-groups’ intuitions right on? Psychology is deep. And so are women’s–and African Americans’–feelings about the readiness of this country to elect someone other than Another White Male.

But I’d love to know if these percentages have changed now that we’ve been through a few primaries and have seen that, on the Dem side at least, some states have proved themselves ready to put a Hillary or a Barack in office. Anyone seen any more recent data on “readiness perception”? Thoughts?

*Data drawn from a book chapter, “She’s the Candidate!”, by Ruth Mandel, published in Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change, edited by Barbara Kellerman and Deborah L. Rhode (Jossey-Bass, 2007). Full chapter available here.

New blogger on the block/financial whiz girl Jacki Zehner and I coauthored another one today over at HuffPo. Come visit, and read our take on the week’s market events! There’s a groundhog involved. For reals.

Frank F. Furstenberg, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, has just released a briefing paper intended to stimulate discussion among researchers and clinicians in advance of the Council’s 11th annual conference, April 25-26, University of Illinois at Chicago–where I’ll definitely be! Join me?

Here’s the jist, via AScribe Newswire:

Teen Pregnancy and Poverty: 30-Year-Study Confirms That Living in Economically-Depressed Neighborhoods, Not Teen Motherhood, Perpetuates Poverty

— In fairy tales, there are two possible outcomes for a young girl. In the Disney version, the handsome prince rescues her, then marries her, and everyone lives happily ever after. In the dark version, the heroine makes a dreadful mistake that leads to disaster. For the past 15 years, political pundits have been telling us a dark fairy tale about American teens, blaming America’s high poverty rates on the actions of teenage girls who have babies out of wedlock. This assumption guided the welfare reform act of 1996, which promised to write America a happy ending by getting teens to stop having babies, get married, and thus end poverty.

But a new longitudinal study by Frank Furstenberg (University of Pennsylvania) shows that fairy tales have no place in the realm of policy-making. His data reveal that teen childbearing is NOT the reason that many Americans have been trapped in poverty over the past three decades….Furstenberg reports that

– teen motherhood tends to occur among people ALREADY trapped in poverty

– postponing motherhood does not make much of a difference to people’s chances of escaping poverty.

– impoverished girls who bear children as teens do almost as well educationally and economically — or as poorly — as the girls who postpone childbearing.

Preventing and reducing teen pregnancy is a valuable social goal, says CCF Fellow Furstenberg. In fact the United States had a dramatic decline in teen pregnancies–and abortions–from 1991 to 2005. But, using observations from his Baltimore study, and supplementing it with current reports from demographers, economists, and demographers, sociologist Frank Furstenberg reminds us that the phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid” is not yet out of date. For details and policy recommendations, check out Furstenberg’s full briefing report at www.contemporaryfamilies.org.

The Conference Board/Families and Work Institute Work Life Conference on March 5-6, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia will explore the critical business issue of how employees work and live today, and what the impact of these changes is on employee engagement and talent management. Highlights include:

· New Research: Families and Work Institute and Catalyst will release for the first time ever findings from our 2008 study, Leaders in a Global Economy: Developing Talent in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

· Company Best Practices: Senior business executives from leading companies will discuss their approaches to talent management and promoting employee engagement.

· Individual Strategies: An expert panel will discuss the latest thinking on how individuals can develop their careers in holistic ways to thrive at work, at home, and in their communities.

Speakers include executives from Accenture, Bon Secours Richmond Health System, Bright Horizons, Deloitte & Touche, Hay Group, IBM Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, LLP, Marriott International, MetLife, PricewaterhouseCoopers, RSM McGladrey, Singapore’s Employer Alliance and many more.

To reserve a space, call The Conference Board Customer Service Department at 212-339-0345 or click here.

Questions? Please contact Tyler Wigton, Conference Coordinator, at 212-465-2044 x224 or twigton@familiesandwork.org.

