A Tale of Two Workplaces
People keep proposing to change the paid workplace to make it easier for women to do both mothering and waged labor. It all sounds so appealing – months of paid maternity leave, part time work with full benefits. America’s current maternal policies are like something from an obscure third world country. Lesotho. Totally missing from the happy discussion is the cost. Not to the employers, the cost to the women. The work/family story is not a tale of one workplace. It is the tale of two workplaces.
Imagine a young woman, let us call her Betty.
She has graduated from school and is starting to work, marrying her sweetheart, and hopes to have children. She is about to start her two jobs. In the market economy, she will work forty hours a week, next to a man working forty hours a week, and, at the entry level at least, they will be paid the same hourly rate. In the home workplace she will work twice as many hours as her male coworker, aka her husband, at housekeeping and at least one-third again as many hours on childrearing, should they have children. They will divide the product – a nice home, children attended – evenly. The result? Every hour hubby works at home “pays” him almost twice what it does her.
Not surprisingly, working at home almost twice as hard, Betty is struggling to keep up in her public job, where she gets paid for what she does, just like the guys do. She is not willing to take on the unjust family, but she is willing to make more demands of her boss to get some relief. She is joined in this strategy by a growing number of online mothers’ movements and bloggers. If the boss does what Betty and the other moms rising and moving and mojoing ask, she will have less time at the equally paid job and more time to spend in the inequitable family. And this is regarded as progress?
I am always leery when, as here, the discussion includes “information” that is weirdly false. People keep saying that the work/family issue is pressing, because women can’t afford to just bail on paid work, but the Bureau of Labor Satistics keeps saying they are opting out. Reporters refer to an intolerable eighty hour week, but real statistics reveal that only 30% even of college educated men work more than 50 hours weekly. Writers blithely assure young women their situation is desperate because half their marriages are doomed to fail, but the divorce rate never approached 50% even before it declined to around 40% some years ago. The campaign has reached the point where respectable journalists advise newspapers not to run stories that happen to be true, because they get in the way of moms rising. They say women who purport to be choosing to stay home are the victims of a kind of lunacy that goes by the politically correct term “false consciousness.”
Such rhetoric makes me wonder what is really driving the discussion. Globalized capitalism has indeed caused a change in the American workplace probably since the Seventies when real wages stopped rising. It’s not a great workplace, rich or poor. Yet all the pressure for change has been confined to the distaff side. One reason is that there effectively are no unions. Union membership began to decline in the early Seventies. Happy Warrior Ronald Reagan drove a stake into the unions’ heart when he broke the Air Traffic Controllers’ Strike in 1981, his first major act in office. Without the counterweight of a viable union movement, working class wages are stagnant, which pressures more of the adults in a family to work, and upper class wages are wildly escalating, but at a cost to the managers of long hours. People (mostly female people in the current discussion) gripe about their working conditions. A slumbering progressive movement staggers to its feet and sees the work/family “crisis” as an opportunity to do for women what they can no longer do for workers. If they succeed, they will doubtless make life easier for non elite working women.
The old lefty in me hears the siren song. But the strategy has terrible risks. A hundred years ago, faced with unregulated industrial capitalism and a union movement yet to emerge, reformers tried to start moderating the workplace with female protective legislation, putting a ceiling on how many hours women could legally work. The arguments for the protective legislation were alarmingly similar to the arguments for the maternal agenda of today – natural mothering, well-being of children, etc. When the second wave of feminism hit, employers used the protective laws to avoid applying the Equal Pay Act and other foundation stones of modern feminism. (Eventually the state laws were struck down under the federal Civil Rights Act, and women were free to claim equal pay and employment opportunity.)
But, you will hear, the new laws are gender neutral. They don’t just put a ceiling on women’s hours; they offer paid “family and medical” leave, benefits for part time workers, a mandatory ceiling on all hours. The laws won’t hurt women competing with men at work, because men are just dying to stay home with the kiddies, too, if only we’d stop acting like Lesotho and start acting like Luxembourg. Problem is, as Judith Stadtman Tucker honorably reports in these pages, similar European programs did not produce anything like that outcome. Immediately after the UN conference on women in 1995, the EU signed on with full force to the platform of “Equal rights, opportunities and access to resources, equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women, and a harmonious partnership between them . . . the involvement of women in economic and social development and equal opportunities and the full and equal participation of women and men as agents and beneficiaries of people-centred sustainable development” and so on.
