feminism

Choices, not discrimination, deter women scientists

So read the headline that summed up a few weeks of articles, blog posts and opinion pieces on Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams’ article, Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science. And that’s the conclusion I would come to as well if I didn’t understand that you can’t examine the issue of underrepresentation of women in the sciences by comparing women and men with equal resources to each other. Because part of the issue with the lack of women in the sciences is that resources are not distributed equally.

It’s Women’s History Month and for the past few years women in the sciences has received a lot of attention during this month. First Lady Michelle Obama mentioned the shortage of women in the sciences and the Smithsonian Channel included comic books to their Women in Science programming this year. After 15 years of studying and working on this issue, if it were that easy, I’d pack it up and move on to a new puzzle to solve.

But let’s look at the “choices” Ceci and Williams claim are at the real root of the issue:

If not discrimination, what is the cause of women’s underrepresentation? Today, the dearth of women in math-based fields is related to three factors, one of which (fertility/lifestyle choices) hinders women in all fields, not just mathematical ones, whereas the others (career preferences and ability differences) impact women in math-based fields. [1] Regarding the role of math-related career preferences, adolescent girls often prefer careers focusing on people as opposed to things, and this preference accounts for their burgeoning numbers in such fields as medicine and biology, and their smaller presence in math-intensive fields such as computer science, physics, engineering, chemistry, and mathematics, even when math ability is equated. [2] Regarding the role of math-ability differences, potentially influenced by both socialization and biology, twice as many men as women are found in the top 1% of the math score distribution (e.g., SAT-M, GRE-Q). [3] The third factor influencing underrepresentation affects women in all fields: fertility choices and work-home balance issues. However, this challenge is exacerbated in math-intensive fields because the number of women is smaller to begin with. [Numbers in brackets were added by me.]

Let’s take these one at a time:

1] Career choice. Girls just like working with people better. I’ve wrestled with this issue for years. I almost bought into it too at one point, but I came to a different conclusion. Parents, educators and career/college counselors are terrible at teaching kids, boy and girls, what “good” comes from math-based careers such as computer science and engineering. For the most part, I would agree that women are attracted to careers that appear to benefit humanity. It’s easy to see that connection when one looks at medicine and biology, especially with the abundance of shows about doctors saving lives on TV almost every night. The CSI franchise is moving that view towards chemistry. Now to work on computer science! Which is why I love that my campus has a good number of women faculty members in the computer science department.

2] Are we really going to revisit the Larry Summers debate? Really? Do I really need to state again that one does not need to be a genius to be a rocket scientist? Yes, smart…but if we restricted math-based careers to just the top 1%, I think we’d have a shortage of computer scientists. Oh, wait, WE DO!

3] The fact that fertility coincides with the tenure clock is discrimination. It impacts women far greater than it does men. The fact that the academy has dragged its feet to alter the tenure system to retain intelligent women in all fields is at bare minimum biased towards a masculine way of promoting workers and thus smells like discrimination.

We can no longer hide behind the idea that women choose to do X when all the social forces in her life is choosing for her. When we settle the question of inequality with “but women choose” we let ourselves off the hook and place the entire burden on individual women. When we don’t encourage our girls to embrace their intelligence, we choose for them. When we tell them that being an engineer isn’t helping humanity, we choose for them. When a woman faces the “choice” between buckling down to get tenure versus starting her long awaited family, we choose for them.

Until women and girls can truly make free choices, we must look hard at the system we operate in and ask, “What is wrong? Where can we help women make the choice they really want versus the choice that seems to fit best?” Now that’s a choice I can stand behind.

I have said it before about sexually transmitted diseases and HPV vaccines, and now I will say it again about brain trauma and football — men’s health is a feminist issue. 

Back in 2007, a NYT article covered “Wives United by Husbands’ Post-N.F.L. Trauma” whose activism motivated the NFL creating the “88 Plan” to provide dementia benefits.  Then, in 2008, a LA Times op-ed proclaimed, “The NFL’s in denial about depression.”  This week, the NYT article “A Suicide, a Last Request, a Family’s Questions” added yet another tragedy to the growing number of media stories about the physically and psychologically devastating consequences for NFL players. 

As I read it, I found myself flashing back to when I was an undergrad and first read sociologist Michael Messner‘s academic article, “When bodies are weapons: Masculinity and violence in Sport.” What does it mean for boys and men — and for all of us — when   not only normalize but also reward boys and men for using their bodies as weapons?

