Ok, so maybe I’m just catching up after being in la-la land for a few days, but I just saw that Lisa Belkin wrote a nice piece the other day called “The Feminine Critique,” in which she cites Catalyst’s recent report on the double-binds women in leadership face. I don’t quite agree with Vanessa at feministing’s take on this research and urge folks to read the actual report for more.
work/life
On the heels my post below on work/life, gender, and families, this just in: Council on Contemporary Families co-chair Steve Mintz sent me abstracts from the November 2007 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Families. Check out the following three tidbits. Now, why can’t we get more of this in the popular media convo about what’s really going on?
Title: College Women’s Plans for Different Types of Egalitarian Marriages (Francine M. Deutsch, Amy P. Kokot, and Katherine S. Binder)
This study examined college women’s plans for egalitarian marriages. One hundred and forty-four heterosexual undergraduate women completed surveys about their preferences for different life scenarios and their attitudes about work and family life. The pattern of their preferences showed a distinction between home-centered, balanced, and job-centered egalitarian families. Regressions showed that gender ideology, ideas about parenting and motherhood, career orientation, and family dynamics were associated differentially with the three types of egalitarian families, which reflected the different values that underlay the pursuit of each. The results also cast doubt on whether outsourcing is truly an egalitarian path. Outsourcing domestic labor may simply be a means for women to pursue careers without achieving real equality in families.
Title: Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty Among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites (Rebecca Glauber)
This study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 5,929) to analyze the moderating effects of race and marriage on the motherhood wage penalty. Fixed-effects models reveal that for Hispanic women, motherhood is not associated with a wage penalty. For African Americans, only married mothers with more than two children pay a wage penalty. For Whites, all married mothers pay a wage penalty, as do all never-married mothers and divorced mothers with one or two children. These findings imply that racial differences in the motherhood wage penalty persist even for women with similar marital statuses, and they suggest that patterns of racial stratification shape women’s family experiences and labor market outcomes.
Title: Parental Childrearing Attitudes as Correlates of Father Involvement During Infancy (Bridget M. Gaertner, Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, and Karissa A. Greving)
Using daily diary data to document involvement with infants at 6 – 8 months of age (n = 142) and 6 months later (n = 95), we examined relations between reported childrearing attitudes and resident fathers’ relative (as compared to mothers’) involvement with children. Fathers’ authoritarian views related negatively to their relative involvement on weekdays, and this relation held over time for caregiving and playing activities. Mothers’ protective attitudes had concurrent negative associations with fathers’ relative weekend involvement. Findings suggest that fathers’ authoritarian and mothers’ protective attitudes relate to how parenting responsibilities are shared within families and may be detrimental to how much fathers become, or choose to become, directly involved in the care of their infants in comparison to mothers.
I’m back. Thank you for all your warm wishes and kind thoughts yesterday. I was very touched and moved.
My belated grandmother was the director of a nursery school for 20 years. My other grandma (the grey haired one below, who turns 90 next week) was a head nurse who later worked at a Planned Parenthood-like clinic. I’ve always felt proud to have had what I’ve thought of as rather high-powered grandmothers. So last night at The New School-sponsored panel on Working Moms (with work/life all-stars Joan Williams, Linda Hirshman, Ellen Bravo, EJ Graff, Heather Boushey, Pam Stone), sitting in a row flanked by “next generation” feminists Jen Pozner, Kara Jesella, and Lisa Jervis, I had generations of women in mind. It seems so frustrating that after 40 years, as Ellen Bravo reminded us, we’re still waiting for families–or rather, the rigidly gendered dynamics of families–to change.
Is the solution to work/life conflict personal or is it political? This was one throughline of the discussion last night, with Williams and Bravo (and Stone) angling heavily for the structural, and Hirshman making a case for both. Another important throughline was class. And despite my fixation on the contemporary travels of the ole slogan (“The Personal Is Political”–which I write about a ton in Sisterhood, Interrupted) and my utter frustration that the popular convo remains narrowly focused on “trends” among the elite, my favorite part of the conversation was an extended digression on men. Why aren’t they involved in the work/life conversation? Why does it always have to be about women? Why did I just write “digression” instead of “centerpiece”? Because there’s a “frigid climate for fathers” at work, says Joan Williams. Men will pursue these roles when they stop being punished for it in the workplace. And maybe that’s when we’ll all start putting men at the center of the conversation, too. Chicken, egg? Or rather, chicken, sperm.
