Genius advice from a guy

I was so relieved to hear that Dr. Warren Farrell had come out with a book explaining why women don't earn as much as men. (Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- amd What Women Can Do About It.) I've been waiting for so long for someone, anyone, to clarify it for me, and finally Dr. Farrell came to the rescue.

I mean why didn't I just choose one of those high-paying jobs like engineer or pilot instead of becoming a librarian? Just because all the other male engineers and pilots didn't really want me, a girl, to join their ranks, that shouldn't have put me off. Geez, I should have just ignored all their put-downs and exclusions from important meetings and pass-overs for training and just gotten on with becoming "one of the guys."

And certainly I should have worked more hours, which would have been so easy, while I was juggling making dinner, picking up my husband's dirty laundry, arranging our social schedule, never mind getting our kids to and from day-care and spending enough time with them so they knew we were mom and dad, not exhausted aliens visiting with them for an hour or two every day. Guess I just need to find a can-opener to pry a few more hours from the day so I can advance my career and increase my pay-check.

Dr. Farrell, he's just so smart. He says I should get more training, take a "line" job (and I have so many of those being offered to me) , tolerate a job I can hate -- just one of those who boost my pay-check by miles. What a genius -- I bet he even belongs to MENSA.

I can't wait for his next book -- maybe it will be titled "How to Balance Work and Family: An Expert's 10-Step Guide." That will guarantee I'll become IBM's next CEO, I just know it!

Intellectual debate?

I've found the hub-bub over Harvard President Larry Summers's comments about women's abilities in science and math a bit amusing. In the latest articles, it appears that President Summers may enjoy fermenting conversation and dissent by suggesting women are biologically inferior in math and science -- however, he doesn't like dissent much himself. A bunch of Harvard professors were quoted in today's NYTimes about Summers' management style -- apparently when they try to dissent from his opinions in faculty meetings, he squelches their new and different ideas. What's good for this crimson goose isn't good for the gander.

Based on my own experience and research, I doubt that Summers's hypothesis is true but I'm actually happy it has stirred a discussion. There absolutely should be more research about why women haven't advanced further, faster in technical professions (and in many others too).

My bigger concern is that soon exactly that type of research is going to be compromised by a new Bush administration initiative. In July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects enough demographic data every year about American workers to fill a thick book, plans to stop collecting data for women workers. Apparently we've become too well-integrated into the economy and the collection of this information is too burdensome, so they're dropping us off the radar screen. They are going to replace this rigorous Labor Dept data with a less robust amalgamation of data about women -- women, again, being left with a lower standard.

The data that will no longer be collected includes information on how high women climb in technical fields, exactly the type of information required to prove or disprove Summers's theory.

Let's face it -- all the intellectual debate in the world, or even at Harvard, has zero value if the factual resources to explore it no longer exist.

Working together, not in sequence

I read David Brooks's January 15th NYTimes op-ed with interest: he posits an idea -- new to me -- to help address the seemingly insoluble conflict women face in balancing work and family. He suggests women should "sequence" their lives -- focus on marrying and having children in their twenties, then on graduate school and a career in their late thirties and beyond. He believes this would allow moms to spend time with their young children and then enjoy an uninterrupted career of, hopefully, continuing advancement while also, potentially, driving up the woefully low American birthrate. He, a bonafide Republican, even suggests the government should help finance it -- through tax or tuition credits for stay-at-home moms.

In some ways, it sounds smart -- offers a creative idea to address women's struggle to combine work and family, focuses on the problem of women holding off having children until their careers are stable but then regret their delay because they can't get pregnant at 40+, and acknowledges a government role in addressing the women/work challenge.

But in spite of its good points, overall I think women sequencing their careers is a bad idea. Why do women always have to be the flexible ones, make the changes to accommodate the workplace? Why can't the male executives in our societal institutions ever make the changes themselves -- truly revamp the workplace to accommodate a variety of models of work and embrace those changes so everyone feels comfortable taking advantage of them? And why can't male op-ed columnists write essays encouraging the workplace to change, not women?

As creative as it sounds, I envision this "sequencing" model as the next women's ghetto. When women who take advantage of it begin their careers in their forties, not only will they not have as much time to reach the pinnacles of organizations, but they will come with a nickname. They'll be called "sequencers," the women who prioritized something other than career first, meaning they will never be taken as seriously in their careers as their non-sequencing -- read: mostly male -- counterparts.

I say let all women, and men, get in the mix together, and let the workplace -- with our help -- figure out how to allow us all to lead meaningful work and home lives, simultaneously.

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.