2002-09-13 3:10 PM
Wracked With Guilt, I Spill to the Press
A reporter asked that the following be posted to a women's e-mail list I'm on. It manages to contain just about everything that I find annoying and off-base about most discussions of "women's issues" I've heard lately:
I am the workplace reporter at [one of the local rags], seeking help on a story that I hope to write soon. The topic: are today's moms choosing home over career? And if so, why? Are today's career women disillusioned with corporate America, climbing the corporate ladder? Has Sept. 11 changed the way women view work and family? Is it a backlash against the Baby Boom generation "I can have it all attitude?'' or simply a way for women to cope with a lack of quality, affordable childcare? Of course, I may be missing the point altogether. Perhaps there are other, more pressing issues that I should be paying attention to with regard to women and the workplace. If that's the case, I'd like to know that, too.
There are so many assumptions here that I have issues with that I don't even know where to start:
- The whole idea of "choosing home over career,"
wherein "home" means being the perfect brownie-baking,
furniture-dusting 50s Ubermom, "career" means being CEO,
and "choosing" means throwing yourself headlong in one
direction or the other and feeling hideously guilty about
whichever way you didn't go.
Since it's impossible to achieve both goals at the same time, the natural state of woman is supposed to be guilt-ridden (because she's trying to be both and, naturally, failing, since there aren't enough hours in the day for anyone to do both well). - The idea that that choice is solely the concern and
province of women. As Gloria Steinem is not nearly quoted
often enough as saying, "I have yet to hear a man ask for
advice on how to combine marriage and a career." It diminishes
both men and women to have women be the only ones who are
allowed to make decisions about whether, when and how to
raise children. (Note the unquestioned assumption that it's
women who need to "cope" with inadequate childcare, whether
they're partnered or not.)
- The idea that September 11 has caused women to value
"family" (read: school-aged children at home) over work.
Note that she asked if women's attitudes had changed,
not how they might have changed, and her follow-up
questions reveal that she already has a fixed idea of what
that change might be: that mothers are staying home with
their children more.
- The idea that housewives couldn't hack it in the corporate
world and are retreating to the "easier" world of raising kids,
and the corollary that "career women" (those without kids or
who don't spend most of their day raising kids) are selfish,
presumably because their careers couldn't possibly have any
benefit to their husbands or children and are so not worth
pursuing.
- "Woman" and "mother" used interchangeably -- either because
she assumes all women are or will be mothers, or because only
the opinions of mothers or future mothers are of concern to her.
- "Of course," the reporter says, naively, "I may be missing the
point altogether."
Hell yeah -- starting with whether, in this crummy economy, in an area that disproportionately benefited from the dot-com boom and is now disproportionately suffering from the dot-com bust, women even have a workplace.
Whether her husband, boyfriend or partner has a workplace either, which would be a necessary prerequisite to having a choice in the matter. (Of course, that's assuming there's someone else there who is willing and able to share the financial burden; for single mothers who have to fight for every dime of child support, a discussion of "choosing" to stay at home would be both a bit insulting and completely moot.)
Or how about whether employers are taking advantage of the sudden dearth of high-tech "women's jobs" such as marketing and web design to increase pay inequity even further? (Not that the techier "men's jobs" categories such as my own, sysadmin, are a lot better these days -- the jobs exist, but I've seen some salaries that are insultingly low.)
God, being cranky is tiring. I'm gonna go take a nap.