In any event, instead of summarizing, I thought I’d just share some memorable quips. Because these ladies all have a knack for rhetorical flair, I leave it in their words (and forgive me or correct me if I’ve mangled anything!):
Linda Hirshman defending the methodology behind her feisty, controversial book, Get to Work: “I am not Lisa Belkin. I didn’t decide there was an opt-out revolution and then go looking for the revolutionaries. I didn’t just call up my friends. And I didn’t expect to find what I found.”
Linda Hirshman on why it’s personal: “We can’t run away from the unjust family by focusing solely on the unjust workplace.”
Joan Williams on why it’s structural: “I think we’ve been waiting for 40 years for families to change. If we keep waiting, women will lose.”
Heather Boushey on the popularity of the opt-out narrative: “The media likes the women-are-heading-home story because it solves all our social policy problems–problems like family leave, child care, sick leave….The state continues to act as if all workers have a stay-at-home spouse to take care of the sicks, the sick, the elders.”
Heather Boushey on framing: “When men lose their jobs, we call it a recession. When women lose thir jobs, we say they wanted to go home and hang out with the kids.”
EJ Graff on “choice” rhetoric: “If women are getting pushed out of the workplace, why do they tell journalists ‘I chose to stay at home’? Because, as psychologists say, we want to want what we’ve got. It gives us a sense of control that we may not actually have.”
Ellen Bravo on, well, everything: “Family values generally stop at the workplace door.” “Sons and brothers would be better husbands and fathers if they did not get punished for it at work.” “We don’t want to smash glass ceilings. We want to redesign the building from the bottom up so that one doesn’t have to have a wife at home in order to succeed.”
And while I’m at it, did you know…
…that the U.S. has a steeper part-time penalty than many other countries? Part-time workers here earn 21% less/hour–and don’t have benefits. That’s 7 times less than part-timers in Sweden. I’m packing my bags. Who’s joining me?
As Ann over at feministing says, it’s like the work/life all-stars over at the New School tomorrow. Just a reminder to come hear the preeminent thinkers on women, work, motherhood, and the so-called “opt-out revolution”:
WORKING MOTHERS: WHO’S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
You’ve read the articles–and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track–or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence–while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families’ needs?
JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the “opt-out” storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.
Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It. The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.
More info here. I’m totally planning to go…
I’m late to posting today (meetings, meetings!) but I’ve got a good one for you. My friend Marci Alboher, author of the book pictured left, has launched a blog called Shifting Careers over at the New York Times. The tagline of the blog? “Smart thinking at work.” With Marci behind it, smart it will be for sure. Heck, already is. Check out this post, on why the best-places-to-work for women lists matters. Or this one, on what Marci did when the Times designed a logo for her featuring a man. Or this one, on her writing mentor Susan Shapiro and how to be a good mentee. See what I’m sayin? This blog has become my new must-read. Do check it out, and if you like it, post comments and send Marci some love.
Sometimes there is just too much panel goodness going on in this town. I am SO going to this one. Join me?!
Tuesday, October 16, 7:00 p.m.
Wollman Hall
65 West 11th Street, 5th Floor
Admission: $8
Are increasing numbers of elite women voluntarily opting out of serious careers thereby betraying feminism, stalling their own development, and gambling with their own and their children’s economic futures? Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher at Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University. Panelists include Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University California at Hastings; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On The Big Boys: Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation and Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University. Sponsored by the Wolfson Center for National Affairs.
(Thanks to Anthony Deen for the heads up.)
In response to Sunday’s New York Times article featuring women in their 20s who outearn their dates and feel awkward about it, the Wall Street Journal’s “Juggle” now asks:
Have other professionals out there faced awkwardness when one person earns far more than other? Or can love trump those kind of differences?
The comments are sooo very interesting.
Meanwhile, according to a new Accenture study, an overwhelming majority of working mothers say that if there were no obstacles, they would continue working. Here’s the deal:
In an online survey of more than 700 working mothers in mid- to senior-level management positions, nearly 90 percent of the respondents reported that, if there were no obstacles, they would work either full-time, part-time or under a flex-time arrangement (reported by 31 percent, 26 percent and 33 percent of respondents, respectively). Just 11 percent said they would not work at all.
Take that ye opt-out-disaster headlines! Read more more here.
(Thanks to the Amazing Laura Sabatinni for the links. Photo cred.)
