In yesterday’s issue of The Washington Post, I review White Dog Fell from the Sky, a new novel about an unlikely friendship between an American expat and a South African refugee (“Eleanor Morse’s White Dog Fell from the Sky”).

While I liked many parts of Morse’s novel, I gave it a mixed review. I’m really grateful for the story it tells and the issues it raises, but perhaps most of all, for the author’s courage in writing about Botswana and South Africa during apartheid—places and experiences that (at least judging from her online bio) are mostly removed from the places and experiences of her own life. But in my opinion, at times the novel fails to accomplish what it sets out to do: tell the stories of both of its characters.

More broadly, I’ve been thinking a lot about the courage it takes to write across differences—in this case, race, class, gender, culture, nation, citizenship status, and education. I’ve also been thinking about the perils of this journey—specifically, the way that stereotypes and myths can sometimes surface in the writerly imagination. Even when we are trying to write past them to get to the human truth.

I don’t think the answer is to retreat to that old adage, “write what you know,” and I don’t think the answer is to clamp down on the imagination. On other hand, I think we need to talk about the power of all the stuff swirling around in our heads—with compassion and understanding, but also with an eye towards how we can create a truly diverse range of truthful, honest, and relevant stories.

In my latest incarnation as a thought leadership coach, I’m often on the hunt for excellent examples of “thinking in public”—TED talks, reports, articles, blog posts, even tweets—to share with clients.  So, I figured, why not share them, when I find them, with GWP readers, too?

I’m experimenting with a new column format here (and please, please, tell me what you think!).  I envision highlighting from time to time a piece of public thought leadership that I come upon in my travels, one that translates academic or industry-specific knowledge for a broad audience in a stand-out way.  I’ll let you know why I love it, what’s surprising about it, and what’s fresh.

To start us off, I bring you Judith Warner’s first report as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.  I’ve long been enamored of Judith’s deft ability to bring a structural lens to the public debate around “domestic disturbances,” as her popular New York Times column so famously phrased it.  In this new report, Warner melds journalism and policy paper to tackle domestic disturbances writ large.

Who:

Judith Warner is a Senior Fellow at American Progress. She is also a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Time.com. She is best known for her New York Times bestseller, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, and her former New York Times column, “Domestic Disturbances.” Her latest book, We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, received numerous awards, and she is currently a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. A former special correspondent for Newsweek in Paris, she hosted “The Judith Warner Show” on XM satellite radio from 2005 to 2007 and wrote the 1993 New York Times bestseller Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, as well as several other books.

What:

Lessons Learned: Reflections on 4 Decades of Fighting for Families, a report for the Center for American Progress

Why I Like It:

The topic is a tough one – and well traveled.  Yet I like how Warner gets in there, challenges perceived wisdom, and works to change the frame:

“It’s long been accepted wisdom that Americans view family matters as purely private concerns and that public policy solutions for families—other than the very poorest—have no place in our culture. Yet polls consistently show that support for family-friendly policies is, in fact, overwhelming.”

Based on interviews with more than three dozen veterans of the fight for family-friendly policy in America representing a variety of perspectives, generations, and stake- holder groups, she quotes all my favorite experts.

She pays close attention to language and narrative:

“Personal responsibility” plus “opportunity” was a winning message combination.  Stressing “equality” or the ending of disparities was a nonstarter for conservatives, but talk of “fairness,” “opportunities,” “choices,” and “tools” were acceptable.

And she links the issue she’s writing about to others:

“The power of the personal played a strong role in building support for the Family and Medical Leave Act, and in recent years such narratives have been essential to shifting public and political opinion on marriage equality.”

But what I like most of all is the sense of possibility Warner invokes.

Much has been written about why progress has been slow in this arena, and so paltry.  What feels different here is the emphasis on the seismic internal shift that must take place in order for the outward change to occur.  We need to “replace the belief that ‘this is just how it is’ with the argument that ‘it doesn’t have to be this way.’”

The report takes a close look at public policies promoting caretaking—through paid family leave, paid sick days, and high-quality public pre-K—that already exist in some states and cities. Warner looks at why they are proving to be highly popular and successful, and how we might replicate what works.

Refreshingly, she leaves us with hope:

“Bleak though the legislative outlook now seems in our bitterly divided Congress, this is potentially a very fruitful time for thinking creatively and productively about creating a better future for our families.”