Twelve years later, across the pond: “. . . the main areas of growth for female employment continued to be concentrated in activities and occupations already predominantly feminine. This has reinforced segregation in the labour market. Indeed, both sectoral and occupational segregation continue to rise in the EU, A further source of concern is the persistence of the gender gap in part-time work, which is done by 32.6% of women in employment against only 7.4% of men . . . the high gender gap is also an evidence of differences of time use patterns between women and men and of the role of carer predominantly assumed by women and the greater difficulties they face in trying to reconcile work and private life.” Here’s the dirty little secret: employers are going to know who will take advantage of the leave and the like. They cannot come right out and say it, as they did when the protective labor laws were competing with the Civil Rights Act. But as the EU says, the workplace will be more segregated than ever. It’s the family, stupid.
Stadtman Tucker throws up her hands and says if nagging could cure it, the unjust family would have vanished years ago. I have no idea what she means. But I do know that an authoritative report from essentially every other country of the developed world stands as an irrefutable argument that Stadtman Tucker’s proposals do not cure it either. What will cure the unjust family? Tucker takes a swipe at someone who could only be me by adding to her little nagging trope that “The heart of the "opt-out myth" is that women choose inequality by making a series of self-defeating decisions about education, employment, and family formation. Women are even held accountable for allowing men to get away with doing less than their fair share around the house.” Guilty as charged. I have accused elite women of “making a series of self-defeating decisions about education, employment, and family formation.” And I told them to stop. I told them to take school seriously, don’t quit a job until you have another job and never marry a jerk. My bad.
I did not just dream this series of self-defeating decisions up. I interviewed elite women from the New York Times wedding announcements. I found many less elite examples on the mommyblog, “BloggingBaby.com,” which obliged me by running a feature on women as an effort to rebut my argument that these women were making a linked series of decisions that sealed their fate. Guess what? The Blogging Baby Women who quit to stay home revealed a linked series of decisions that sealed their fate. You could look it up. They “burned out” and didn’t go to graduate school.” They “couldn’t take the office politics.” They could not understand how their bosses cared more about their bosses’ businesses than the bloggers’ babies. Meanwhile, their husbands steadily kept their eyes on the workplace ball and are now all making twice what they made when the couples met, in an original position of income equality.
Men are not going to carry their share of the family until women force the issue by not choosing inequality. All the paid leave in the world does not change that fact. If I didn’t believe it before, I’d believe it now that I have studied up on the autobiographies of the legendary stay at home dads of the Internet, “Rebel Dad” Brian Reid and “Daddy Dialectic” Jeremy Adam Smith. Rebel Dad spent under three years at home with one baby, while creating his (now defunct) online personam of rebel dad and pitching a book proposal all over the internet. Once the second baby came Rebel took his rebellious self right into full time work in public relations, leaving his former lawyer wife with a newborn and a kindergartener. The Dialectical Smith didn’t even stay home a year, but lived exactly the life the mommy activists dream of. He posts: “You know, my wife and I tried [both working part time] (she . . . is fortunate to have a unionized part-time teaching job that provides full health care) and I must say that it was extremely difficult to maintain . . . I'm interviewing for jobs. For our family, it might better for one of us to work full-time while the other stays home . . . I'm sort of thinking that maybe it's my wife's turn to stay home.” A few hours later: “Well, for us the issue is resolved: yesterday I accepted a full-time job . . . Poof! I'm no longer a stay at home dad and now it's my wife's turn to stay home -- actually, she's still thinking about whether she wants to go back to work. I hope she doesn't; I want her to have time with the boy.”
Poof. I’d hate to be the woman with the desk next to Dialectical Dad, taking family leave while he minds the workplace.
This whole issue is, above all, results-oriented. Maybe it would help if you stated plainly how things would be in a just world, where men behave and women don't make self-defeating choices.
March 25, 2007 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Waaaaaay better, Wiiiiilbur.
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March 25, 2007 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whatcha doing? Using reality as a context for change?
My goodness! You expect women and men to give up their delusions? You Betty, you Betty, you Bet!!!
There is a flip side, however. When I run into one of these Neanderthal chauvinistic male clients that try to CUT my wages, I simper (intentionally, of course) that my "husband" (now almost ex) simply won't let me work for such a paltry sum.
That works a treat.
Also, as one of those women that supposedly works "part-time" (60 hours a week, usually) takes care of the house, the bills, the laundry, the animals and, oh, the children, I must say that I have noticed a lot more men pushing their way into what was a pretty much "female" territory: Freelancing.
It works a lot better if your spouse has a fulltime job and a health plan. Mine had neither. Probably why, after 20 years, he's my soon to be ex.
Something has got to give here: sanity, housework, or "reliablity as a worker."
Personally, I'll vote for anything that makes my daughters path a bit easier then mine has been. I think I just heard on NPR that despite the fact that most women are working they STILL spend more time with their kids then their parents did. I can vouch for that.