Check out the abstract (bold font added for emphasis):

This paper utilizes a feminist theoretical framework to explore the contemporary social meanings of sports violence. Two levels of meaning are explored: first, the broad, socio-cultural and ideological meanings of sports violence as mediated spectacle; second, the meanings which male athletes themselves construct. On the social/ideological level, the analysis draws on an emergent critical/feminist literature which theoretically and historically situates sports violence as a practice which helps to construct hegemonic masculinity. And drawing on my own in-depth interviews with male former athletes, a feminist theory of gender identity is utilized to examine the meanings which athletes themselves construct around their own participation in violent sports. Finally, the links between these two levels of analysis are tentatively explored: how does the athlete’s construction of meaning surrounding his participation in violent sports connect with the larger social construction of masculinities and men’s power relations with women?

Mainstream U.S. society continues to validate a very narrow construction of socially acceptable masculinity.  When I teach the Sexuality and Society course at CLU, I ask my undergrad students to tell me the traits of an “ideal” man.  Each time, a new group of students generate basically the same list which includes being heterosexual, tall, muscular/physically strong, and a “protector.”  With this clear and consistent construction of masculine bodies, it’s not a surprise that the NFL continues to attract players who are willing to sacrifice their health and fans who enjoy the spectacle. 

The lure of the N.F.L. — the glory of hyper-masculinity — masks the still unmeasurable damage that these players (and their families) endure.  Their sacrifices allow ‘armchair athletes’ to vicariously revel in battles on the gridiron.  These warriors, ill-protected by sports gear masquerading as armor, are paying steep prices for embodying unrealistic and unhealthy ideals of what it means to be a man in the U.S.  

As research studies work to document the ways in which this sport consistently results in life-changing injuries (and sometimes life-ending conditions), we owe it to boys and men to challenge the status quo.  But, how can we hope to do this if, as one political science blogger suggested, “Americans have begun to construe access to football spectating as a social right“?

This past week you might have noticed something different around here.

In addition to a guest post from Andrea Doucet (author of Do Men Mother? and a forthcoming book tentatively titled The Bread and Roses Project: Breadwinning Moms and the New ‘Problem with No Name’) about whether dads are facing discrimination on the playgrounds and a well-earned celebratory announcement from Veronica Arreola (go SCIENCE GRRL!), a number of regular GWP writers devoted our monthly columns to various aspects of historian Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s.  Coontz’s book is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book.  A forum about book about a book?  Sounds rather…discursive.  So why did we do it?

As “crossover” scholar type peeps, we think the way conversations about feminism play out in public, in this case the cultural conversation about a second-wave feminist text, are important to track.  As a generation, we’re indebted to Betty Friedan for her classic.  And we’re  indebted to Stephanie Coontz for reviving a conversation about the journey this book helped launch–not only for women at the dawn of the 1960s, but for those of us striving for egalitarian marriages and humane workplaces and raising our children here in 2011.

Here’s a recap:

To kick it off, Virgina Rutter (NICE WORK) asked two dear friends, one born in 1935, the other born in 1940, to tell her their experiences around the publication of Friedan’s TFM in 1963. The kicker: they’re both men.

Fueled by Coontz’s analysis, we cleared up some myths about TFM and encouraged readers to Test Your Feminine Mystique Cliche Quotient. In a Review of ‘Stirring’ Reviews, we offered a reading of the initial reviews of Coontz’s book appearing in in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, Salon, Ms., Bitch, and feministing.

Natalie Wilson (POP GOES FEMINISM) asked whether “Housewives” today are just as “Desperate” as in the era documented by Friedan and offers up pop-culture infused Thoughts on Coontz’s A Strange Stirring.

Finally, Deborah Siegel (MAMA W/PEN) waxed intergenerational and mused on How the Choices of Our Generation Are Shaped By the Last. (Your comments on that one are giving me–it’s Deborah here–tons of food for thought…!)

We hope you find the discussion of interest.  We’d love your feedback.  And if you’d like to see more of this kind of group forum, or would like to propose one yourself for the future, please do let us know!

This is the fifth and final in a series this week from Girlw/Pen writers on Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, which is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book.

I’m obsessed, you could say, with second-wave feminism’s legacy.   Questions like “How has feminism’s past shaped its future?” and “Why are battles begun 40 years ago so damn difficult, still, to win?” keep me up at night.  So when I first heard that Stephanie Coontz—a pre-eminent social historian, and one tremendously adept at translating feminist research for popular audiences via the New York Times op-ed page no less—was writing a cultural history of The Feminine Mystique, I nearly peed in my pants.

Foremost on my mind was the question I hoped would be addressed: “What’s the relevance of The Feminine Mystique—book and concept—today?” Coontz’s book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, did not let me down.  But I’m finding that in the wake of finishing it, I’m more than a little depressed.