Since I’m already interested in the unfinished business of feminism, and how the issues travel and repeat across generations, Warner had me at “lessons learned.”  But the optimism in the report made me want to share it.  Warner brings a much-needed burst of energy to a topic that can easily deflate readers—especially those of us living this fight.

We know about the gendered wage gaps in the workplace. It’s old news that women are wildly underrepresented in top leadership positions at companies across the nation. And it’s clear that men need to be on board in order to for women to achieve equity in the workplace. Men have a central role in improving the workplace as we move into the future. But to be effective in accomplishing productive solutions, we need to scratch beneath the surface and look beyond salary and the corner office.

Most men believe that all people should have the same opportunities based on qualifications, not gender. What about that guy at the conference table — you know, the one who means well but still puts a sexist foot in his mouth.

Allow me to suggest a few tips to share with co-workers about why gender equity matters and what men can do in taking a lead.

As I explain in my book Men and Feminism, masculine privilege is the idea that society awards certain unearned perks and advantages on men simply because they are male. Sometimes this privilege is really obvious, like the fact that Congress remains overwhelmingly male. But masculine privilege also flies under the radar. Institutional practices and ideological beliefs about masculine superiority seem so normal or natural that we’ve learned not to notice when a man’s opinion is taken more seriously than a woman’s.

And, let’s face it. The workplace is nothing if not an institution.

As Michael Welp explains, it’s to men’s individual advantage to inquire more about others and step back a bit from chronic self-advocacy and self-promotion. Listening more and speaking less can “collectively shift the culture in organizations toward more inclusion.”

If it’s a hard sell to convince folks with power and privilege to step aside and share a bit of that pie, then it helps to remember that gender equity improves a company’s bottom line. Michael Kimmel points out that equality “increases a company’s profitability, enhances its reputation in the outside world, and boosts employee morale.”

Exposing invisible patterns and practices allows us to think critically about the links between gender privilege and sexism. One way masculine privilege operates is in how men (and women) are taught to see sexism as “individual acts of meanness,” says scholar Peggy McIntosh. What’s really going on, though, is that sexism is supported by invisible systems that perpetuate and maintain dominance for men as a group.

What Men Can Do (and Encourage Other Men to Do):

1.    Engage don’t interrupt. Be quiet. Don’t talk-over others. Communication is a two-way street, and some people have been socialized to cross that street more slowly than others. Research shows that women speak less when they’re outnumbered while men are groomed for assertiveness. Simply put: talk less; listen more.

2.    Wait for a response before continuing. Ask more questions and don’t assume you know more than the person you’re speaking to.

3.    Remember: authority, expertise and strength come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and wardrobes. A hot manicure does not preclude a hot IQ as 16-year-old Mensa-member Lauren Marbe can attest.

In my recent book Men Speak Out, a collection of first-person perspectives on gender, sex, and power, Ian Breckenridge-Jackson sums up the issues of privilege in the workplace really well. Ian was part of a mixed-gender volunteer crew working to rebuild homes in the Lower Ninth Ward in post-Katrina New Orleans. “Men would often challenge women’s competence on the worksite, particularly women in leadership positions. For instance, men often assumed women were ignorant about using tools, leading men to inappropriately offer unsolicited advice to women about how they should do their work,” Breckenridge-Jackson explains. And even though he was tempted to step in, take over, do the job himself, and explain to the women how things get done, he had to check himself. “All men owe this both to the women in their lives and to themselves.”

There might not be a perfect solution, but we can certainly start the process, and we can easily commit earnestly to change. Men have a crucial role in promoting this workplace change by refusing to be bystanders to the problem.

First published on www.onthemarc.org.

We’ve made the society pages!  No, not those society pages.  These ones.

For those of you know us already, the only thing that’s different, really, is our url.  Our content will remain unchanged. For those who are meeting us for the first time, allow us to introduce ourselves—and what we’re doing here.

Girl w/Pen is a group blog dedicated to bridging feminist research and popular reality. We publicly and passionately dispels modern myths concerning gender, encouraging other feminist scholars, writers, and thinkers to do the same. We’re a collective of feminist academics, crossover writers, and writers who have left the academy to pursue other thought leadership forums and forms.

Like researchers and writers themselves, blogs grow up, evolve, and shift shapes.  Such has been the story of Girl w/Pen, which began in 2007 as a way for me to keep friends and family posted as I hit the road on book tour. The name, Girl w/Pen, came in a flash, an easy way to describe myself at the time—an academic transitioning to an identity as a writer in a different realm.

