events

A dear friend and colleague of mine–and fellow blogger!–Shari Cohen is leading a fabulous workshop here in NYC for anyone currently looking to jumpstart their career.  Looking to make a move from an unsatisfying position to something more meaningful?  Or between jobs and searching for what’s next?  Then you seriously might want to check this out.

Shari’s Career Action Group is a 4-week career transition workshop starting on May 5. She’s doing it in partnership with Next Step Partners, a firm that is launching similar groups across the country, including in Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Why is this workshop different from all other career workshops?  Shari has an intense background in leadership development work, and she’s awesome at helping people figure out ways to contribute their talent and creativity in new directions.  I should know.  I’ve worked with her myself.

Here’s the formal bio:

Shari Cohen, Ph.D., a senior consultant with Next Step Partners, focuses on leadership development.  She has been working for over ten years to help leaders in international development, health, philanthropy, advocacy, market research, technology and publishing, to access their potential, build their confidence and expand their creativity.  She has consulted for the World Bank, Carnegie Corporation, Bain, Demos and Doctors without Borders.  Previous experience includes senior management positions at two non-profits where she built leadership programs.  She also served as a professor of international relations at Wellesley College.  Shari holds a Ph.D. in political sociology from University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell University.  She has a certificate in organizational and executive coaching from NYU.

For more info about the Career Action Group, go here.  But whether you’re career-shifting or not, definitely check out Shari’s blog, Unstuck Future, where she’s been writing lately about thinking about your career from the inside out, and her own career transition, as well.  Like me, and like many GWP readers I know, Shari is a postacademic, so her insights really resonate, if you know what I mean.

So this just well may be my favorite annual report out there, and it’s just out now: Unconventional Wisdom: New Data, Trends, and Clinical Observations about Equality in American Family Life and Gender Roles

In it, experts from the Council on Contemporary Families review key recent research and clinical findings on gender and equality. In preparation for the Council on Contemporary Families’ Twelfth Anniversary Conference at the University of Chicago at Illinois, April 17-19, 2009, CCF surveyed its members about their “most important or surprising research results and clinical observations related to topics being considered at the conference.” The resulting report provides a snapshot of what some of the nation’s leading authorities are seeing in their research and clinical practice. Check it out:

1. Does marital quality decrease when couples need to negotiate the division of household chores and child-care?

Researchers and clinical psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan report that marriages suffer most when couples fail to talk through these thorny issues. On average, having a child leads to a long-term decline in marital satisfaction. But couples who have more egalitarian relationships can avoid these problems, first when they jointly plan for and welcome the birth of a child, and second, when they minimize the tendency to slip into more traditional gender roles after the child’s birth. Still, the closer couples move toward equality, report conference presenters Marc and Amy Vachon, the less likely they are to focus on quantifying who does which chores. Good to know, huh?!

2. Women feel more work-family conflict than men, right?

Not any longer. A just-released report from the Families and Work Institute, “Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home,” shows that as men have increased the amount of time they spend with young children over the past 15 years, they are now experiencing more work-family conflict than women.  Welcome to our world, dudes.

3. What’s happening to the traditional double standard?

It’s been to a great extent reversed in middle school, according to researcher Barbara Risman. Forty-five years ago, studies showed that the school culture was suppressing girls’ natural talents and aspirations by the time they entered middle school. At age 10 or 11, girls stopped speaking up in class and even started “playing dumb” to attract boys. They often chose not to compete in sports or to develop their bodies for fear of being teased as tomboys. Risman’s new study of middle-school children in the 21st Century shows a remarkable reversal of this pattern. Being a top-flight athlete is now considered part of the “ideal” girl package, and girls are very willing to compete with boys in the classroom. Today it is young boys who are afraid of showing off how smart they are and who feel they have to suppress their interest in certain activities for fear of being taunted as “gay.”