As ever, the personal is political.  And vise versa.  I can’t help but read this social history through personal history—my own.  Last week, after a year and a half of equally shared parenting with both of us working part-time from home, my paid hours were cut back and my husband Marco, who got an unexpected offer, went back to a full-time, on-site job.  Overnight, I became Primary Parent, Emergency Contact, and Master Coordinator for our beloved 15-month old twins.  I wrote—bitterly, I now confess—about the first day of the new arrangement at my other blog.  The source of my knee-jerk bitterness?  Though still a working woman, I feared being swallowed by the feminine mystique.  Is this feminism unfinished, or undone?

The feminine mystique.  I’m here to report that its ghost is alive and kicking in the psyches of a generation whose mothers knocked down doors so that we could walk through them. I won’t go so far as to say we’re haunted the way children of Holocaust survivors are (Betty Friedan wrote about the home as a “comfortable concentration camp”–she also, of course, and as Coontz expertly rehearses, wrote SO much more), but let’s just say that the term “feminine mystique” conjures up a vortex that women like me—highly educated, high-earning potential—dread.

Granted, to cut back momentarily (and temporarily) on paid work is not exactly the same as embracing the feminine mystique, but mentally it’s a slippery slope. I think back to Charlotte from Sex and the City at the very moment she quits her job at the art gallery to stay home: “I choose my choice! I choose my choice!” she doth protest–too much.  That first shakey day at home, I spewed the opposite: “I didn’t sign up for this.”

After whining to my mother and counting my many blessings–battling the feminine mystique mirage in my head is a luxury compared to the real and punishing demons many single women with kids, for instance, face–I  came to my senses and realized that not much in my life had changed from the one day to this next.  Except that it had.  Because I had this revelation: it only took one day as Primary Parent for me to realize how tenuous the so-called battle lines between “Stay-at-Homes” and “Working Moms” really are.  At one point or another, we are each other.  And the reason for our resentment-filled (and highly media-fueled, let’s face it) fighting, apparently, is that we are largely unsatisfied ourselves.

As Coontz notes in the final chapter (“Women, Men, Marriage, and Work Today: Is the Feminine Mystique Dead?”), a chapter in which I found myself underlining every other word, wives who work paid jobs and those who don’t say they’d like to switch roles (according to a study conducted 10 years ago that is).  “In 2000 25% of the wives who worked full-time said they would prefer to be homemakers.  On the other hand, 40 percent of all wives without paying jobs said they would rather be employed.”  Those who work wish they could be working less—and that applies to men as well as women.

Why are so many men and women with families unhappy with their lot?

Because the job of feminism is far from done. Blinded, now, by the workforce ideal that “defines the ideal employee—male or female—as having no familial or caregiving obligations that compete with work” (some call it, as Coontz points out, the “career mystique”), our culture replaced one mystique with the next.  And no one, so far, has had the power to take this new mystique down.

The moment for Career Mystique warriors has come.  They are out there already, rattling our collective cage. Conversations at places like Role/Reboot and Daddy Dialectic and The Council on Contemporary Families and work+life fit and Viva la Feminista and Pundit Mom and The Motherlode lead us in the charge.  And in the meantime, books like The Feminine Mystique remain relevant—all the more so—because their missions remain incomplete.

*Title inspired by the last line of Lisa Belkin’s recent post, “New Fears of Flying” over at The Motherlode.

This is the fourth in a series this week from Girlw/Pen writers on Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, which is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book.

The Feminine Mystique, is a book that, as Coontz notes “has been credited—or blamed—for destroying, single-handedly and almost overnight, the 1950s consensus that women’s place was in the home.” In her new study of the book, its era, and its reception (both at its publication and over the years), Coontz doesn’t shy away from documenting The Feminine Mystique’s faults (chief among these, the limited view offered by its white heterosexual middle class author that not only silenced issues of working class women and women of color, but also framed homosexuality as a menace).

The faults of Friedan’s book have of course been extensively analyzed and debated over the years, constructing Friedan as what Rebecca Traister names “a revered and reviled feminist foremother.” Coontz current work goes far beyond this debate though, placing The Feminine Mystique within the context of its time and then expertly weaving in analysis of how many of its key arguments have resonated in the decades since. As Traister puts it in her New York Times book review, the text functions as “a timely contribution to the conversation about what constitutes progress for women (and for which women) in these days of mommy wars and mama grizzlies.”