Girl quickly became girls (I know, I know, women—but it was the youthful blogosphere, right?). When I started giving workshops on translating academic ideas for trade, participants of my seminars contributed guest posts.  Some became regulars.  Other fellow travelers followed suit, coming in and out as interests and workflow allowed.  In 2009, we decided to turn GWP into a full-fledged group blog, with a full roster of columns, and the name stuck.  Though admittedly anachronistic, our name continues to speak to the writerly journey many of us have taken, are on, and aspire to, as we put our thoughts to metaphorical paper, raise our collective voices, experiment, bridge research and reality, rabble rouse, and inform.

GWP has become a true interdisciplinary forum, enriched by its range.  Our current lineup of columns includes:

Bedside Manners (Adina Nack): applying the sociological imagination to medical topics, with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health

Body Language (Alison Piepmeier): Because control of our bodies is central to feminism. (“It is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc., if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right.” –Lucy Stone, 1855)

Body Politic (Kyla Bender-Baird and Avory Faucette): A co-authored column on queer bodies, law, and policy.

Girl Talk (Allison Kimmich): truths and fictions about girl

Mama w/Pen (Deborah Siegel): reflections on motherhood, feminist and otherwise

Nice Work (Virginia Rutter): social science in the real world

Off the Shelf (Elline Lipkin): book reviews and news

Second Look (Susan Bailey): a column on where we’ve been and where we need to go

Science Grrl (Veronica Arreola): the latest research and press on girls and women in science & engineering

Women Across Borders (Heather Hewett): A transnational perspective on women & girls

We’re delighted to be teaming up with The Society Pages, where we join an active and far-reaching multidisciplinary blogging community, supported by publishing partner W.W. Norton.  When we first started looking for a home, TSP was the first that came to mind.  Major props to Adina Nack for suggesting it, Virginia Rutter and Heather Hewett for seeing it, Lisa Wade and Letta Page for brokering it, Jon Smajda and Kyla Bender-Baird for so beautifully executing it, and Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen for having the vision in the first place—and for welcoming us in.

Here in our new neighborhood, you’ll find long-established and esteemed blog neighbors like Sociological Images, Thick Culture, and Sexuality and Society—blogs that in many ways share our DNA.  You’ll also find here roundtables, white papers, teaching resources, and Contexts magazine. Everyone here is invested in bringing academically-informed ideas to a broad public, to speaking about society with society—just like we’ve always been.

Those of us thinking in public about the way feminist research informs our surroundings and shapes our world look forward to settling into our new digs.  As ever, we invite you to join us.  We welcome your comments and critiques, your follows (@girlwpen) and your shares.  We welcome pitches for guest posts. We’ll keep evolving, enriched by our TSP neighbors, and by you.

We’re honored to be here, and to be a part of your society. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch, and let us know what you think.

High Society, a photo by jesuscm [on/off] on Flickr.

xx

New controversy about free condoms inspires this month’s column, a critique about student health and public health by Chloe E. Bird, Ph.D., senior sociologist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and co-author of Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies (Cambridge University Press).

Back in the 1800s, the U.S. labor movement aimed at reducing impossibly long working hours—and succeeded with the Adamson Act in 1916, which gave us the 40-hour work week. A century later, that’s all changed. Research released this month in the journal Gender & Society confirms that “overwork”— working more than 50 hours per week—has become part of the job for many Americans, though with different effects for men and women. Over the past thirty years, hours at work—especially in higher income jobs—have increased, and over one-third of men and nearly one-fifth of women in professions work more than a 50-hour week.

A new Gender & Society study reveals how overwork contributes to the “stalled gender revolution” and helps to explain why there isn’t more equality in the workplace, despite the popular belief that equality between men and women is a social good. The new study gives hints, too, about the challenges women face in order to “lean in” and get ahead.

