work/life

Two news items this afternoon on women, work, and life:

Women Have Another Who Understands
8/28/08 Denver Post: Hours before Michelle Obama’s big speech, she watched the “Cosby Show” cast reunited on Oprah to discuss how their sitcom gave the country its first glimpse at an educated, career-oriented black mom. “Americans didn’t believe there were black families with two professionals,” Michelle Obama says. “Sometimes, I feel that people don’t believe I exist.” After her speech, it would be tough not to believe in the authenticity of Michelle Obama. And after talking with her the next morning, I’m struck by how far we’ve come since 1992 when Hillary Rodham Clinton dissed half the women in America by saying, “You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies.” Obama gets the complicated tug….Read the rest

And an odd yet slightly interesting little item on housework:

Women Might Like Being Housewives, But Not Every Day
8/28/08, Telegraph, UK: Feminists got it wrong. Women don’t want to be bread-winners; they want to stay at home and bake bread. This, at least, is the view of The Yorkshire Building Society, that well known repository of expertise on gender psychology/publicity-mongering. The key element to all of this is choice. Scrubbing floors has a therapeutic value as a contrast to a week of sedentary desk-based toil; compulsion would take the shine off, in more ways than one…Read the rest

NCRW Panel on Corporate and Academic Diversity – Post#2

Moderator Ana Duarte McCarthy (pictured) leads the next bit of the session by noting that less than 3% of senior management and corporate officers are people of color. The numbers for women are extremely low. What is it that isn’t working? And what can we do about it?

Melinda Wolfe responds: “Until organizations recognize that women bear children and are primarily the caretakers for them, there will continue to be barriers for women to move up. Some women might come off the track; there are times when women take the scenic route but want to get back on and make a difference, but our systems don’t allow that. There are still huge underlying unconscious bias factors that go on in these institutions, that without critical mass, will continue. In some ways we’re at a dangerous inflection point, in that there are now more people who’ve heard about diversity and think that they get it. But they don’t. Because they think that they get it, their behaviors are more insidious.”

Anne Erni responds: “Several years ago, several of us worked with Sylvia Ann Hewlett on her Brain Drain study. We found that nearly 43% of women in corporations want to step off the track for a while, and 93% of them want to get back on. But less than half are successful in finding fulfilling fulltime roles. So some firms created models, like Lehman’s Encore program, to address. It’s been successful. The key is getting men to empathize. Many of these guys marry women on the Street [Wall Street, that is – GWP], so they are more likely to get it. There were also incentives: people would get paid for referring women who wanted to on-ramp.”

Ah, how money talks. Poignant conversation about race going on next. A woman from the audience comments that she’s often the only African American student in the room. How do we move past that? Rosemary Cocetti shares a personal story about her son, who is an athlete, and a great writer, and who experienced straight out racism at college. His professor didn’t believe that a paper he submitted was his. Ironic, given that Cocetti is the diversity officer on campus. Actually, less ironic, more telling of how far we have to go. On the corporate front, how do coworkers deal with it the first time they see a colleague wearing a head scarf? The dilemma of being the first.

Stomachs are rumbling and the panel is wrapping up. A question asked earlier by Meryl Kaynard, Lehman Brothers, who is sitting next to me, has yet to be addressed. Rats, as this was my question too. The question: What’s going on in terms of Generations X and Y? And I want to know: to what extent does the comfort with a more global community–the one in which we’ve come of professional age–shape our expectations for inclusion here at home?

Ok, signing off now. Fear of carpel tunnel kicking in!

This is why I love CCF, which I blog about here a lot because they’re just such darn good providers in the knowledge business. This week they’re issuing a press release on the importance of a time use survey, with contemporary spin and flair–and an important message with policy application: “Save ATUS.” What’s ATUS you ask? Here’s a sneak peak at the release, courtesy of Virginia Rutter, who just sent it to me. Feel free to pass it on!:

Making Time for Work and Family: Got Data?

For Family Social Scientists, the American Time Use Survey Provides Valuable Information on Work, Family, and How We Endure the Conflict between the Two

June 4, 2008 Chicago Il —- Mothers do more paid work—14 hours more—than they did 40 years ago. They do less housework—exactly 14 hours fewer—too. But they do 4 hours more of childcare than in the past. How do we know? Suzanne Bianchi, University of Maryland sociologist, and her colleagues used the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a time diary study that has been collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 2003.