The gals are catching up. Though I’m curious to learn more about *which* gals and *which* professions. In case you missed it, the New York Times reports today on a “historic” reversal:
For the first time, women in their 20s who work full time in several American cities — New York, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis — are earning higher wages than men in the same age range, according to a recent analysis of 2005 census data by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York….The median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men….Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38 percent of men.
How long before we start with the “Girls-are-taking-over!” and “What-about-the-boys!” headlines? I’m guessing a New York minute.
Regardless, as Jessica rightly picks up on over at feministing today, the article’s slant on the whole thing is rather, how do you say, annoying. The basic message? Beware the young woman with the earning power. Men in their 20s are running scared!
Last week two of my favorite “career” writers, New York Times career columnist and author of One Person/Multiple Careers Marci Alboher and Cali Williams Yost (of Work+Life Fit blog) joined Eve Tahmincioglu and Feminine Mistake author Leslie Bennetts on the Lime channel of Sirius radio for a conversation about women in the workplace. Karen Salmansohn hosted. You can listen to the podcast here.
Marci (pictured left) also had a great column in the Times the other week on worklife blur, called “Blurring by Choice and Passion.” Today, Cali is live-blogging from the Alfred P. Sloan/AWLP Flexibility Retreat out in Park City, Utah. Both Marci and Cali generally pontificate about “work/life” in fresh and interesting ways. If you’re looking for new and well-informed thinking on a not-so-new topic, these gals have got the goods.
Phewph! After spending part of today conversing with Anonymous in the comments section at Broadsheet (love the broads over there!), I’m back here at Girl with Pen. A few quickie updates about two fellow crossover-y types I adore:
Megan Pincus Kajitani, who has participated as a story editor for the forthcoming Daring Book for Girls, has also started a really interesting blog project called Having Enough. Megan asked me to answer 4 questions about having enough in a having-it-all (and never enough) world. Our interview is up now, here. Thank you, Megan, for making me think!
One thing one can never have enough of, of course, is lunch with fine feminists. I’m taking time out tomorrow for lunch with Alison Piepmeier, English/Women’s Studies prof extraordinaire down in South Carolina, coeditor of Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, and girl with excellent hair. Alison is one of my early bloggy mentors, and for that I’m forever grateful. In tribute, I stole (er, shall we say, borrowed?) the title of this post from her.
On the heels my post below on work/life, gender, and families, this just in: Council on Contemporary Families co-chair Steve Mintz sent me abstracts from the November 2007 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Families. Check out the following three tidbits. Now, why can’t we get more of this in the popular media convo about what’s really going on?
Title: College Women’s Plans for Different Types of Egalitarian Marriages (Francine M. Deutsch, Amy P. Kokot, and Katherine S. Binder)
This study examined college women’s plans for egalitarian marriages. One hundred and forty-four heterosexual undergraduate women completed surveys about their preferences for different life scenarios and their attitudes about work and family life. The pattern of their preferences showed a distinction between home-centered, balanced, and job-centered egalitarian families. Regressions showed that gender ideology, ideas about parenting and motherhood, career orientation, and family dynamics were associated differentially with the three types of egalitarian families, which reflected the different values that underlay the pursuit of each. The results also cast doubt on whether outsourcing is truly an egalitarian path. Outsourcing domestic labor may simply be a means for women to pursue careers without achieving real equality in families.
Title: Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty Among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites (Rebecca Glauber)
This study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 5,929) to analyze the moderating effects of race and marriage on the motherhood wage penalty. Fixed-effects models reveal that for Hispanic women, motherhood is not associated with a wage penalty. For African Americans, only married mothers with more than two children pay a wage penalty. For Whites, all married mothers pay a wage penalty, as do all never-married mothers and divorced mothers with one or two children. These findings imply that racial differences in the motherhood wage penalty persist even for women with similar marital statuses, and they suggest that patterns of racial stratification shape women’s family experiences and labor market outcomes.
Title: Parental Childrearing Attitudes as Correlates of Father Involvement During Infancy (Bridget M. Gaertner, Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, and Karissa A. Greving)
Using daily diary data to document involvement with infants at 6 – 8 months of age (n = 142) and 6 months later (n = 95), we examined relations between reported childrearing attitudes and resident fathers’ relative (as compared to mothers’) involvement with children. Fathers’ authoritarian views related negatively to their relative involvement on weekdays, and this relation held over time for caregiving and playing activities. Mothers’ protective attitudes had concurrent negative associations with fathers’ relative weekend involvement. Findings suggest that fathers’ authoritarian and mothers’ protective attitudes relate to how parenting responsibilities are shared within families and may be detrimental to how much fathers become, or choose to become, directly involved in the care of their infants in comparison to mothers.