Who is affected by overwork? In “Overwork and the Persistence of Gender Segregation in Occupations,” Indiana University sociologist Youngjoo Cha reports that overwork affects men and women differently—especially in fields where there are a lot more men than women to begin with. Dr. Cha finds that the impact of overwork on men and women is especially pronounced in occupations where the majority of employees are men, known as “male dominated occupations.” She found that:

• In male-dominated occupations, overwork was more likely than in balanced fields or female-dominated fields.
• Mothers were 52 percent more likely than other women to leave their jobs if they were working a 50-hour week or more, but only in occupations dominated by men.
• Higher education levels make it more likely that women stay in their jobs—but not enough to overcome the discouraging effect of being an overworking mother.
• Mothers in male-dominated occupations were more discouraged despite the fact that the women who survived in those more masculine fields may on average be more committed to work than overworking women in other jobs.
• Meanwhile, men (whether fathers or not) and women without children were not more likely to leave their jobs in overworking fields.
• When mothers left their jobs, some moved to less male-dominated professions; others entirely left the labor force.

The problem, according to Cha, is simple. Overworking mothers continue to have a larger share of caregiving responsibilities, compared to other workers. Cha explains that “Overwork disadvantages women with children in particular. In overworking workplaces, you have to be there or be on call all the time. That expectation can be met by people who have few caregiving or community responsibilities and who are not primary caregivers at home.” While men and women have adjusted their ability to share domestic caregiving in recent years, these more extreme situations of overwork demonstrate the limits of the flexibility that men and women often aim for—but can’t always achieve.

Why does overwork affect mothers only in male-dominated professions? Cha’s finding that overwork discourages women in male-dominated occupations begs the question, why? “If it were a case of women’s reticence to work additional hours,” Cha explains, “we would expect overworking women to be discouraged regardless of whether mainly men or women were at work.” But her results do not show that. Instead, the results suggest that something about jobs that are mainly populated by men discourages women. What’s that something? Cha observes that male-dominated professions are more likely to maintain strong and inflexible expectations of overwork.

Does this tell us anything about what dual earner couples can expect? Workplaces dominated by men tend to operate on outdated assumptions about “separate spheres” marriage — that is, families that have a homemaking woman and a breadwinning man. Yet today both partners are employed in nearly eighty percent of American couples.

Is this a case of opting out? Cha considered whether she had found evidence of “opting out”—the claim that women, when they can, leave work when they become mothers. “In my study, not all women with children leave the labor force. When they work long hours, it is the combination of being a mother, working long hours, and being in a male dominated profession that is discouraging.” Where overwork only in a male-dominated occupation influenced married women’s choices, Cha also found that husbands’ income didn’t change the basic findings.

In her article, Cha argues for promoting workplace policies that minimize the expectation for overwork, such as setting the maximum allowable work hours, prohibiting compulsory overtime, expanding the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime provisions, and granting employees the right to work part-time hours without losing benefits. She advocates labor policies that can reduce work-family conflicts and benefit women, men, families, and firms.

As University of Massachusetts sociologist Joya Misra, editor of Gender & Society, comments, “‘Leaning in’ might not be the same for everyone. Cha’s study shows us that despite our best efforts, work and home still seem to generate unequal opportunities and benefits. The loss affects everyone: We’ll stop losing highly qualified women in their careers of choice when we reduce barriers like the culture of overwork and unequal sharing of care-work at home.”

The study is based on analysis of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, a national longitudinal household survey collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. The data covers years from 1996 through 2007. The sample was limited to full-time workers ages 18-64 who were in a job at the beginning of each of the survey periods.

–Virginia Rutter

You heard about the letter: Princeton alumna Susan Patton worries that Princeton women might not find husbands as smart as they are if they don’t find ’em while still at college. Behind her anxiety is the view that: one, marriage is a partnership (between two different sexes) of intellectual equals—and, two, college sorts people into roughly equal intellectual groups.

I’ve been listening to lots of fun commentary about the Patton letter when I am not pondering other news about troubles in elite education. A week before the Patton letter, Carolyn Hoxby and Christopher Avery (Stanford and Harvard; they must be smart!) presented new information about how elite colleges are failing to recruit students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Hoxby and Avery report that among the high achieving high school students, only 34 percent of those from low-income families end up at the fancy colleges that their extremely high grades and high test scores would qualify them for. This is less than half the rate for “achievers” from high-income families, where 78 percent go to top-tier schools. The smart students in the bottom income quarter go, instead, to local universities or community colleges. These economically disadvantaged kids, Hoxby and Avery believe, are not aware of the elite educational options, and don’t appear to have information about how much aid is available from the most elite schools.

So for women who recognize that rushing into marriage really is not a smart thing to do, but are worried that they can’t find smart partners if they aren’t at Princeton or the like, they can relax, slow it down, and realize that there are a lot of smart potential partners who are not at elite schools. Not even counting all those smart men who don’t even start (or start but don’t finish) college, given the growing gender gap in higher education. It turns out that there are lots of smarties who aren’t at elite and selective colleges.