Dads are stepping up in new ways too. Men have steadily increased their participation in housework and child care over the past 30 years. And contrary to claims of some earlier studies, dads who work less than full-time don’t use their extra time just to watch TV. Part-time worker dads do more housework (about an hour more) than full-time worker dads, and about 40 minutes more childcare. We know about these changes thanks to forthcoming work from Liana Sayer (Ohio State University) and Sanjiv Gupta (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in which they analyzed the 2003-2005 ATUS.

But if women have given up 14 hours a week of housework and taken on 14 more hours of paid work, what else have they given up to put in 4 more hours of childcare? Here the news may be less rosy. It appears that social bonding with spouse, kin, and friends is being sacrificed to the higher standards for time with children. Bianchi and colleagues’ analysis of the ATUS reveals that, compared to 20 years ago, married working moms now spend less time with their spouse—while single moms spend less time with friends and family.

SCIENCE HELPS US KEEP UP WITH SOCIAL CHANGE
These facts illustrate the on-going revolution in how Americans spend their time—what they do at work, how men and women organize family schedules, and how children and teens spend their days. To understand changes in family life and to guide policy makers—and families themselves—about the best ways to adjust to new patterns of work and parenting, researchers collect such information. This in turn becomes the basis for news stories, advice columns and television programs that citizens rely on—and are hungry for.

The American Time Use Survey is one of those key resources. (For more information on ATUS visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm and www.saveatus.org.) As researcher Bianchi explains, “ATUS provides essential information about how Americans spend their time—time spent caring for children, cleaning the house, working for pay, and caring for sick adults.” We all rely on these jobs being done in order to keep our society running well: but it is vital for us to know how, when, and by whom they are done in our changing social world.

“The Council on Contemporary Families uses this kind of scientific research in order to understand the complex and changing dynamics of the family,” reports Evergreen State College Professor Stephanie Coontz, CCF’s Director of Research and Public Education. “Many CCF briefing papers and fact sheets rely on data from the time-use studies.” (A host of examples are at http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/briefpapers.php.)

“The complexity of coordinating families’ work and school schedules with the need for health care, down time, cultivation of intimacy, and everyday chores presents new challenges to couples, parents, and children in the way they spend their days,” explains Coontz. “Changes in time use help us understand how families cope with modern stresses–and also what happens when they cannot cope. Right now, the economy is slowing down, but many families find themselves speeding up. Unless we keep on top of these changes, we cannot analyze what kinds of practical support and information families need. Making sure that the data continue to be collected is an issue that cuts across partisan divisions, uniting family researchers from many different points of view.”

For further information on the American Time Use Survey, visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm.

WELL DONE, CCF!

The Mama PhD gals have started their blogging over at Inside Higher Ed–and what interesting timing. Turns out two new studies suggest that academe may hinder parenthood, and that as a result many female academics may be opting not to have kids. Watch for the Mama PhD anthology in July.

According to the Families and Work Institute’s 2008 National Study of Employers, employers with more ethnic and racial minorities in top and senior level positions–and nonprofits organizations–are more likely to offer flexible workplaces, caregiving leaves, child and elder care assistance, and health care/economic security benefits.

This national study of employers with 50 or more employees is the largest and most comprehensive study of the programs, policies, and benefits designed to respond to the changing workforce. The report includes this interesting tidbit related to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA): 22% of employers offer more than the 12 weeks of mandated maternity leave, yet 18 to 21% of all employers surveyed appear to be out of compliance with FMLA.

For more, you can download the report at www.familiesandwork.org.

Lately I’ve heard the term “diversity fatigue” used to describe a) the genuine frustration that diversity programs at corporations haven’t made more progress, and b) the eye-rolling backlash against affirmative action.

Offering a fresher take, there’s a great post over at the NYTimes blog Shifting Careers called “Diversity at Work: More than Just Numbers” in which Marci Alboher interviews Natalie Holder-Winfield, an employment lawyer turned diversity consultant and author of Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce. The book, says Marci, is “a well-researched and eye-opening account of why minority employees flee workplaces even when employers have so-called diversity programs in place.”

Based on interviews with professionals from various backgrounds, Holder-Winfield seeks to provide managers, employees, and students with advice for navigating the overlay issues of cultural and generational diversity. The book looks great, but from a “making it pop” perspective, I kind of wish it had a catchier title. This one would be hard. I’m coming up dry. Which is probably why they went with the title they did?!

Read excerpts from the interview here.

The economy may be Issue No. 1, but what do working women have to say about it all?