All you women out there, stand proud. You are tougher, harder-working, and better parents than your spouses are and your mothers were.
That's why it's time to put the "fairer" sex in charge. I think we've humored the male long enough. Time to clean up the mess they've made of things.
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March 25, 2007 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I may not be sitting in an ecstatic frame, but I don't understand your reply, or the relevance of your link.
March 25, 2007 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Linda, a superb essay. Many valuable points. I would add the following:
The kind of men you visualize, who might be willing to share the duties of children, home and work equally, don't exist. For men, much more so than for women, their identity is inextricably tied to their work role, whether or not it has anything to do with feeling that they are the "provider". Being the "provider", IMO, is an after-the-fact rationale for the real need to feel important in their work outside the home. The bottom line is that for a man, homelife is only important so long as it doesn't interfere with work life. No man I know is going to stay home with his sick child while his wife goes off to work that day. It's always the woman who is supposed to make the accomodation. The women who refuse to make that accomodation have "nannies". In other words, real working-class women will never have the ability to move ahead so long as there are children at home.
March 25, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Hirshman writes
I went to take a look at the "real statistics" (it seemed a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday afternoon), and I noted two things about them which struck my interest. Warning! I'm a historian, and stats aren't my bailiwick.
Footnote 6, p. 5
p. 6
I interpret this to mean that those in the age group least likely to have the toddlers are least likely to be able to blame "the job" for doing less then their share of household maintenance. I don't know what to make of the fact that salaried workers are increasing their hours worked faster than hourly paid workers are, except that workplace culture must play a significant role, and that workaholic bosses are rewarding behavior which mimics their own through control over promotions and the like.
If I understand this discussion statement...
...the corporation itself benefits more from "incentives" to long hours than the labor force working long hours does: Another reason, MHO, for "smart" college educated men and women to unionize, and fast! One hundred years ago the rallying cry was for the 40 hour week. How the mighty have fallen.
I posit that one reason for older men to increase their hours of labor is the cloud of expenses for higher education looming on the horizon. The kids need a lift onto the treadmill, after all. An alternate hypothesis...having teenagers is an irresistible temptation to get out of the house. (Bad joke).
I think one could argue that the current system is an equal opportunity abuser of labor, with the added fillip that those who should have the greatest power to stop the abuse, the highest educated in their peak earning years (who also happen to be the most politically active, save retirees) are most complicit in abusing themselves.
aMike
March 25, 2007 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
And turning around and allowing the abuse of others....
March 25, 2007 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
At several blogs where women (and men) like to blame everything on the "patriarchy", I have asked what does a world without the "patriarchy" look like?
I've been banned from several sites and been called a right wing misogynist troll at them, but I have never been given an answer.
I agree with much in this essay and don't understand other parts of it. Sometimes I need to have things spelled out, and sometimes I may just be too left brained.
I especially agree with this:
I told them to take school seriously, don’t quit a job until you have another job and never marry a jerk. I think that's good advice for everyone!
March 25, 2007 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, I don't know why you are separating from your husband but you say it's because It works a lot better if your spouse has a fulltime job and a health plan. Mine had neither. Probably why, after 20 years, he's my soon to be ex
Cause that's EXACTLY why I divorced my lazy assed wife. She wouldn't get a real job and she had no health plan.
DUMPED HER!
That's why it's time to put the "fairer" sex in charge. I think we've humored the male long enough. Time to clean up the mess they've made of things.
Oh. Absolutely!
March 25, 2007 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The bottom line is that for a man, homelife is only important so long as it doesn't interfere with work life. No man I know is going to stay home with his sick child while his wife goes off to work that day. It's always the woman who is supposed to make the accomodation.
This is incredibly sexist.
I think that for many men, whether it's biology, culture, or love, they feel that the most important thing they can do for their family is provide food and shelter, so that in fact they sacrifice their desired home life so they can provide that.
I suspect that most men (and women) when asked about their jobs would hardly say that their hourly or salaried job really constitutes a fulfilling career, and that their future, especially these days is very uncertain and not in their control.
I think it is sexist, bogus and a cheapshot to say for a man, homelife is only important so long as it doesn't interfere with work life. If someone made a similar comment about a women would they be called misogynist?
As workerbee attests up above, she is apparently, (if I understand her post correctly) divorcing her no good husband since he can't get a fulltime job with health care ans she is tired of providing that to the family.
As to staying home with the kids, ALL of the male workers around me with kids have done just that. From myself, to my boss, to my coworkers. I think it's more a function of the company and their sick policy as well as the nature of the job itself.
There is so much sexism at this site!