4. But the double standard is still alive and well in college, says Stanford University researcher Paula England.

While women have gained some sexual freedoms, they risk harsher judgments than men do if they proceed beyond “making out” in a hook up. And when activity does progress beyond making out, there is a striking “orgasm gap” between males and females-it is worse than the sex gap in pay! “Men get more than their share of the orgasms while women get more than their share of the bad reputations,” notes England, who is currently interviewing students across the country about changing sexual practices and norms.

5. In another finding, sexual health researcher Adina Nack discovered that women who are diagnosed with an STD ultimately develop improved sexual communication with their partners and are better able to discuss their own needs and wishes as well as insist on safe health practices.

In still more data-driven observations from family experts, you can learn about important and surprising research on family, gender, economics, and sexuality from the past year. The report is available here.

WANT MORE UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM? CHECK OUT CCF’s CONFERENCE “Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality” — I’ll be there! Here’s more:

The Council on Contemporary Families 12th Anniversary Conference,
“Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality: How Far Have We Come?” (April
17 and 18, 2009 at the University of Illinois, Chicago) includes the
following panels, presenting new research and best practice findings on
these timely topics:

*Work-Family Balance for Women and Men
*Gender Convergence in Families and Intimate Relationships
*Gender in the Next Generation
*The Marriage Go-Round – A Special preview of his forthcoming book with Andrew Cherlin
*Women, Men and Equality: What the Election Taught Us

You’ll hear Jeremy Adam Smith discuss his study on role-switching
between husbands and wives, including interviews with dads forced into this
position by lay-offs. At a time when men have experienced more than 80
percent of layoffs since 2007, we have a growing number of families with
stay-at-home dads and breadwinner moms. The entire work and family panel
offers fresh perspective on families in a time of recession.

In the “Next Generation” panel, noted psychologist Diane Ehrensaft will
discuss the growing phenomenon of children telling their parents
that they are not the gender stated on their birth certificate or are
not able or willing to play within the culturally defined binary boxes
of “girl,” “boy.” They might be transgender; they might be gender
fluid; they might be a “Prius”-a hybrid half boy-half girl; or they
might be a “gender smoothie”–a synthesized blend of male/female.
What do we know about how parents can best handle these situations?

For a detailed conference program, visit www.contemporaryfamilies.org.
Accredited journalists seeking complimentary registration should contact
Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, Council on
Contemporary Families: coontzs@msn.com. Phone: 360 556-9223.

So I loves me a campus visit, but my visit to Framingham State College on Monday — though exhausting! — took the cake. Heartfelt thanks to superorganizer Virginia Rutter and her amazing crew: Lisa Eck, Bridgette Sheridan, the Gender Interest Group, English, History, Psychology, Sociology, Academic Affairs, President’s Office, Wellness Center, and Women’s Empowerment, with special kudos to students Chelsea Hastbacka and Ashley Barry.

The day started with a first-run lecture/discussion called “Gender Shakeup at the Recession,” in which I got to play professor once again.  I talked a bit about my personal experience with layoff, and national trends, and then had students go through two media pieces chock full of gender stereotypes (that DABA article from the New York Times from January and my dear co-blogger Joe the Trader’s piece at Recessionwire called “Gendernomics”).  The students really got it, and I learned from the things they noticed as well.  We talked about why the return to these traditional notions and self-presentations of gender now, and it’s something I sense I’ll be writing about more and more…

Then, a Sisterhood, Interrupted talk in a church — I got to say words like “ass” and “bitch” in a church!  Hey, they’re in the section of my book that I read from; not like I planned it or anything.

Next up, a blogging workshop.  And finally, a wrap-up with the faculty Gender Interest Group and the kind of discussion that made me really miss academia.  As a freelancer out here who straddles academic and non-academic worlds, it was grounding and re-energizing to be among engaged students and engaging faculty for a whirlwind day of thinking, discussing, and mulling.

The feminist group on campus — who call themselves “Women’s Empowerment” — played a big role in getting me there, and they, together with the faculty I met, are the lifeblood of feminist consciousness on this campus.  As always, the sight of young people coming to — and questioning — their feminism inspires me to no end.  Thank you, FSC, for reminding me why I do what I do!  You keep me going, you really do.