The leading labor-rights organization, the AFL-CIO, and its community partner, Working America, are collecting data online for their Ask a Working Woman survey between now and June 20. The survey is a chance for working women to tell decision-makers what it’s like to be a working woman in America in election years. It’s open to all. They want to hear what working women need – health care, pension benefits, flex time? – to make the crazy juggling act that is working womanhood easier.

Findings will be announced to decision makers and released in nationwide media in order to highlight and help improve the status of the working mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, nieces, you get the picture. In 2006, more than 22,000 working American women took the survey. I hope in 2008 they get even more.

There’s more background information about the survey available on the AFL-CIO News Blog.

Caroline Grant, coeditor of the forthcoming anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, just gave me the heads up that InsideHigherEd.com is launching a new Mama PhD blog, and seven of the book’s contributors — Libby Gruner, Megan Kajitani, Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell, Anjalee Nadkarni and Della Fenster — will be blogging regularly for them. As Caroline notes, “This is a terrific opportunity to bring the discussion of academic work/ family life balance issues out of the book, into the blogosphere and from there into classrooms and campus administrative offices.” Hells yeah.

Megan, of the very cool blog Having Enough, will be writing a weekly advice column. For more on everything, check out the book’s website here. And congrats, you Mama PhD powerhouses out there! I’ll be sure to blog more about the book in this space when it comes out.

Well, today is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, an event I’ve long thought a brilliant conception–especially when it used to be just for girls. But I get it, I get it, esp. when it’s a case of boys seeing Mommy at Work. According to the official literature, the day is designed to be more than a career day:

For over 15 years, the program’s development of new, interactive activities and partnerships has helped us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.

This year’s program theme, “Making Choices for a Better World,” centers on “encouraging girls and boys to consider the options they have and make choices for a better world. This means making choices to serve the community and one’s family, to care for one’s body and health, and to make better choices that impact our environment, as well as one’s future.”

Cool. And how can you argue with that. But still, I can’t help but feel the language lost something in the translation from daughters to daughters and sons–and you know what an advocate I am for including boys/men in the feminist conversation.

Helaine Olen (co-author of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job and a contributor to the forthcoming book The Maternal Is Political) has a different bone to pick, and I’m not sure how I feel about her critique. Helaine rails against it in a piece in Newsday, writing:

If the past is any guide, several million children nationwide will accompany their parents to work today, participating in the annual rite of spring known as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Moms and dads across the United States will allow their kids to play in their offices, running through cube farms and “assisting” at cash registers, all in the name of breaking down the mystique that exists between work and family.

Yet in a world of home offices, moms on the playground taking business calls by cell phone, and dads answering queries on their BlackBerries at school events, it’s quite likely that children are all too aware of the importance of paid employment to their parents. What they really need is a lesson in the value of taking time to kick back and relax.

She goes on to call for an official event to teach America’s children about the importance of downtime, concluding: “We can call it Let Your Daughters and Sons See Mom and Dad Do Absolutely Nothing Day. Any takers?”

Now, I’m not a parent (yet) so maybe I’m off kilter here. But I still think the event is a good idea. What do y’all think – especially you parents out there? Is it a good thing, or a pain? Did it lose something in the translation when it switched to include boys? What’s been the experience of folks who’ve done it?

If I had a kid and I took them to work today, they’d be spending the entire day in Starbucks, watching mommy type. Thrilling, no doubt.

The Guardian has a great piece up today by Polly Toynbee, “Girlification is Destroying All the Hope We Felt in 1968.” By “girlification,” Toynbee means pink princessification. I love neologisms on a Tuesday morning.

The article comes on the heels of an announcement from the UK’s Office for National Statistics yesterday, which reported that UK women in their 40s earn 20% less per hour than their male counterparts. Explains Toynbee, “This is the motherhood penalty – and the more children a woman has, the wider the gap. Young women start out earning almost the same, deluded by beating boys at exams. Motherhood knocks most out of the running.”

The piece goes on to ask, “so, what’s new?,” noting that 2008 is a year for reflection for her generation of women (aka second wave): “What happened in 1968? What really changed? The year of riots saw feminism ignite too, a year hazed in an illusory miasma that nothing would be the same again – but of course it was.”

Depressing. But just in case you aren’t depressed enough, Toynbee reminds us too that only 24% of parliamentary seats in the EU are occupied by women, 20% in the UK; and that 90% of top EU company boards are men. Women dominate primary school teaching, men run universities. The UK has the largest pay gap.

On the upside, Spain’s new cabinet is 50% female. GO SPAIN! And for more on the connection between pinkification and the mommy gap, read the rest here.