March 25, 2007 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since I have quibbled with everyone else, I have to quibble with you too:
In the home workplace she will work twice as many hours as her male coworker, aka her husband, at housekeeping and at least one-third again as many hours on childrearing, should they have children. They will divide the product – a nice home, children attended – evenly. The result? Every hour hubby works at home “pays” him almost twice what it does her.
I don't believe it is as clearcut as you suggest.
Kevin Drum talks about a study (also discussed by Matthew Yglesias and Jessica Valenti)
I was curious about why the total hours of housework goes up so dramatically for couples (two people shouldn't require twice the hours of housework as one person, should they?). Was this due to the presence of children or did they control for that? So I went looking for the paper itself, and eventually found an earlier version of the research here. Unfortunately, it was so crammed with formidable looking equations that I quickly gave up.
However, if you scroll down to Table 2, you'll find something that makes the basic results a little more understandable: men in couples do less housework than women, but they also do way more work outside the house (44 hours vs. 31 hours on average). Women's work outside the home declines when they become part of a couple, and my guess is that men's work outside the home increases (though, oddly, Table 2 doesn't actually provide this data directly). The total amount of leisure time reported within couples is 128 for women vs. 124 for men. The guys aren't quite so lazy after all!
Now, the author warns us to be careful with this data, since time spent with children is sometimes coded as housework and sometimes coded as leisure, and it's not always clear which is which. And overall, there's not much question that men rarely do their fair share of housework: I'll bet that if the author controlled for hours worked outside the home, men would still report fewer hours of housework than women. Still, if you're going to report this stuff, shouldn't you report the full picture?
I think that Warren Farrell have also been over this as well as Glenn Sacks. I think they make some valid points.
You also write They will divide the product – a nice home, children attended – evenly. I think this is terribly misleading. I would gladly have chosen to work less and be with my kids in their early years. I had a problem getting my employers to accept less than a 40 hour, 9-5 week, and I had a problem paying the bills.
So I missed out on a great deal of my children's lives and certainly not willingly and only as part of the shared sacrifice of family.
And I certainly do not think that the divorce statistics show men getting full custody or joint shared custody of their children happens anything like 50% of the time.
Sexism and gender based preferential treatment abounds everywhere, including in these discussions.
I wish that the Women's movement and the Father's movement could see that there are win-win outcomes if they could work together. I must say that I am depressed with the amount of bias, sexism and misandry is propagated in these discussions.
March 25, 2007 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
My "unreal job" paid the mortgage, the health plan, incidentals AND the grocery bills.
So much for "real" jobs.
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March 25, 2007 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few days ago, E.J. Grath wrote this about you:
Linda Hirshman comes to mind as today's intellectual version of the Bad Feminist, and she's not highly thought of among feminists.
I don't know if that is how she feels about you herself, and I am not saying this "casting out of heretics and critics" doesn't occur in all fields, but gosh, it sure seems to occur a lot amongst feminists. Is that just a mistaken impression on my part?
March 25, 2007 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Methinks Jerry protesteth too much here.
Would you put up with 95% of the earning responsibility, 100% of the childrearing, and 90% of the domestic chores (inside and outside?) The answer is obviously no, as your ex-wife, who I am asassuming did most of the housekeeping, wouldn't compromise that in order to earn money.
I certaily wasn't "tired of providing" anything I was tired of "doing it all" and having all of the responsibility but none of the control.
Who's fault was that? Mine.
I did something about it. I didn't mean to imply ALL men were like that, I should hope not, but I patiently spent 20 years waiting for MY husband to grow up and show a little responsibility. It didn't happen, oh well, I gave it my best shot. End of story.
I do know couples that seem to be able to work out the work/home contributions equitably, but they are by far the exception.
You might find reality "sexist," but that is your problem. Welcome to a woman's world, jerry. We've found reality "sexist" for centuries. It isn't getting better, and who's fault is that?
Women's. To a certain extent, it is also men's.
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March 25, 2007 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, there IS that.
:-)
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March 25, 2007 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
workerbee, I don't mean to criticize your own unique situation for your divorce, and if it means anything you all definitely have my sympathy.
I was critiquing your initial description of it which to my ears would be considered sexist if it were reversed.
You will have to ask my ex why we actually split, but we had two kids, by choice, while she earned a Ph.D. and while I worked to support us all and our weekly maid.
March 25, 2007 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe I just know too many nice guys, but around here, they're the ones out shoveling snow (and do we get snow), mowing the grass, painting the house, cleaning the gutters, repairing the roof, trimming the bushes, taking care of the car, performing various and sundry mechancial maintenance chores, driving kids to practice, playing catch with the kids in the yard, spelling their wives when kids are out of school sick for several days... I don't know too many of the worthless types she knows, but it wouldn't be a good idea to marry one of them, I'd agree with that.
