Valuing work

The results of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' new survey of how American spend their time (http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm#news), which were announced this week, offered little new news. Working women get less sleep and spend more time cleaning the house and taking care of the kids vs. their male counterparts. Any one of us working mothers could have told you that.

I found the survey more interesting when I considered the message it sent about the value this society puts on paid work. The BLS separates "work" -- the kind of work you get paid for it -- and "caring for family members" and "housework" -- the kind of work you do for free. Of course, this is something feminsts have been complaining about for years, something that has spawned the politically correct question sprung whenever we meet a mother: "Do you work or do you work at home?

Perhaps if we looked at this work done at home, mostly by women, in a different way -- perhaps if those who do it were paid for it or at least made eligible for social security as Ann Crittenden suggests in The Price of Motherhood (www.anncrittenden.com) -- we would value it differently.

To some, I know this smacks of socialism, or at least of the ever expanding reach of big government. But if ALL work was given a measurable value, both the corporate decision-maker jobs that men have typically filled and the home management responsibilities that women have handled, our perceptions of their importance would be levelled. The importance of the cleaning and cooking and child rearing would be elevated, put on a relative par with those office jobs, increasing their attractiveness. This couldn't help but open more doors for women in the organized leadership positions of U.S. society while giving men a greater appreciation for the issues women have always cared about. It seems like we would be bound to come out with a fairer and more humane society as a result.

The emotional argument

Yesterday, while I was chatting with the Maine Public Radio reporter -- female, well-educated, well-respected, feminist -- who was interviewing me about my new book THE BELLWOMEN (see www.marjoriestockford.com), she made a comment I hate to hear, especially from someone like her. She senses that people, maybe even including herself, don't really care if women at the highest levels of companies are treated fairly in the workplace. I guess the thought goes, They're already making tons of money, who cares if they are making any more, the woman to worry about is down in the trenches being paid $1 less an hour than her male counterpart.

I get it, of course, at a certain level. Of course, the woman down in the trenches is in a much tougher spot, and she certainly deserves that buck an hour, it's going to mean a lot more to her than Ms. Junior Exec on the top floor of a Wall Street skyscraper. It's an emotional argument -- that lower class woman elicits our sympathy and, yes, our guilt, emotions that just aren't in play when we think of any top American executive.

But that's the whole problem with this debate about women's equality. It shouldn't be about emotions, it should be about fairness, about rights. The point isn't that Ms. Junior Exec is doing just fine for herself, it's that she's not being treated fairly. And until women are treated fairly, equally, in all aspects of American society, bottom, top and middle, we will never share power in making decisions and running the world we live in.

This isn't the only place where emotions or, better, soft and fuzzy words are used to undermine the feminst fight. Society loves to couch feminism in "choice" -- the accomplishments of feminists have given all women a choice: they can now choose to work or stay home, have a child or an abortion, vote or abstain. Of course, this is true, I enjoy these choices and am happy to have them. But it's a slippery slope -- if it's just a choice, it's optional, it's not written into law, it can be given or taken away. Factually, we know of course that we don't just have the choice to do these things, we have the legal right. But it makes everyone -- well, almost everyone -- feel so much more comfortable if they see it in those softer terms of choices. It's a feel good kind of thing, which is fine until those "choices" disappear or get compromised and there will be a lot of us who won't feel so good any more.

Inaugural

I've been hearing about blogs, thinking about blogs, for too long. Time for me to have my own blog. An opportunity to write, to try out ideas, to think things through on a computer screen.

I'm been obsessing about women's advancement in our society for years now -- all we want is to be considered competent, to be considered 100% Human, to share power with men in society. As a woman, in the new millennium, this feels like little to ask. But since we are still so far from this, from any of these things really, every day I am clearer that it is an uphill, perhaps unending, at least in my lifetime, battle.

But I battle on. And perhaps this little blog will help me do that.