Linda Hirshman, I love you!
Q: Who is Hirshman, and what did she do to make me love her?
A: She stood up and spoke the truth – finally – about families, careers and the so called “work-life balance”.
Read the truth here
Clearly, crisply and eloquently, she told the world what it already ought to know but is doing it’s best to forget: The glass ceiling is still firmly in place, but it isn’t located in the workplace. It is located right here, at home.
The “work-life balance” (How I hate that term! As if work was not a part of life–the purpose of life, even!), Hirshman says, is just another term for keeping women out of positions of power. “I wonder what their concept of balance would be if they weren’t dragging around the full weight of the household. This isn’t about balance. It’s because they need more time to do tasks that are unjustly handed to them, or that they hand themselves because they believe in the gender ideology as much as their husbands do”
(Source: The Guardian, Saturday January 14, 2006)
Precisely! Isn’t this just what I have said all along? How infuriating it is to read endless accounts of the new “yummy mummy” trend, which apparently inspires young, educated mothers to ditch their careers (or, as they like to kid themselves, put them on the “back burner”). This new trend is put forward as evidence that a leopard never changes its spots, feminism was just a fad—when the pressure’s on, all women really want to do is make jam and take toddlers to Gymboree™ classes. Men can draw a sigh of relief–the free housekeeper is back and believe it or not, she is grateful for the opportunity to finally take off that power suit and go back to doing the school run in jam stained yoga pants.
No bloody wonder women can’t hack it! They may have been put on an equal footing with men in the workplace, but no-one ever did anything to remove their responsibilities in the home! Now, they are expected to hold down two jobs, and for years, they were supposed to be proud to be doing it, too! (Remember Superwoman?)
Anyway, Linda Hirshman is here and this time the world will listen. Not because there is anything magical about Hirshman–how many people had even heard her name before this highly publicised u-turn? No, the world will listen because the snowball is rolling, and it’s rolling fast. The word is out there, and in today’s world, when something is out there, it really is out there. No-one can get away, whether you agree or not. But can anyone disagree? Let me know if you do!
Thank you, Linda. Mwoa! Mwoa!
PS. It didn't snow! The weather is as unpredictable as ever, and I wish I could feel as upset about global warming as I should do.
About Me
- Give 'em enough rope
- Where am I?" "In the Village." "What do you want?" "Information." "Whose side are you on?" "That would be telling." "We want information. Information. Information!" "You won't get it." "By hook or by crook, we will." "Who are you?" "The new Number 2." "Who is Number 1?" "You are Number 6." "I am not a number — I am a free man!"
4 comments:
No-one can get away, whether you agree or not. But can anyone disagree? Let me know if you do!
Hi--Found you via Technorati. This will be a bit long because it always gets my train of thought moving. Here goes:
I agree and disagree. First off, it's funny because since I was 5 years old, I watched the children of working parents (which in the 80's usually meant absent parents) stay at day care until all hours and bully other children due to lack of discipline at home.
I said to my mom, "The problem with the women's movement is that instead of making Dad more like Mom, we pulled for two Dad's."
My dad always being absent (at work), I meant that it seemed like feminism was letting the men off the hook by telling Mom, "Just spend as many hours at work as he does--the kids will deal."
And the kids didn't deal, and the housework didn't get done.
Little did I know, even though I identify as conservative-moderate, I was agreeing with Gloria Steinem, who I think said the same thing--"women can do what men can do, but men also should learn to do what women can do." Therein lay the problem.
So I agree that the solution is not "daycare at 6 weeks, rush back to the office, and let the kids raise themselves," as was touted during the second wave. It's "Let both parents be more involved at home, if both parents want to earn an income." 2-income families do work, but compromise, teamwork, and involved parenting are necessary.
What I disagree with you on (and you might not even be saying this), is the idea that all women scale back their careers becasue the men aren't willing.
Self-disclosure here: My husband is not only a registered Republican (as am I) and former treasurer of his campus Young Americans for Freedom, but he comes from a culture stereotyped to be sexist (Asian).
But you'd never know it--I wake up every Saturday and the laundry and vacuuming are done. I prefer to clean the bathroom because I'm nitpicky about it, but he does everything else around the home that I do. And he swears that when we have a baby, he'll let me rest on weekends while he gets the kids up and fed--we'll see about the followthrough, but you know. ;-)
Yet, I will be staying home (hopefully telecommuting though!). Why? Because it is his job that is permanent and comes with benefits, and will ultimately pay more because he's commissioned. I'm a lowly contract worker (my company "can't afford" to put me or anyone on my team on the permanent payroll/benefits framework).
Part-time is not an option for him either--it'll reduce his sales numbers and get him fired (hazard of the trade). If I can work at home, I will continue to earn an income however.
If he stays home and I work, we will be buying our own insurance for us and the kids, as well as having less stability because I work through a staffing agency and could be canned at any time.
If I had the business degree and sales job and he were the contract worker, we'd probably switch.
Not true in all families, just putting it out there why some people might scale back careers that have nothing to do with gender issues. Unlike many conservatives, I don't believe that nurturing is female and providing is male, necessarily. I think whoever does it best, and can do it most practically, should do it. Sometimes that results in traditional gender roles; sometimes it doesn't.
Okay...enough jabbering from me for one day. Have a good one!
Thanks for your comment – it was very interesting to hear your views on this topic!
As you say, we are definitely in agreement on the point that the way forward is not to make two “traditional dads” and hope that the job of “traditional mom” will just sort itself out somehow.
I think this is really the core of what Hirshman is saying. The job is not sorting itself out, and women are returning to the home to take care of it. I am convinced that fathers would do the same thing, eventually, but as things stand we never really get to that point.
As for the point where we may not be in agreement, ie that some families choose a traditional division of labour not because of gender-pressure but because of things such as work related circumstances and personal disposition, I don’t think we’re in any great disagreement either. Perhaps my main objection would be that these work related circumstances and personal dispositions aren’t really random and unconnected to gender.
My argument would be that statistically, it's a lot more likely that it's a man and not a woman whose job is “permanent and comes with benefits”, “will ultimately pay more”, and where “part-time is not an option”. It is a lot more likely that if the woman stays at home rather than the man, the couple will have more money, greater stability, and generally a better life, period.
I believe that there are a whole host of reasons behind these differences, and those reasons are all to do with gender roles even if individuals like you and me (our situations sound pretty similar from what you are saying) don’t feel like they are being forced. Of course, we aren’t being forced, we are being conditioned.
To name but a few of those reasons: Women more often marry older men than vice versa, which means that the man is often more established in a career by the time they have children. The corporate environment is still very much geared towards traditionally male traits, which means that statistically, men will find it easier to stay put than women. Society still judges men more than women on what they do for a living, which puts more pressure on men to have a career and to keep it. Women still carry more of the responsibility for the potential cost to the children of her career – a man who does even a small share of child-rearing duties is hailed as a wonderful, “new man”, while a woman who doesn’t is seen as a bad mother. And so on.
But on the whole, I think we are generally in agreement. I look forward to reading your blog!
Ha ha ha - I have just had a quick browse of your blog and determined that we are probably in disagreement on more than I thought ;-)
But hey, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
It's cool. Always good to read stuff from both sides and keep an open mind, which we both seem to be doing.
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