March 25, 2007 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I apologize, jerry.
I guess I am a little touchy.. Sounds like you gave it your best shot, too.
I'm just... sorry.
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March 25, 2007 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you but there was really no need to apologize. Relationships are the best thing in the world, and also the suckiest.
March 25, 2007 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally missing from the happy discussion is the cost. Not to the employers, the cost to the women.
I think that every living human needs time off from work to do other things besides work.
That why I agree that the post heavily uses sexism to justify itself.
For example, the logic doesn't include the plight of singles who might need time off to find mates or to mentor at risk kids.
If the majority of the population isn't rewarded by a rule change, then the majority will definitely trounce the minority, economically.
March 25, 2007 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
a lot of women use their kids as a status symbol and their husbands, in order to avoid a fight, let their wives endulge in it.
there's no sympathy in my book when, after the women get control, they start fussing over how much work they have.
modern "power sharing" arrangements should be good for everyone.
March 25, 2007 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The gold standard for housework is Bianchi, et al., 12. Suzanne M. Bianchi, Melissa A. Milkie, Liana C. Sayer, and John P. Robinson, "Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor" Social Forces, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 191-228 (September 2000). Archived at: http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc3.asp?DOCID=1G1:66274516
They found women doing twice as much housework as men do.
Later, Waite and Lee put watches on the couples and found that women do 61%, men 39% of the housework.
Journal of Marriage and FamilyVolume 67 Issue 2 Page 328 - May 2005
To cite this article: Yun-Suk Lee, Linda J. Waite (2005)Husbands' and wives' time spent on housework: A comparison of measures
Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (2), 328–336.
The Census Bureau looked recently and found that women did about 30% more housework even where both spouses were full time employed in the market economy. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
I am certainly not saying men are slugs! Data show men work longer hours in the market economy, and the women do more housework but when women work longer, men do not do more housework. They speculate the house just gets dirtier.ournal of Family Issues, Vol. 3, No. 2, 199-216 (1982)
Impact of Wife's Employment upon Husband's Housework SHARON Y. NICKOLSDOI: 10.1177/019251382003002005
© 1982 SAGE Publications
Oklahoma State University
I have other tasks to do now, so commenting will have to proceed without response, including someone's invitation to engage in a most popular feminist contest with E.J. Graff (the commenter says Grath, but I assume that's what S/he meant). I like my numbers wiith hyperlinks.
March 25, 2007 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
"In other words, real working-class women will never have the ability to move ahead so long as there are children at home."
In an otherwise jaundiced, presumptuous, and cliche-ridden post, that statement stands as absolutely true today. The preponderant concern of those publicly urging a work/home revolution seems to be the accommodation of the dignitary interests, and the often overweening professional aspirations, of upper-income families who, in any event, will not suffer meaningful financial hardship when a parent loses income or promotion opportunities during family time off.
Before these folks get their velvet sedan chairs, I would like to see public schools extend their hours and provide pre-school-age child care, and I would like to see many more workplaces start having some day care capabilities.
Then we won't see so many lower-income families getting trapped at that level of income, simply because the costs of child care and the associated travel turn a second parent's job into a non-profit activity, or make further education unaffordable.
March 25, 2007 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Graff?
March 25, 2007 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your study is behind a pay wall, but I wonder how it defines "housework." You may like your numbers with hyperlinks, as I do, but many people also like their definitions of terms to be hyperlinked. IMO, you should not have posted the study, knowing it rests behind a pay wall, without at least defining a term used on which you so heavily rely.
If your study defines "housework" as this study does, which also found men doing half the housework that women do:
http://portal.ecu.edu.au/adt-public/adt-ECU2006.0038/02whole_Pirouznia.pdf
then your argument is flawed to the extent that men are left to perform what Bluebell listed as:
.So, how does your study define "housework?"
March 25, 2007 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The "most popular feminist contest" is a mug's game.
I disagree with pretty much most of what you have to say on this topic, but I appreciate your saying it nonetheless.
Feminist this, feminist that...but there's no real organized feminist movement in this country anymore, and I suppose we might want to occasionally step back and ask why this might be. You lay bare the logic, I guess, though in so doing, you almost give the game away.
And the risks to non-elite working women (and almost by definition, they would be, the last time I checked, the majority of women, no?) would be exactly what? That they might find themselves symbolically positioned as women/mothers/the feminized, even as they managed to improve their material lot? But as you must well know, they’re already both symbolically and materially positioned as women/mothers/the feminized...so an improvement in material conditions, even under the rubric of the feminine (under which rubric they already labour, after all) would be a net gain, so far as I can tell. The extent to which elite women don’t give a flying f*** about non-elite women is a prediction, if not a measure, of the extent to which non-elite women will refuse to identitify as “feminist.”