I’m back. Thank you for all your warm wishes and kind thoughts yesterday. I was very touched and moved.
My belated grandmother was the director of a nursery school for 20 years. My other grandma (the grey haired one below, who turns 90 next week) was a head nurse who later worked at a Planned Parenthood-like clinic. I’ve always felt proud to have had what I’ve thought of as rather high-powered grandmothers. So last night at The New School-sponsored panel on Working Moms (with work/life all-stars Joan Williams, Linda Hirshman, Ellen Bravo, EJ Graff, Heather Boushey, Pam Stone), sitting in a row flanked by “next generation” feminists Jen Pozner, Kara Jesella, and Lisa Jervis, I had generations of women in mind. It seems so frustrating that after 40 years, as Ellen Bravo reminded us, we’re still waiting for families–or rather, the rigidly gendered dynamics of families–to change.
Is the solution to work/life conflict personal or is it political? This was one throughline of the discussion last night, with Williams and Bravo (and Stone) angling heavily for the structural, and Hirshman making a case for both. Another important throughline was class. And despite my fixation on the contemporary travels of the ole slogan (“The Personal Is Political”–which I write about a ton in Sisterhood, Interrupted) and my utter frustration that the popular convo remains narrowly focused on “trends” among the elite, my favorite part of the conversation was an extended digression on men. Why aren’t they involved in the work/life conversation? Why does it always have to be about women? Why did I just write “digression” instead of “centerpiece”? Because there’s a “frigid climate for fathers” at work, says Joan Williams. Men will pursue these roles when they stop being punished for it in the workplace. And maybe that’s when we’ll all start putting men at the center of the conversation, too. Chicken, egg? Or rather, chicken, sperm.
In any event, instead of summarizing, I thought I’d just share some memorable quips. Because these ladies all have a knack for rhetorical flair, I leave it in their words (and forgive me or correct me if I’ve mangled anything!):
Linda Hirshman defending the methodology behind her feisty, controversial book, Get to Work: “I am not Lisa Belkin. I didn’t decide there was an opt-out revolution and then go looking for the revolutionaries. I didn’t just call up my friends. And I didn’t expect to find what I found.”
Linda Hirshman on why it’s personal: “We can’t run away from the unjust family by focusing solely on the unjust workplace.”
Joan Williams on why it’s structural: “I think we’ve been waiting for 40 years for families to change. If we keep waiting, women will lose.”
Heather Boushey on the popularity of the opt-out narrative: “The media likes the women-are-heading-home story because it solves all our social policy problems–problems like family leave, child care, sick leave….The state continues to act as if all workers have a stay-at-home spouse to take care of the sicks, the sick, the elders.”
Heather Boushey on framing: “When men lose their jobs, we call it a recession. When women lose thir jobs, we say they wanted to go home and hang out with the kids.”
EJ Graff on “choice” rhetoric: “If women are getting pushed out of the workplace, why do they tell journalists ‘I chose to stay at home’? Because, as psychologists say, we want to want what we’ve got. It gives us a sense of control that we may not actually have.”
Ellen Bravo on, well, everything: “Family values generally stop at the workplace door.” “Sons and brothers would be better husbands and fathers if they did not get punished for it at work.” “We don’t want to smash glass ceilings. We want to redesign the building from the bottom up so that one doesn’t have to have a wife at home in order to succeed.”
And while I’m at it, did you know…
…that the U.S. has a steeper part-time penalty than many other countries? Part-time workers here earn 21% less/hour–and don’t have benefits. That’s 7 times less than part-timers in Sweden. I’m packing my bags. Who’s joining me?
As Ann over at feministing says, it’s like the work/life all-stars over at the New School tomorrow. Just a reminder to come hear the preeminent thinkers on women, work, motherhood, and the so-called “opt-out revolution”:
WORKING MOTHERS: WHO’S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
You’ve read the articles–and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track–or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence–while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families’ needs?
JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the “opt-out” storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.
Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It. The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.
