I love it when all things converge. New York Times columnist and writing teacher extraordinaire Verlyn Klinkenborg recently wrote a rather poignant reflection on young women writers and authority. Tonight I’m headed to the Girls Write Now friendraiser. And this week the Woodhull Institute has online modules up on “Your Authentic Voice and Advocacy” over at the Dove Real Women, Real Success Stories site. To honor said convergences, I’m posting a long expert from the dear ole Verlyn here:

I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is …”

Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?

Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that? I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves?….

These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of their thoughts….I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice? Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?….But whenever I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.

(Thank you, Lori, for the heads up.)

Earlier this week I attended the awards ceremony for the Gruber Foundation International Women’s Rights Prize–which is a hefty prize of $500K. The recipient, Pinar Ilkkaracan, took my breath away. Based in Istanbul, Ilkkaracan heped establish two organizations that are working to reform Turkish laws and advance the rights of Muslim women. The ceremony was followed by a stellar panel on the theme of women taking the lead in Muslim societies, which unfortunately I missed, but since you probably did too, you can join me in catching bits of it here.

(Panelists included Ilkkaracan; Daisy Khan, Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement; Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International; and Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning and 2004 Gruber Women’s Rights Prize Laureate. Emmy award-winning filmmaker Anisa Mehdi moderated.)

On the heels my post below on work/life, gender, and families, this just in: Council on Contemporary Families co-chair Steve Mintz sent me abstracts from the November 2007 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Families. Check out the following three tidbits. Now, why can’t we get more of this in the popular media convo about what’s really going on?

Title: College Women’s Plans for Different Types of Egalitarian Marriages (Francine M. Deutsch, Amy P. Kokot, and Katherine S. Binder)

This study examined college women’s plans for egalitarian marriages. One hundred and forty-four heterosexual undergraduate women completed surveys about their preferences for different life scenarios and their attitudes about work and family life. The pattern of their preferences showed a distinction between home-centered, balanced, and job-centered egalitarian families. Regressions showed that gender ideology, ideas about parenting and motherhood, career orientation, and family dynamics were associated differentially with the three types of egalitarian families, which reflected the different values that underlay the pursuit of each. The results also cast doubt on whether outsourcing is truly an egalitarian path. Outsourcing domestic labor may simply be a means for women to pursue careers without achieving real equality in families.

Title: Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty Among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites (Rebecca Glauber)

This study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 5,929) to analyze the moderating effects of race and marriage on the motherhood wage penalty. Fixed-effects models reveal that for Hispanic women, motherhood is not associated with a wage penalty. For African Americans, only married mothers with more than two children pay a wage penalty. For Whites, all married mothers pay a wage penalty, as do all never-married mothers and divorced mothers with one or two children. These findings imply that racial differences in the motherhood wage penalty persist even for women with similar marital statuses, and they suggest that patterns of racial stratification shape women’s family experiences and labor market outcomes.

Title: Parental Childrearing Attitudes as Correlates of Father Involvement During Infancy (Bridget M. Gaertner, Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, and Karissa A. Greving)

Using daily diary data to document involvement with infants at 6 – 8 months of age (n = 142) and 6 months later (n = 95), we examined relations between reported childrearing attitudes and resident fathers’ relative (as compared to mothers’) involvement with children. Fathers’ authoritarian views related negatively to their relative involvement on weekdays, and this relation held over time for caregiving and playing activities. Mothers’ protective attitudes had concurrent negative associations with fathers’ relative weekend involvement. Findings suggest that fathers’ authoritarian and mothers’ protective attitudes relate to how parenting responsibilities are shared within families and may be detrimental to how much fathers become, or choose to become, directly involved in the care of their infants in comparison to mothers.

I’m back. Thank you for all your warm wishes and kind thoughts yesterday. I was very touched and moved.

My belated grandmother was the director of a nursery school for 20 years. My other grandma (the grey haired one below, who turns 90 next week) was a head nurse who later worked at a Planned Parenthood-like clinic. I’ve always felt proud to have had what I’ve thought of as rather high-powered grandmothers. So last night at The New School-sponsored panel on Working Moms (with work/life all-stars Joan Williams, Linda Hirshman, Ellen Bravo, EJ Graff, Heather Boushey, Pam Stone), sitting in a row flanked by “next generation” feminists Jen Pozner, Kara Jesella, and Lisa Jervis, I had generations of women in mind. It seems so frustrating that after 40 years, as Ellen Bravo reminded us, we’re still waiting for families–or rather, the rigidly gendered dynamics of families–to change.

Is the solution to work/life conflict personal or is it political? This was one throughline of the discussion last night, with Williams and Bravo (and Stone) angling heavily for the structural, and Hirshman making a case for both. Another important throughline was class. And despite my fixation on the contemporary travels of the ole slogan (“The Personal Is Political”–which I write about a ton in Sisterhood, Interrupted) and my utter frustration that the popular convo remains narrowly focused on “trends” among the elite, my favorite part of the conversation was an extended digression on men. Why aren’t they involved in the work/life conversation? Why does it always have to be about women? Why did I just write “digression” instead of “centerpiece”? Because there’s a “frigid climate for fathers” at work, says Joan Williams. Men will pursue these roles when they stop being punished for it in the workplace. And maybe that’s when we’ll all start putting men at the center of the conversation, too. Chicken, egg? Or rather, chicken, sperm.