Also, what’s with the rational choice theory? If you really are an “old lefty,” as you claim to be, then you must realize that we are born into a world that is not of our own making. We can change this world, yes, but not each one of us on her own, and certainly not by recourse to the rhetoric of heroic individual effort. We do not sit down and rationally calculate, while drawing up our own unique, tailor-made individual 5-year plans. We muddle through, as social actors who are already deeply embedded in thickly-descriptive socio-cultural-economic contexts. You can work at changing the content and meaning of those contexts, or you can deny the relevance of culture and society while excoriating the “choices” of women as you set yourself up as national scold.
And how is that tactic working out for you? Are they listening, all wide-eyed and shame-faced, while signing pledges to amend the evil of their ways?
I didn’t think so.
March 25, 2007 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just noticed Mrs. Hirshman's parting utterance:
"I have other tasks to do now, so commenting will have to proceed without response . . . ."
And I thought Graff was the drive-by shooter.
March 25, 2007 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Professor Hirshman is absolutely right that paid leave and "work from home" solutions are no panacea, no matter which gender takes advantage of them.
My workplace is really quite good about letting people work from home, if and when they want, so long as they're in the office when they're physically needed.
But, the people who most take advantage of that haven't been promoted in ages. I doubt anyone said, "Let's not promote that person who works from home," it's more a case of out of sight, out of mind.
Our offices have very loose human resources policies and that's a double edged sword. More attention by HR might solve the problem of the work at homes being ignored, but it might also eliminate the free-for-all environment that we have and that so many enjoy.
Same for leaves of absence. Again, our office has generous leave policies, including retention bonuses for people who come back and stay on for six more months. But, when you're on leave, you're going to lose ground against the people who are working every day. There's no doubt about it. You might come back and find a person below you is now on your level, or beyond. There are still trade-offs.
Professor Hirshman writes about this from the perspective of gender equality. But there are also trade-offs that have little to do with gender and everything to do with the fact that when it comes to getting raises and promotions, very little beats having a physical presence in the office.
The only jobs where you can really move up fast without being in the office 40 plus hours a week are jobs where you have your own profit and loss sheet that proves your economic value. The vast majority of workers have no way of quantifying the economic value they create, though, so that's no answer either.
By the way, it occurs to me that people often also suffer from working at somewhere other than the company's headquarters. I think that the biggest obstacle to change is this need to be visible to the people who make decisions about rank and pay.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
March 25, 2007 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
A hundred years ago, faced with unregulated industrial capitalism and a union movement yet to emerge, reformers tried to start moderating the workplace with female protective legislation, putting a ceiling on how many hours women could legally work. The arguments for the protective legislation were alarmingly similar to the arguments for the maternal agenda of today
I don't know if they are still on the books, but labor regulations in Japan in the 80s and before guaranteed women two days of paid menstrual leave per month. This was another reason given for rampant discrimination against women in the workplace at a time when few Japanese women could find meaningful, well-paid employment beyond the age of 25. Most feminists opposed it, except for those who advocated that women take their two days on principle, because they weren't going much out of society except for what paternalism supplied.
March 25, 2007 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Be at your desk a half hour before your boss comes in and still there a half hour after s/he leaves and make sure s/he knows it.
March 25, 2007 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to agree with you -- about the quality of the post, and also about the verity of the quote. As someone who left the best job I ever had to stay home with my children, I worked with women doctors who chose the field of college health precisely because it was more family-friendly rather than more lucrative specialties.
For me, I felt I had to stop and stay at home. It is always a personal decision, but this fact remains:
At least one parent has to put the children and the family above personal ambition if they are going to do a good job. I doesn't mean that you check your ego at the door, or that you stop reading, or become a Stepford wife. It just means that priorities are different when you have wonderful, emerging humans at home whom you want to have a relationship with that matters.
The other parent also has to value what the first one is doing, and realize that his/her freedom to be available 24-7 career-wise depends on the stalwart devotion to the family as a whole of their spouse. If this is sexist, then so be it. For me it was the only way to make it work. And then to my surprise, I became a single parent...
The mystery for me is how Chelsey Clinton turned out so well. When children grow up to be good adults it is not an accident. The Clintons deserve our respect for the job they did with her.
Jan Knaus
March 25, 2007 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not asking you to engage in a popularity contest with Ms. Graff.