The continuing “mommy wars” and their particular pervasiveness in the contemporary cultural moment makes Coontz’ book (and the book her book is about – The Feminine Mystique) incredibly relevant. As I read it, I could not help but picture the ways in which current females on the cultural radar – Sarah Palin, Angelina Jolie, Katie Perry, for example – STILL fit into the wife/mother-is –tantamount-to-a woman’s-identity model. Yes, Palin is a politician, but she and others actively highlight that it is motherhood and wifery that defines her. Yes, Jolie has famously said she will not marry Pitt until all people have the right to marry, but she is positioned by the press as a global mother, with news of her adoptions/mothering trumping her acting career. As for Katie Perry – she is not a mother, but her well documented marriage to Russell Brand (not to mention her bubble gum bright, salaciously sexy 50s era outfits) bring a sexed up cross between June Cleaver and I love Lucy to mind.

Another cultural zeitgeist – Twilight – similarly shapes women’s identities as dependent on their relationships to men, famiy, and the home, with the end goal (as it is for the series protagonist) to become an eternal wife and mother.

And – a show with a title that would fit very well between the pages of The Feminine Mystique – Desperate Housewives – has largely explored female identity as tied to what goes on in the home, between the sheets, and while chatting by the picket fences that populate Wisteria Lane, a block that, like Friedan’s book, is mired in white middle class heterosexual privilege.

In contrast, a show set in the past, Mad Men, is a much more valuable lens through which to view not only The Feminine Mystique but also changing gender norms (as Coontz expertly reveals – with many show spoilers – here).

So, what does it say that a show set in the 60s is more feminist, more astute about gender norms and the damage they do to both men and women, than too contemporary shows such as Desperate Housewives (and, I might add, pretty much all of Reality TV)? What does it say that current cultural icons such as Sarah Palin and Katie Perry (and yes, Bella Swan) would fit better in a 50s/60s world where women were presented as needing to be tied to the home on the one hand and beholden to the male gaze on the other? Are we, as I have heard so many discuss, heading so far into the backlash that soon the era Friedan and Coontz document will seem more liberated than our own?

I certainly hope not – and I hope this concern drives people to read Coontz timely work, a book that taps into something that should concern us a great deal – the continuing hold post-feminism and “enlightened sexism” has over our cultural imagination.

This is the second in a series this week from Girlw/Pen writers on Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, which is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book, The Feminine Mystique.

The reviews are out (more on that coming soon!).  While some give an apt assessment of this rich new look at a classic feminist text, some lapse into cliche about both Coontz’s book and Friedan’s.  Here are four myths–cliches, really–about The Feminine Mystique, and feminism the movement, as cleared up in Coontz’s book:

1.  MYTH: Betty Friedan was a man-hater, and The Feminine Mystique was anti-marriage.

REALITY: Friedan hated housework (and her willingness to say that was considered shocking in the early 1960s), but she loved men and greatly enjoyed flirting with them. She even suggested that her tombstone should read: “She helped make women feel better about being women and therefore better able to freely and fully love men.”

Friedan believed that marriages would be more harmonious and loving when wives were free to find meaning in their own work or community activities rather than seeking fulfillment through their husbands’ accomplishments. When wives have interests and skills of their own, she argued, they will stop nagging or belittling their husbands. Their daughters, seeing their mothers fulfilled instead of discontented, will grow up “sure that they want to be women.” And in fact, I interviewed many women who told me they had developed a deep suspicion of marriage and motherhood not by reading Friedan but by seeing how unhappy their own mothers were. They were able to commit to family life only after they were sure they would not be trapped the way their mothers had been.

2.  MYTH: Friedan encouraged women to put their personal gratification and career ambitions ahead of family or community concerns, leading directly to a “sex-in-the-city” individualism.

REALITY: Friedan told women it was a mistake to think that better sex or a new man would meet their need to grow. She argued that only an un-liberated woman would believe that more money or a bigger house would fill the hole inside her. She also said it was better to do volunteer work, if possible, than to take a job just for the money, insisting that women, like men, could find themselves only by developing their individual capacities in the framework of socially useful work, whether paid or unpaid. She would have hated “Sex in the City.”

3.  MYTH:  The entry of women into the workforce and their growing educational advantage over men destabilized marriage and doomed many women to a life of loneliness.

REALITY: Divorce rates initially rose as more wives went to work, but this trend reversed as people adjusted to women’s new rights. Today the states with the highest percentage of working wives generally have the lowest divorce rates. And marriages where one spouse specializes in housework and the other in paid work are now more likely to end in divorce than marriages where spouses share domestic and paid work.

Divorce rates have fallen sharply over the past 30 years for college graduates and for women who delay marriage while they establish themselves in careers. In fact, every year a woman delays marriage, up into her 30s, lowers her chance of divorce.

Marriage rates have been going down for all Americans, but women with Ph.D.s are the only group with a higher marriage rate today than in 1950. And while a highly-educated woman is slightly more likely to reach age 40 without ever marrying than a woman with less education, she is also much less likely to divorce. As a result, educated women are now more likely to be married at age 40 than their less-educated counterparts.