Virginia Rutter (the gal who brought us “Who Votes Their Gender?” the other week) took time out from writing college lectures to pen this excellent review of Juno from the perspective of a sex researcher. As you likely know by now, Juno was just nominated by the Academy for four Oscars, including Best Film, and Best Actress (Ellen Page). We’re bound to see a continued discussion of the issues the film raises in coming months, and here Virginia calls our attention to something other reviewers have overlooked: the way our culture talks about–or rather, doesn’t talk about–luuuvvv. -GWP

Can We Talk about Love, Please?

The movies are giving demographers, sociologists, and sex researchers a boost these days. Movies about unwanted pregnancy that eschew abortion, such as Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress, are giving gifted columnists (like Ellen Goodman and Carrie Rickey) a chance to contemplate where the culture stands with respect to unwanted pregnancy, early motherhood, and all things youthful, tawdry, and anxiety producing for those of us who consider ourselves grown ups now. Those kids are different from us grown ups, and the problems that they have are about the mechanics of sex, and the rules and practices around abortion, adoption, and teen delivery.

Meanwhile, it is Christmas in January for a sex researcher. There is a lot of important teen sex and unwanted pregnancy news out there, too. Abortion rates are down, Guttmacher reports. The fantasized link between teen pregnancy and poverty is screwy, as reported to the Council on Contemporary Families, and instead, poverty is caused by (who’d a thunk it?) the economy. Ouch. How unromantic.

But I don’t want to write about that, any more than I want to write my sociology lectures or finish my latest sex data analysis, right now. The cultural theme that Juno raised for a lot of commentators is whether we as a society are making sex and reproductive decisions look too easy and too simple.

Mind you, the main theme, focused on a woman’s body, seems to have crowded up some other ideas that matter. I have wondered why we haven’t detected a cultural story to be told here in this movie about the fact that:

1. Consequences of sex are a component of the plot in Juno, just as they are in Knocked Up; and

2. The boy, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), though not as touched by the pregnancy crisis as the girl, Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) remains a large focus of the unfolding story of the consequences of sex.

But, like I said, none of this grips me. You know what grips me? Love. And I’m convinced that we just don’t talk about it enough.
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The value and pleasure of Juno was that it was a story of love—where the kids sing to each other “you’re a part time lover and full time friend.” In the messy, dull, weird world of conformity and reticence that dominates high school relationships, Juno sweetly offers a story of shy, sweet, but steadfast friendship and romantic love.

Family love was there too. I was touched by the love and acceptance that the father showed his daughter, even as he was befuddled by her choices. I cheered at the loyalty portrayed by the stepmother when she dressed down the judgmental ultrasound operator. This is the kind of love we can live with, the kind of love that we need in order to live, survive, thrive, and just be good people. It isn’t “kill yourself love” like we get from movies like Titanic, which is the kind of love we are more likely to glamorize and talk about.

Cultural commentators, chief among them Stephanie Coontz, highlight the way in which marriage itself has been transformed from an institution based on commitment to an institution based on love. We’ve got a host of politicians who respond to this reality with hand-wringing about the loss of old-fashioned commitment. But we will do well to contemplate, elucidate, illustrate and talk about ways to love skillfully, kindly, and with compassion and acceptance that were illustrated in Juno. In the end, love—doable, realistic, everyday love–was the protective envelope (not marriage, not traditional values) that made us see that Juno the teen mother was going to be okay. In other words, love, done right, serves the kind of social purpose that commitment and traditional values do. And jeepers, the songs are so sweet when they are about love.

Since, despite my impulses, I have to keep working on my sociology lectures and my sex research, I have a nice little social science illustration for why love matters that brings us full circle to thinking about teen sex. In her research, Amy Schalet (UMass-Amherst) contrasted how teens and their parents in the United States think about and communicate about sexuality as compared to in The Netherlands. She found that Dutch parents and teens actually believe that young people can experience love, can be in love, and that love is an important prerequisite to sexual activity, while in the United States, parents are skeptical of their teenagers’ capacity to be in love, and instead keep expressing the view that boys and girls must be in some kind of antagonistic, sexual arms race. The lesson in Professor Schalet’s work: the age of first sex is higher and the rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lower among Dutch versus American youth. Valuing love works. Don’t forget it.