In any event, instead of summarizing, I thought I’d just share some memorable quips. Because these ladies all have a knack for rhetorical flair, I leave it in their words (and forgive me or correct me if I’ve mangled anything!):

Linda Hirshman defending the methodology behind her feisty, controversial book, Get to Work: “I am not Lisa Belkin. I didn’t decide there was an opt-out revolution and then go looking for the revolutionaries. I didn’t just call up my friends. And I didn’t expect to find what I found.”

Linda Hirshman on why it’s personal: “We can’t run away from the unjust family by focusing solely on the unjust workplace.”

Joan Williams on why it’s structural: “I think we’ve been waiting for 40 years for families to change. If we keep waiting, women will lose.”

Heather Boushey on the popularity of the opt-out narrative: “The media likes the women-are-heading-home story because it solves all our social policy problems–problems like family leave, child care, sick leave….The state continues to act as if all workers have a stay-at-home spouse to take care of the sicks, the sick, the elders.”

Heather Boushey on framing: “When men lose their jobs, we call it a recession. When women lose thir jobs, we say they wanted to go home and hang out with the kids.”

EJ Graff on “choice” rhetoric: “If women are getting pushed out of the workplace, why do they tell journalists ‘I chose to stay at home’? Because, as psychologists say, we want to want what we’ve got. It gives us a sense of control that we may not actually have.”

Ellen Bravo on, well, everything: “Family values generally stop at the workplace door.” “Sons and brothers would be better husbands and fathers if they did not get punished for it at work.” “We don’t want to smash glass ceilings. We want to redesign the building from the bottom up so that one doesn’t have to have a wife at home in order to succeed.”

And while I’m at it, did you know…

…that the U.S. has a steeper part-time penalty than many other countries? Part-time workers here earn 21% less/hour–and don’t have benefits. That’s 7 times less than part-timers in Sweden. I’m packing my bags. Who’s joining me?

(Photo cred)

Early this morning my grandmother, Pearl Pearlman, died. Grandma Pearl is the grandmother to my right. She was 98, and she died peacefully in her sleep. She lived her last four months in the loving care of my parents, in their guest room, on the second floor.

GWP is going to be pretty quiet today, as I work on something to be read at her funeral in Minneapolis later this week.

Go in peace, rest in peace, Grandma Pearl. We love you.

Quick pitch: So this year I’ve joined the Advisory Board of Girls Write Now. Staffed almost exclusively by volunteers, GWN runs a lean operation. We need help to continue and expand our services to more girls in New York City. Before the year’s end, I’m hoping to be making the largest donation I have ever made to any organization. Please join me in supporting GWN with a (tax deductible) donation. Your contribution will be put to immediate use, and help us keep this valuable organization vibrant and thriving for another year. Here’s how.

And/or if you’re in New York, join me at our fall friendraiser on October 18 (this Thursday!) at Bluestockings, the feminist bookstore, at 5:30pm and then cross the street to The Slipper Room for fun, drinks, and music at 7:30 (NO COVER). Author and “girlbomb” Janice Erlbaum, award-winning novelist Tayari Jones, and hotshot indy rockers Royal Pink will all be there. (And so will I!)

The video above showcases some amazing girls from the June 2007 Girls Write Now Spring Reading at Barnes & Noble Astor Place in New York City. Click play and you’ll see why I love this organization so much.

…that one I mentioned earlier today is here, and it’s called “From Barricades to Blogs.” Reporter Jennie Yabroff spoke to some feministas across the generations and cites some great quips from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Katha Pollitt, Susan Faludi, and Jessica Valenti. (She mentions my book! Whahoo!!)

Harvard President Drew Faust’s Oct. 12 inauguration speech is posted here. Pitter patter. Loved the bit that Broadsheet quotes, about how her presence in that position was unimaginable not so long ago, but I found this tidbit about the unimaginable particularly interesting, too:

Last week I was given a brown manila envelope that had been entrusted to the University Archives in 1951 by James B. Conant, Harvard’s 23rd president. He left instructions that it should be opened by the Harvard president at the outset of the next century “and not before.” I broke the seal on the mysterious package to find a remarkable letter from my predecessor. It was addressed to “My dear Sir.” Conant wrote with a sense of imminent danger. He feared an impending World War III that would make “the destruction of our cities including Cambridge quite possible.”…“We all wonder,” he continued, “how the free world is going to get through the next fifty years.”

And we wonder about the next fifty, starting from here. Not to get all fatalistic or anything. But, well, you know.

As Ann over at feministing says, it’s like the work/life all-stars over at the New School tomorrow. Just a reminder to come hear the preeminent thinkers on women, work, motherhood, and the so-called “opt-out revolution”:

WORKING MOTHERS: WHO’S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)

You’ve read the articles–and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track–or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence–while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families’ needs?

JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the “opt-out” storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.

Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It. The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.

More info here. I’m totally planning to go…

So the current issue of On Campus with Women –an online publication of the American Association of Colleges and Universities–focuses on “Women on the Web.” It includes an article on Facebook Feminism by Kathy Fischer, one called “Women Harnessing the Power of Internet Publishing” by Genevieve Brown, an essay on“Academic Blogging as Intercultural Exchange”, and a personal essay by moi, which begins:

Technological innovation can transform a culture, but it can also transform a career. It did mine. When I started out as a PhD student in English and American Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I could hardly imagine that fourteen years later I’d be calling myself “Girl with Pen” in public, living in New York City, and writing for The Guardian. That pen, really, is a keyboard. But I like mixing it up…. Read more