Three-quarters of female college graduates aged 40 are married at age 40, compared to two-thirds of women that age with some college education, 63 percent of high school graduates, and only 56 percent of women with less than a high school degree. And 88 percent of women aged 30 to 44 who earn more than $100,000 per year are married, compared to 82 percent of other women in that age group.

And here’s a win-win scenario for women who can take advantage of the new educational options for women: Educated couples with egalitarian views have the highest marital quality. Educated women who remain single and enjoy their jobs report nearly equal levels of happiness as married women. And a never-married college-educated woman in her 40s who wants to marry has twice the chance of doing so as a never-married high school graduate.

4.  MYTH: The feminist movement has hurt homemakers.

REALITY: In 1963, when The Feminine Mystique was published, only eight states gave stay-at-home wives any claim on their husband’s earnings, even if they had put their husband through school and then devoted themselves to raising the children for 40 years. The husband got to determine what was an “adequate” level of support, and if they divorced, the wife had no right to a fair division of the property. She could not even get alimony unless she could prove “fault” by a very stringent standard. Feminism has improved the security of homemakers as well as of employed women.

What are the cliches that come to mind when you think about The Feminine Mystique or any other classic second-wave feminist text–and more importantly, are they, or aren’t they true?

My daughter Maya turns 10 today.  You may not remember what it feels like to hit double digits, but take it from me: this is a big deal.  Maya might say that hitting 10 means that she is definitely ready for a cell phone (not that she has one, however).

Now that I can talk about motherhood in terms of decades (well, at least a decade) instead of just years, it feels like a big deal for me, too.

In fact, motherhood has been getting a lot of media play these days.  If recent coverage is any indication, we’re either too harsh or too self-involved.  Consider the controversy surrounding Amy Chua’s Why Chinese Mother’s are Superior excerpt in The Wall Street Journal and Judith Warner’s roundup of recent memoirs in The New York Times. Warner claims that in contrast with their own feminist moms, today’s mothers are turning inward and embracing home and family with a “deep desire for rules and regularity”

Neither the overbearing mother nor the self-involved ones hunkering down at home sound especially new to me (Freud, anyone, or Cinderella?).  But I am wondering where I fit into these public accounts of motherhood and how to define my own mothering.

For example, learning to ski would certainly have been low on my list of life pursuits before parenting despite growing up in the Northeast Ohio snowbelt.  Now as a steward of my kids’ (I have a 7-year-old son as well) health, I try to cultivate an active lifestyle and exercise habits that can serve them throughout their lives.  Thus the skiing lessons, which I have found that I love, and which allow me and my kids to learn something together.

And while I have given a lot of thought to teaching students about social constraints and feminist responses to them, I have also discovered that it’s altogether different teaching my children how to be change agents.  For one thing, I have my children for more than a semester, so if I get things wrong we can always try again!

Last year Maya ran for class representative and found herself in a runoff, which she lost, much to her disappointment.  Talking at home later she explained that she voted for a classmate in the first round because she “wanted to give someone else a chance.”

Although her generosity of spirit is one of her admirable qualities, I explained that it is sometimes fine and even important to pursue what you want.  That is, if you want to be class representative, vote for yourself.

This year, I’m happy to report that Maya was elected class representative.  But before you congratulate me for offering a successful lesson on assertiveness, I should add that Maya explained that she did not vote for herself in the first round of balloting: she voted for a friend, and the friend voted for her.

That same friend and Maya spent their Martin Luther King Day “on” by selling “Cocoa for a Cause” at our local sledding hill and donating the proceeds to an area soup kitchen.  They raised $47.

Sometimes working together is the best way to make a difference.  That’s not a bad vision for either of us to have as we enter double digits as mother and daughter.

And GWP readers, what’s your take on the latest mommy wars? Do you have favorite accounts of motherhood to share, and what does feminist mothering look like?

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I had the pleasure of spending last weekend in the presence of Isla, a four-year-old who LOVES Toy Story Two and LOVES Jessie even more. When the scene highlighting Jessie’s back story came on, she jumped off the couch and ran towards the television with a look of rapture on her face. Once the song finished and the main narrative resumed, she chanted “More Jessie, more Jessie!!!”

Sadly, if her parents bring home Toy Story 3 for her to enjoy (released on DVD November 2^nd), she will find there is not more Jessie. Rather, the male toys are still front and center. Meanwhile, the female toys have gone missing (Bo), fallen in love with Ken (Barbie) or gone soft for Latino Buzz (Jessie).