In my forays around the corners of feminism, I perceive lots of fighting about who really is a feminist and who is not. Karen DeCrow, Daphne Patai, Cathy Young, IWF, Wendy McElroy, Christina Hoff Sommers, many others (and apparently you too?) have all been disparaged as not really feminists. Feminists no more! Ceased to be!
My perception is that this occurs more frequently in feminism than in other areas. And my suspicion is that some agents within feminism aren't open to critique. That there is a political agenda that is actively policed.
My question in general, for you or anyone that wishes to answer is are my perceptions accurate? If not, what if anything, am I perceiving?
My concern is that there are many missed opportunities between feminism (which I do care about as citizen and father of girls) and fathers' rights (which I also do care about.) And I perceive that as such a loss personally and culture-wide.
March 25, 2007 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just for the record, even before I became a single parent, these jobs were mine:
shoveling snow * * *, mowing the grass, painting the house, cleaning the gutters, repairing the roof, trimming the bushes, taking care of the car, performing various and sundry mechancial maintenance chores, driving kids to practice, playing catch with the kids in the yard,
and no one "spelled me" when the children were sick, either. I also did, and still do most of the plumbing and carpentry. I just renovated my basement.
Jan Knaus
March 25, 2007 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are a woman (I think you are, based on this reply and on what I may recall from some other thread), and you were employed full-time while doing all that, I would say your work-sharing(?) arrangement was atypical, and, unless there was some special reason for it (spouse abroad, for example), unsatisfactory.
My point was, though, that it is at least possible that none of these tasks, all but one of which (driving to practice is about even IMO) men typically do more of than women, is included within the definition of "housework" in Hirshman's "gold standard" study.
March 25, 2007 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect this debate is only a modern echo of one that has surfaced repeated times over the millennia: "Food on the table? I'm the one finding fruits and roots while you and your friends play war and chase aurochs!"
Perhaps my situation is wildly anomalous, but as an orchestra player married to a nurse I spent more daytime hours with the children than did the spouse. I only missed bedtime stories some nights.
And as to housework, I was the main cook as well as main diaper changer and chief ironing specialist. I also kept the car maintained and picked up the dog waste (not to mention opening jars and hauling garbage).
A difference arose over housecleaning--not so much that my wife spent more time at it but that she cared more that it happen. I was less fanatic about dusting and vacuuming. How much of the reported difference between men and women's housework is simply lack of desire on the man's part? Living alone now, I usually don't dust, etc. unless company is coming.
I offer this anecdote about la difference: Dweezil Zappa said living with his parents was wonderful and free of coercion, but his sister Moon said she moved out as soon as she could, and that her apartment was spotless.
I've posted at length elsewhere about the plausible selection process that yields competitive males, and the women that seek them as mates, so I'll leave that as going without (further) saying.
March 26, 2007 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just curious, Linda, how much of the housework your husband does. Or do you have a housekeeper to do his share?
March 26, 2007 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
In her blog entry, Linda Hirshman writes: "Rebel Dad took his rebellious self right into full time work in public relations, leaving his former lawyer wife with a newborn and a kindergartener."
As I am the "wife" to which she refers, let me clarify a few things ...
Error One: I am not a "former" lawyer. I have an active practice in federal sex-based discrimination litigation. I am also an adjunct professor of law -- where, irony of ironies, I lead discussions on Ms. Hirshman’s ideas. I wonder why Ms. Hirshman ASSUMED I was not working outside the home.
Error Two: I was not "left" with a newborn and a kindergartener. RebelDad was the primary care provider for our eldest from birth until K -- five years, that’s Error Three. (And I must ask, if being the primary caretaker for a child until she goes to school isn’t enough for a dad to do, what is?) I wanted the chance to care for our newborn daughter (our last child) and had wonderful work opportunities that allowed me to further my career and be an active parent at the same time.
I am happy to be partnered with a true feminist who shares life, kids, career and all equally with me (and leave it to RebelDad to correct the factual errors pertaining to him).
I am quite happy to overlook the errors above and wish Ms. Hirshman continued success at being a thought-provoking force in this area of law and life. I find many of Ms. Hirshman’s points valuable and think they are too often summarily dismissed due to her rhetorical style.
March 26, 2007 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we should be cautious in rating comments from new members -- here, a member for all of seven hours.
There is, after all, a whiff of sockpuppetry in the air.
March 26, 2007 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is one of the problems with the rating system, but then the rating system seems the most valueless element of the cafe.
I think a worse problem is letting new members rate other comments. Last week, jpfbookworm came through, brand new, and rated down all sorts of messages.
In this case, I think it is useful for "old members" to rate the new post, but I think you are very correct to point out that we have no idea whatsoever who RebelMom actually is or how accurate her comment is.