But, Patton might still be worried. Part of me thinks that she might be saying “smart” kids but meaning kids from a “higher social class.”

Patton’s letter reminds me that the heteronormative dream (Girls! Find your ideal boy!)  is still profoundly concerned about matching on social class as much as it is about finding an intellectual (or some other human quality) peer. But what do I know? My boyfriend went to Princeton.

-Virginia Rutter

The folding of Gender Across Borders one year ago brought home the challenges of online feminism. Like, the fact that it’s (more often than not) unpaid. Piled on top of paid jobs and activism, plus (for me at least) raising children and working on longer writing projects. (Or at least talking about them.)

Fortunately some folks who are a heck of a lot smarter than I am have been thinking about the need for sustainability in the online feminist ecosystem. And while they don’t have all the answers, they’ve started a public conversation to generate exchange, debate, and new directions.

Tonight at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, I heard Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti (along with some amazing bloggers from Feministing, Crunk Feminist Collective, SPARK Movement, F-Bomb, Feminist Teacher, and Feminist.com) present a report, #FemFuture: Online Revolution, about where online feminism needs to go. Their inspiring and thought-provoking report can be found here. It reminded me of the HUGE amount of amazing feminist work happening online… and I also learned about amazing folks and projects that I’d missed (such as the successful crowdfunding undertaken by queer Nigerian Afrofeminist blogger/online activist Spectra for social media and communications training for African women’s and LGBT organizations).

Martin and Valenti propose a range of strategies under the category of “more”… more collaboration, reciprocity, infrastructure, coordination, strategic thinking, and sustainable business models (both non-profit and for-profit). Because, as they put it, “An unfunded movement further privileges the privileged.”

They have some (preliminary) ideas about how to strategize long-term, though mainly they’ve started a conversation for feminists who are online. And ones who aren’t, too. The conversation turned global with the presence of organizations like WEDO and Digital Democracy, my new favorite org that’s empowering marginalized communities to use technology to fight for human rights in a handful locations, including Haiti. DD’s insight? Think mobile.

Your insights?

Earlier this month I wrote about gender, debt, and college drop out rates–men’s and women’s different debt tolerance (women have more) is related to their early job market prospects (men have more) and helps explain why men drop out of college more.

Now, here’s a new piece of the gender gap in education puzzle. According to a new briefing report presented to the Council on Contemporary Families, “the most important predictor of boys’ achievement is the extent to which the school culture expects, values, and rewards academic effort.” Sociologists Claudia Buchmann (Ohio State) and Thomas DiPrete (Columbia University) present their in-depth findings on the much-debated reasons why women outstrip men in education—also the subject of their new book—in “The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools.” The full CCF briefing report is available here.

When did the gender gap begin? Some of the gender gap in schooling is new and some is not. For about 100 years, the authors explain, girls have been making better grades than boys. But only since the 1970s have women been catching up to—and surpassing—men in terms of graduation rates from college and graduate school. The authors report, “Back in 1960, more than twice as many men as women between the ages of 26-28 were college graduates. Between 1970 and 2010, men’s rate of B.A. completion grew by just 7 percent, rising from 20 to 27 percent in those 40 years. In contrast, women’s rates almost tripled, rising from 14 percent to 36 percent.”

Is the gender gap translating into wages? “The rise of women in the educational realm has not wiped out the gender wage gap — women with a college degree continue to earn less on average than men with a college degree.”  But because more women are getting college degrees, growing numbers of women are earning more than their less-educated men age-mates, and the gender wage gap has narrowed considerably.” But, report the authors, if men were keeping up with women in terms of education, men would on average be earning four percent more than they do now, and their unemployment rate would be one-half percentage point lower.

What should schools do? The authors debunk the notion that boys’ under-performance in school is caused by a “feminized” learning environment that needs to be made more boy-friendly. Making curriculum, teachers, or classroom more “masculine” is not the answer, they show. In fact, boys do better in school in classrooms that have more girls and that emphasize extracurricular activities such as music and art as well as holding both girls and boys to high academic standards. But boys do need to learn how much today’s economy rewards academic achievement rather than traditionally masculine blue-collar work.

Please read here to read more about the gender gap in educational achievement and the sources of it.

–Virginia Rutter