Though Toy Story 3 opens on a female-empowerment high, with Mrs. Potato-Head displaying mad train-robbing skills and Jessie skillfully steering Bullseye in the ensuing chase, from there, the bottom drops out of the film’s female quotient. Out of seven new toy characters, only one is female – the purple octopus. This is far worse than the one female to every three males ratio documented in children’s media by The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media.

When I first viewed the 3^rd film, I was almost giddy as Mrs. Potato-Head and Jessie chased a train in the opening scene. Alas, after this first scene, the movie went back to its male focus, throwing in rather sexist and homophobic banter along the way. For example, Mr. Potato Head says at one point “No one touches my wife, except for me!” while another character suggests she needs her mouth taken off. As for Ken, he is depicted as a closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink. Played for adult in-jokes, Ken huffily insists “I am not a girl toy, I am not!” when an uber-masculine robot toy suggests as much during a heated poker match. In the typical way homophobia is paired with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest how funny and scary it is for a man to be either feminine or queer. Admittedly, Barbie ultimately rejects Ken and is instrumental in Woody and Co’s escape, but her hyper-feminine presentation coupled with Ken’s not-yet-out-of-the-toy-cupboard homophobia make this yet another family movie that perpetuates damaging gender and sexuality norms.

Though the film ends with young Bonnie as the happy new owner of the toys, Woody would have to become Wanda and Buzz become Betty in order for the series to break Pixar’s male-only protagonist tradition. Finally a female-helmed film is on the horizon though – Brave – too bad the protagonist is a princess (how original!) and Pixar recently fired the female director (it’s first ever).

This is not to say that Pixar’s films are not funny and clever. And I would agree that in many regards Pixar films are an improvement on Disney. But need we settle for “better than Disney”? Can’t we ask they also make films with female protagonists, with racial and class diversity, without homophobic jokes, and, ahem, with FEMALE DIRECTORS?

Some 43 years after Mowgli’s love interest in The Jungle Book sings of her future daughter, “I’ll send her to fetch the water, I’ll be cooking in the home” her metaphorical daughters populate not only Disney films, but also those of Dream Works and Pixar. Alas, not only do these animated daughters still accord to gender norms for the most part, so too do their creators – most animators, screenwriters, directors, and producers are still men, completing Mowgli type adventures in the Hollywood jungle, adventures that still place boys front and center while keeping their female counterparts as figurative water fetchers.

Brenda Chapman, the female director who seemingly broke away from the sticky Cinderella floor to slipper through the glass ceiling into what is reportedly the Pixar boys club was sadly turned back into a non-directing pumpkin– no fairy tale ending for her as the director heroine of Brave, a film she wrote and has been developing for several years. Instead, Mark Andrews has reportedly taken over director duties. The title of his Pixar Short, One Man Band, is a fitting way to describe what seems to have become Pixar’s one-note ode to male helmed and focused films.

While changes in directors are common in the film world, Chapman’s firing caused quite the stir as she was Pixar’s first woman director – all eleven previous films were directed by (and featured) men. Pixar is not unique in this regard: As Sharon Waxman & Jeff Sneider write, “The animation industry is not known as a warm and fuzzy place for women.”

And, it was only this year that a woman finally won Best Director at the Academy Awards, despite the fact women have been involved in filmmaking since its beginnings in 1896.

Tracy L., a former film development executive with 12 years experience in the industry, responded to Chapman’s dismissal as follows:

“The bigger issue here is not the firing but why Pixar has never had a female director to begin with. The bigger story to my way of thinking is the utter lack of female input behind the scenes and the lack of female protagonists on screen.”

In films, this lack of women behind the scenes seems to translate to a certain type of woman character on screen–one who is less heroic, adventuresome, independent and important than the male robots, toys, cars and humans that surround her.

With Disney figuratively cutting Rapunzel’s powerful locks by making Tangled more boy-focused, and now Pixar taking away Chapman’s directorial wand, what’s next–a film about a female warrior who suddenly becomes a gooey-eyed animal lover? Oh, that’s already been done (Pocahontas). How about taking a you-go-girl patriarchy-defier and stealing her voice? Oh, that one is taken too (Little Mermaid).Wait, I know: a movie about a matriarchal society filled with female power-players that have to be saved by a tremulous boy. (Oops, that’s Bug’s Life).

So, I want to add my virtual voice and echo four-year-old Isla “I want more Jessie!” Come on, Pixar, get with the Bigelow effect already: encourage more women directors and more female friendly story-lines! Really, now, let some women lead your (or at least play in) your one-man band, would you?

This month’s guest column* by Christine H. Morton, PhD, a research sociologist at the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, draws on her research and publications on women’s reproductive experiences and maternity care advocacy roles, including the doula and childbirth educator. She is the founder of ReproNetwork.org, an online listserv for social scientists studying reproduction.