Catch me at WAM! on Sunday, 11:30, for the panel “Going Group: How Blogging in Numbers Gets It Done,” with Racialicious’ Latoya Petersen, Shira Tarrant of GWP’s “The Man Files,” and Ebony Utley. And see you in the halls!

On Monday, I”ll be giving a bunch of talks and workshops at Framingham State College, hosted by GWP’s own amazing Virginia Rutter (the BEST hostess EVER!) Can’t wait….

As I wrap up this liveblogging session from the Brooklyn Museum, a gooey little confession about how the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art holds a special place in my heart:

This summer, the month before I married, instead of the traditional (cough cough) bachelorette party, friends organized a picnic accompanied by a private tour of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, housed at the Center.  What better way to mark the moment, we figured.  And what an amazing opportunity this was to learn about this pivotal piece of feminist art, long buried, and to reconnect with it as members of a new generation.

So it is with extra special love that I wish the Center many happy returns–and TONS of future visitors–on this, its second birthday!

For those of you just joining, here, in chronological order, are 5 posts blogged live from “Women’s Visions for the Nation: What’s It Going to Take?”, a speakout held by the intergenerational feminist thinktank, Unfinished Business, celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art on this sunny March afternoon.  Quite a gathering of feminists and ideas.  Enjoy.

Liveblogging Women’s Visions for the Nation @ Brooklyn Museum

Elizabeth Sackler Revs It Up

C. Nicole Mason Keynotes

Laura Flanders Emcees

Esther Broner and Ai-jen Poo Take the Stage

Let the Intergenerational Speakout Begin

What Will the Feminist New Deal Look Like?

Closing Thoughts from Esther Broner, Ai-jen Poo, and HipHop Artist Toni Blackman

Liz Abzug Brings It Home

I’m thrilled to be LIVEBLOGGING from the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, in celebration of the Center’s second anniversary! I’ll be tweeting too 🙂

Stay tuned…

Here we are, at 92Y Tribeca.  From left to right: Courtney Martin, Elizabeth Hines, Gloria Feldt, and me.  Logo on screen done by Marco.  Thanks to everyone for coming out, props to the great staff at the Y, and endless gratitude to my fellow WGLs — of all the different things I do, doing this panel with them is hands down one of my FAVES.

For some recaps, check out:

Courtney’s reflections on our shared blog, WomenGirlsLadies, in which she summarizes a lot of what I’ve been thinking about of late: “There is an opportunity, this economic downturn, for all sorts of gender shake-up. When we’re forced to recognize that old styles of leadership and assumptions about gender roles are no longer valid, we can get even the most reluctant folks to try a more enlightened, equal approach. The media coverage of this phenomenon has been totally unsatisfying (dads who cook! women who work! what a revelation!), but in truth, there is something interesting going on.”

A meaty comment over at WomenGirlsLadies from audience member Sara: “I think the most exciting thing anyone said was that this is a moment the feminist movement can take advantage of the social chaos to effect broad change, but if we’re not looking beyond the division of work at home and our ability to balance family and work life, even just in the context of work we’re limiting ourselves.”

Elisabeth Garber-Paul’s review over at RH Reality Check, Feminism and the New Great Depression: What’s Next?, in which she writes: “However, the depression [sic] makes it a more volatile time for the discussion of gender roles—especially because 4 out of 5 laid-off workers are men, and that translates into a seeming crisis of masculinity. The image of the female breadwinner and the stay-at-home dad is increasingly common, and now that men don’t necessarily identify primarily through their title at work, how we define masculinity will need to change—just as the image of femininity has been changing over the past 40 years.”

BTW, I’m starting to develop a TALK on these themes of men, women, gender, and recession — I’ll be trying it out next week at Framingham State College and in April at Catalyst here in NYC.  More on all that soon….and potentially one day coming to a venue near you….stay tuned!