The articles begins...
THIS week is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s international best seller, “The Feminine Mystique,” which has been widely credited with igniting the women’s movement of the 1960s.And it gives us some depressing stats:
Between 1994 and 2004, the percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model actually rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of full-time working mothers who said they would prefer to work part time increased to 60 percent from 48 percent. In 1997, a quarter of stay-at-home mothers said full-time work would be ideal. By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full time.Finally, in recent years, I've started to stop paying attention to comments because they've become so awful, but you may want to read over some of them and see what you think...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-gender-equality-stalled.html?smid=pl-share
I've always found this topic really interesting since woman are always criticized for leaving their children in day cares and working. For many years now even in my culture woman are told that they must out their careers on hold in order to take care of their children until they go into grade school, But the funny thing about this is that woman who do this often stay at home and do not go back into the work force or have another child in between this time. I hate the fact that many women are pressured to feel guilty because they want to better their lives and not stay at home.. I mean what happens to these mothers who do not have a choice but to work full time because their husbands have walked out of their lives? they have to work in order to support their families but even they are judged.
ReplyDeleteProfessor, this article was so enlightening to me-- thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI found a few things especially interesting:
"The sociologist Pamela Stone studied a group of mothers who had made these decisions. Typically, she found, they phrased their decision in terms of a preference. But when they explained their “decision-making process,” it became clear that most had made the “choice” to quit work only as a last resort — when they could not get the flexible hours or part-time work they wanted, when their husbands would not or could not cut back their hours, and when they began to feel that their employers were hostile to their concerns. Under those conditions, Professor Stone notes, what was really a workplace problem for families became a private problem for women.
and here...
......When you can’t change what’s bothering you, one typical response is to convince yourself that it doesn’t actually bother you. So couples often create a family myth about why they made these choices, why it has turned out for the best, and why they are still equal in their hearts even if they are not sharing the kind of life they first envisioned."
Wow! How true is that last part? It's hard for me to express a well thought out opinion on this, but I agree with this articles argument that we have hit a wall in human rights development, specifically regarding family friendly / work/life balance. I've always thought that 40+ hours in a week seems so outdated, and that we as a nation haven't quite gotten ourselves on our feet with equal distribution of child care between partners, and it makes sense that the jobs we have are holding us back from developing.....
"Women are still paid less than men at every educational level and in every job category. They are less likely than men to hold jobs that offer flexibility or family-friendly benefits. When they become mothers, they face more scrutiny and prejudice on the job than fathers do."
ReplyDeleteThis passage jumped out at me. It's SO ironic that women, who have to carry children for nine months and deal with significant changes even afterwards, aren't shown more respect for that role. Instead, we're scrutinized because we're biologically built to birth children and need time off as a result. I'm in no way downplaying a man's role of course, but they don't seem to have the problem of family-friendly flexibility on their jobs. Why, in this day and age, don't women have more of the same flexibility? I guess much hasn't changed after all.