The ever-evolving history of the childbirth reform movement has new developments, which need to be incorporated into the older story which documents the shift from home to hospital birth; and the paradigm clash of midwifery and medical models of birth reflecting holistic and technocratic values, respectively. We need to incorporate the story of the doula, which I argue, is one of many efforts to bridge the divide – to provide, as Robbie Davis-Floyd has called it, humanistic care in birth, which is what most women desire.

History is happening now. In addition to the emergence of the doula in the past thirty years, more recently, we see efforts underway in maternal health policy (Childbirth Connections’ Transforming Maternity Care), among physician and nursing professionals (most especially around maternal quality measures, and maternity quality improvement) and resurgence among, for lack of a better word, ‘consumers’ or childbearing women, who seek greater access to vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). What are the goals of each stakeholder; how do they intersect and overlap, and come into conflict with one another? This is a big story, and we need to tell it!

I take a small slice of this larger historical backdrop to consider the interconnected history of childbirth educators and doulas, which will be the subject of my research presentation at the Lamaze-ICEA Mega Conference in Milwaukee.

To back up a bit, when I embarked on my sociological investigation of the doula role, I was interested in many aspects of this innovative approach to childbirth advocacy and support. What strategies and mechanisms enabled women with no medical training to insert themselves at the site where medical care is delivered to a patient in a hospital, and enact their self-defined role? Why did women become doulas and what did the work mean for those who were able to sustain a regular practice over time? How were doulas utilizing and leveraging the corpus of evidence based research which suggested their impact was as great, if not greater, than that of the physician, the culture of the obstetric unit, or the labor and delivery nurse? Where did doulas come from? What, in the history of childbirth reform, or childbirth education, or labor/delivery nursing, could help me understand how doulas emerged at this point in time in U.S. history?

Later, after learning that there were limited histories of childbirth education (by non-childbirth educators), and little research on the history of obstetric nursing, I had to take a step back and consider these factors as well. Why was the work and perspectives of women who support other women during childbirth an overlooked piece of historical research? Why did histories of women’s health reform efforts largely exclude childbirth reform? Why had there been no history of the women who were involved in childbirth education; in labor and delivery nursing; in the mainstream arena of birth care in the US? So as not to be accused of ignoring the scholarship that does exist in this area, I acknowledge my debt to Margot Edwards and Mary Waldorf; to Judith Walzer Leavitt, to Barbara Katz Rothman, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Margarete Sandelowski, Deborah Sullivan and Rose Weitz, Judith Rooks and Richard and Dorothy Wertz (I can make my full bibliography available to those interested). I have been inspired by these histories, but they focused less on the women (childbirth educators) who were making history and more on the larger cultural shifts in beliefs about medicine, technology, women’s bodies and reproduction.

When childbirth education per se was a topic of inquiry, the research focus tended to be on the primary sources of the male physician champions – Grantly Dick-Read, whose work informed the natural birth movement, and Ferdinand Lamaze (and his US counterparts – Thank you Dr. Lamaze author Marjorie Karmel and Elisabeth Bing) who formulated a method for accomplishing unmedicated, awake and aware childbirth. However, most of this scholarship makes unsubstantiated generalizations about what particular childbirth educators (of various philosophies /organizations) believed, and how they taught. There is surprisingly little in the way of empirical research – few scholars interviewed childbirth educators or conducted systematic observation of their classes over time.

So after completing my dissertation on the emergence of the doula role, I had the great opportunity to continue with my research interest through a research grant from Lamaze International to conduct an ethnographic investigation of childbirth education, with my colleague, medical anthropologist Clarissa Hsu. We talked to educators, observed their classes and analyzed our data.

We found that educators who were actively practicing doulas drew heavily on their direct labor support experiences as authoritative resources for stories and examples that supplemented the material they taught. Actively practicing doulas also included more curricular content on early labor than educators without such experience. Having real births to draw upon provided doula-educators a different type of credibility and authority than educators without such current labor support experience. These educators relied on other mechanisms to establish their authority, such as knowledge of the latest research on birth and use of more authoritarian teaching styles.

We found that the intersection of doula practice and childbirth education has significantly affected how childbirth preparation classes are taught, and this new infusion of practice and ideology is worth exploring. I encourage you to explore this with us, and welcome your thoughts.

*Note: this column was originally posted on the Science & Sensibility blog.

For this month’s column, I had the pleasure of emailing with Chris Bobel, Ph.D. about her new book which deftly tackles a taboo topic.

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You explore new feminist activism that focuses on menstruation. Historically, how have feminists viewed menstruation, and why menstrual activism now?