I say, up with Juno! Up with love! Now, to write lectures and look at data.

Today, the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, has become Blog for Choice Day. Some poignant blogging going on around the blogosphere. Thought I’d share a few of the posts that have most caught my eye:

Gloria Feldt at Huffington Post, “I Am Roe”
Courtney Martin at Huffington Post, “Admitting the Complexities of Abortion”
Erica Jong at Huffington Post, “If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament”
Jill Filipovic, “10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day”
Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman at The Nation, “Long Roe to Hoe”
Susie Bright at Susie Bright’s Journal, “Anatomy of a Smushmortion”

Also:

The Guttmacher Institute’s newly released report finds that the U.S. abortion rate is the lowest it has been in more than three decades. Commentary by Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet, here.

Salon asked a number of feminists to talk about the court case that changed their lives, and why it matters more than ever. Read their responses here.

And the ever-wonderful Feministing will be blogging reproductive justice all day long.

Catherine Prendergast is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Ethnography of the University Initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. She is the author of Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education, a book Gloria Ladson-Billings called “a breath of fresh air in what has been a very stale atmosphere.” As I think you’ll agree after reading Cathy’s post here, she’s also one of the freshest thinkers on the much-blogged topic of race in this race around. On top of that, she’s a dear friend of mine from graduate school and can twirl a mehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifan pirouette. Here’s Cathy:

Breaking up with Bill

Out of the ashes of the South Carolina Democratic debate, uninspiring in so many ways, I saw a glimmer of hope. It wasn’t in the CNN debate itself or the punditry afterwards, but rather in a related article on CNN’s website which saw the media monolith scarfing down a little humble pie. It seems that within minutes of running a story in which it was speculated whether black women in South Carolina would vote their race or vote their gender, CNN was barraged with angry emails decrying the characterization of black women and their “unique” dilemma. Black women weighed in with the obvious (though apparently not obvious to CNN) point that they might also have other options, including voting on (gasp!) the issues. Did CNN really imagine black women so dumb that they would only perceive two choices in front of them? “Pull this racist crap off” one angry reader responded. But perhaps the most revealing comment came from a white man who wrote “Since Edwards no longer officially exists, as a white male I face the same choice – either I vote my race (Clinton) or my gender (Obama).”

What did this man reveal? Whiteness, plain and simple. That state of being that is invisible and somehow transcendant, allowed to be raceless because it takes place against a continually racialized other. People have been quick lately to recall Toni Morrison’s description of Bill Clinton as our first black president. They’ve been less apt to recall her more substantial observation that white people have always resisted shifting the racializing gaze to themselves. Morrison, for a related reason, refuses to don the mantle of feminist writer just because she writes about women. She finds such labels suspicious: “No one says Solzhenitsyn is writing only about those Russians, I mean, what is the matter with him? Why doesn’t he write about Vermont?”

So when Bill Clinton, in speech the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, assured listeners that he could well understand why African-Americans would want to vote for the first “intelligent” African American presidential candidate they’ve ever had the chance to vote for, I cringed. Clinton may have been called our first black president, but he certainly was never called our first “intelligent” black president, which is why, of course, he never was black, and was never called white.

Since this is a blog honoring women writers, let me quote one of my favorites, whose words have been bouncing around in my head ever since this primary season began: Susan Sontag in the days after 9/11, when surrounded by those who asked “why us,” famously answered, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together.” What is going to make this current election different, if it is going to be different, is not the presence of a black (male) or (white) female candidate as front-runners for the first time. It will be the continued presence of all the extraordinary people who wrote speedily back to CNN, and in so many words, said, “Let’s by all means vote together. But let’s not be stupid together.” Here’s to those people. They point the way ahead.

Virginia Rutter, whose last post “Who Votes Their Gender?” traveled across the blogosphere far and near, will be reviewing Juno in this space later this week She’s one savvy lady, a helluva sex researcher, and an astute cultural observer too. Stay tuned.

Wrote he:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

Amen.