More info here. I’m totally planning to go…
I’m late to posting today (meetings, meetings!) but I’ve got a good one for you. My friend Marci Alboher, author of the book pictured left, has launched a blog called Shifting Careers over at the New York Times. The tagline of the blog? “Smart thinking at work.” With Marci behind it, smart it will be for sure. Heck, already is. Check out this post, on why the best-places-to-work for women lists matters. Or this one, on what Marci did when the Times designed a logo for her featuring a man. Or this one, on her writing mentor Susan Shapiro and how to be a good mentee. See what I’m sayin? This blog has become my new must-read. Do check it out, and if you like it, post comments and send Marci some love.
Sometimes there is just too much panel goodness going on in this town. I am SO going to this one. Join me?!
Tuesday, October 16, 7:00 p.m.
Wollman Hall
65 West 11th Street, 5th Floor
Admission: $8
Are increasing numbers of elite women voluntarily opting out of serious careers thereby betraying feminism, stalling their own development, and gambling with their own and their children’s economic futures? Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher at Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University. Panelists include Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University California at Hastings; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On The Big Boys: Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation and Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University. Sponsored by the Wolfson Center for National Affairs.
(Thanks to Anthony Deen for the heads up.)
In response to Sunday’s New York Times article featuring women in their 20s who outearn their dates and feel awkward about it, the Wall Street Journal’s “Juggle” now asks:
Have other professionals out there faced awkwardness when one person earns far more than other? Or can love trump those kind of differences?
The comments are sooo very interesting.
Meanwhile, according to a new Accenture study, an overwhelming majority of working mothers say that if there were no obstacles, they would continue working. Here’s the deal:
In an online survey of more than 700 working mothers in mid- to senior-level management positions, nearly 90 percent of the respondents reported that, if there were no obstacles, they would work either full-time, part-time or under a flex-time arrangement (reported by 31 percent, 26 percent and 33 percent of respondents, respectively). Just 11 percent said they would not work at all.
Take that ye opt-out-disaster headlines! Read more more here.
(Thanks to the Amazing Laura Sabatinni for the links. Photo cred.)
The gals are catching up. Though I’m curious to learn more about *which* gals and *which* professions. In case you missed it, the New York Times reports today on a “historic” reversal:
For the first time, women in their 20s who work full time in several American cities — New York, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis — are earning higher wages than men in the same age range, according to a recent analysis of 2005 census data by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York….The median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men….Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38 percent of men.
How long before we start with the “Girls-are-taking-over!” and “What-about-the-boys!” headlines? I’m guessing a New York minute.
Regardless, as Jessica rightly picks up on over at feministing today, the article’s slant on the whole thing is rather, how do you say, annoying. The basic message? Beware the young woman with the earning power. Men in their 20s are running scared!
Last week two of my favorite “career” writers, New York Times career columnist and author of One Person/Multiple Careers Marci Alboher and Cali Williams Yost (of Work+Life Fit blog) joined Eve Tahmincioglu and Feminine Mistake author Leslie Bennetts on the Lime channel of Sirius radio for a conversation about women in the workplace. Karen Salmansohn hosted. You can listen to the podcast here.
Marci (pictured left) also had a great column in the Times the other week on worklife blur, called “Blurring by Choice and Passion.” Today, Cali is live-blogging from the Alfred P. Sloan/AWLP Flexibility Retreat out in Park City, Utah. Both Marci and Cali generally pontificate about “work/life” in fresh and interesting ways. If you’re looking for new and well-informed thinking on a not-so-new topic, these gals have got the goods.
Phewph! After spending part of today conversing with Anonymous in the comments section at Broadsheet (love the broads over there!), I’m back here at Girl with Pen. A few quickie updates about two fellow crossover-y types I adore:
Megan Pincus Kajitani, who has participated as a story editor for the forthcoming Daring Book for Girls, has also started a really interesting blog project called Having Enough. Megan asked me to answer 4 questions about having enough in a having-it-all (and never enough) world. Our interview is up now, here. Thank you, Megan, for making me think!
One thing one can never have enough of, of course, is lunch with fine feminists. I’m taking time out tomorrow for lunch with Alison Piepmeier, English/Women’s Studies prof extraordinaire down in South Carolina, coeditor of Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, and girl with excellent hair. Alison is one of my early bloggy mentors, and for that I’m forever grateful. In tribute, I stole (er, shall we say, borrowed?) the title of this post from her.