The issue of menstruation has not been a top feminist priority, though, since at least the 1970s, a few bold feminists have recknoned with socio-cultural and political dimensions of the menstrual cycle. I argue that the menstrual taboo–which impacts us all, even feminists–often puts the issue off-limits. In mainstream culture, the only menstrual discourse that gets any play is making fun of women with PMS. I studied menstrual activists who want to widen and complicate the conversation. Menstrual activism is part of an enduring project of loosening the social control of women’s bodies, moving women’s bodies from object to subject status–something absolutely foundational to addressing a range of feminist issues, from human trafficking to eating disorders to sexual assault.

What do you think of Kotex’s new ad campaign “Break the Cycle,” which lampoons traditional menstrual product ads?

The new campaign could be a game change, but I’m doubtful. First, the campaign only works as long as the menstrual taboo persists; otherwise, their frank talk doesn’t stand out, does it? While I can join in the joke of the industry poking fun at itself–and I love the message of “no more shame”–in the end, it’s the same, just repackaged.

Second, I resent this campaign for exploiting shame to sell product for nearly a centuray and then exploiting THEIR overdue pronouncement–“enough with the euphemisms, and get over it”–to sell product.

Also, you’ve got to wonder if not only Kotex but their whole industry is now pulling out all the stops to try to hold onto its market share as menstrual suppression drugs–like Seasonique and Lybrel–are gaining interest.

So, what do you think of pharmaceutical industry arguments that support these menstrual suppressants?

Their quasi-feminist arguments co-opt feminism to push drugs. Big Pharma is marketing suppression as a ‘lifestyle choice’, but what most don’t realize is that “menstrual suppression” is actually cycle-stopping contraception that does not only reduce or eliminate menstrual bleeding but also suppresses the complex hormonal interplay of the menstrual cycle. We don’t yet have adequate data to really show if this is a safe long-term practice for otherwise healthy women. Check out this position statement.

Furthermore, ad campaigns represent the menstrual cycle as abnormal, obsolete, and even unhealthy. These messages underscore that women’s natural functions are defective, dysfunctional and need medical intervention. This can lead to negative body image, especially in young women. How is this feminist? ‘Choice’ without good, fact-based information based on thorough medical studies isn’t real choice, and a campaign that exploits women’s negative attitudes about their bodies isn’t feminist either.

Your work uses menstrual activism as an analytical lens through which to view continuity and change in the women’s movement, from what some call the “second wave” of feminism through the “third wave.” So, given that the ‘wave’ distinctions are not without controversy among feminists, what do you see as setting third wave feminism apart? Is it truly unique, or is it merely a label that recognizes the next generation?

There’s a lot of continuity between the waves–mostsly in the tactical sense. Today’s feminist blogs are yesterday’s zines, which reflect earlier mimeographed manifestos; radical cheerleading recalls street theater and public protests, like early second-wavers at the 1969 Miss America pageant. Second-wavers practiced what third-wavers call DIY (Do It Yourself) healthcare when they modeled pelvic self exams. But, most third-wavers depart from most (but not all) second-wavers by troubling the gender binary. For example, the radical wing of menstrual activism movements reers to “menstruators”, instead of assuming that everyone who menstruates gender-identifies as a woman.

Tell me more about that!

Most assume that a female-bodied person, with breasts and a vulva, is a woman, and usually that’s true. We also assume that menstruation is a near-universal experience for women. Radical menstruation activists question these assumptions. Menstruation is not and has never been EVERY woman’s experience. Women don’t menstruate for lots of reasons, and they don’t menstruate their whole lives. Also, some transmen and intersex people DO menstruate. So, equating menstruation with womanhood is problematic. Saying “menstruators” makes room for more people, more experiences. This linguistic move is boundary smashing, inclusion-in-action and bodes well for feminism’s future.

But, you’ve written that menstrual activists are not successful at all attempts at inclusion.

The first face of the feminist movement may have been white and middle class, but poor white women and women of color across the class spectrum have always been there, often toiling in relative obscurity. This could be the case with menstrual activism, too. However, I’m a white, privileged academic, and this biases my world view. I looked for women of color doing this work and found a few. But, was I looking in the right places? Was I using the right language? One activists of color said that I was likely missing Black women because I wasn’t clarifying how race and gender intersect in menstrual health. Also, menstrual activism is risky business for all, and especially for women of color, whose bodies have been denigrated throughout history. Taking on the menstrual taboo can make others see you as nasty, gross, improper…and if you’re already struggling to be accepted and taken seriously, then why go “there”?

Well, I and many other women’s health activists appreciate that you ‘went there’!

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For more on this topic and her research, check out Chris’s new book — New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation (Rutgers University Press, 2010), previewed in the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog and in a provocative article in the Guardian last fall.