March 26, 2007 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your comments are understandable. I'd invite you to look at www.rebeldad.com, RebelDad's (my husband Brian Reid's) site, for confirmation of my identity. He posted my response to Ms. Hirshman earlier today on his personal blog (which, contrary to Ms. Hirshman's assertion, is operational--as is his On Balance blog for the Washington Post).
Thanks.
March 26, 2007 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
If "Rebel Mom" is a sock puppet
she had to be clever enough to hack "Rebel Dad's" blog. It seems far from defunct as Ms. Hirshman claims. Rebel Mom has posted largely the same reply there, dated 26 March. There are posts on the front page dating back to 9 March. There is a gap in the archives between December 22, 2006 and 9 March 2007, otherwise, the archives are continuous from 2002.
Of course RebelMom and RebelDad could be one in the same, I suppose. There seems to be some previous spat between RebelDad and Ms Hirshman, dating at least to March 15, so perhaps what we have is spillover here. There is also something weird because the post for March 9, begins "As I mentioned Yesterday" and I can't find a "yesterday". But then again Blogger is known to do some strange things as I see ranted about on other blogs I look at frequently.
I don't know how easy it is to counterfeit dates...someone who knows more about all of this can tell me, perhaps. But I don't think the shortness of membership is proof positive of some kind of skulduggery going on on rebelMom's part. Ms. Hirshman has only been a member for 3 days herself, and it would be reasonable to take out a membership to reply to her if she said some harsh things.
Rebel Dad guest blogs at On Balance, The Washington Post Work-life Blog, and writes under his own name, so it should be possible to check whether indeed his wife did write this response to Ms Hirshman. I thought it well written, so I gave it a 5.
aMike
March 26, 2007 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The kind of men you visualize, who might be willing to share the duties of children, home and work equally, don't exist.
I disagree. This is not a question of existance (which implies innate characteristics?) or even ability. At some point, all men and women are equal with regard to a lcak of experience with a household and parenting. Women by and large learn and so to can men.
I am married to one of the men you suggest does not exist - to his great credit. A truly equal partner. But a large part of our relationship was heavily "negotiated" early in our marriage (well before children) when I made it clear that I was not housekeeping for two. Likewise, I did in effect "marry down" (although I do not care for the phrase at all) as LH suggests women do to avoid the unequal distribution of home efforts. I am more educated than my husband and make more money. It has never been a realistic option for me to stay home with our children - rather the realm of "choice" has fallen to him. And guess what? The mantle of "choice" has an amazing abilty to alter priorities and effort at home.
Now, we can still argue that there is inequality in the fact that I had to first surpass my husband in the traditional paradims of power (education, earing capacity, etc) before we could share responsibilities equally within the home, but for now I am satisfied with the shift our relationship seems to represent.
I agree with much of what LH says and I have come to feel strongly that "choice" is a sharp, sharp, double-edged sword. As women, we need to be careful about what we fight for - we might get it, and find it is not at all what we thought we wanted.
March 27, 2007 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree wtih Linda's basic positions. There are certainly societal changes that need to occur in order to reshape family economics (two that come to my mind first are the costs of healthcare and the intense competition for "decent" public schools that are driving up home prices in many areas), but beyond that the notion of work/life "balance" is, IMO, a straw man that should be ignited along with its combustible twin "choice". Both are too readily used as excuses by workplaces not to hire/promote women and by women as excuses for a lack of success. That is not to say that there are not times when there are genuine obstacles in the way of parents (particulary women with young children) that manifest within the workplace (childcare, sick leave, etc), but the root of those problems lies within the home and not the office. Focusing on changes to the structure of the workplace is rife with unintended consequences and does nothing to encourage sustainable changes.
As long as working is viewed primarily as a "choice" for women (a notion that the "Mommy Wars" endlessly reinforces whether directly or inadvertantly) with the parallel assumption that working is a "responsibility" for men, then inequality will persist. The foundation for shared responsibility (or at least a more liquid concept of choice/responsibility that changes over time) begins long before parenthood in the form of educational choices, career preparation, realistic planning for self-sufficiency, realistic planning for the costs of children, etc.
March 27, 2007 6:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
The main difference, Wigmar, is that the above tasks are not daily tasks. The work is sporadic and temporary, as opposed to the work which is defined as housework. Yes, males do spend more time generally on the above tasks. But the numbers of hours still is not comparable to the daily chores, of cooking, cleaning, laundry, child care which is every single day 365/24/7. That is the biggest difference between traditional 'male' tasks you listed above and the definition of housework. Also females typically chauffeur and nurse the kids far more frequently than dads, as well.
March 27, 2007 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you have data for that statement?
If you look at my response at:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2007/mar/25/a_tale_of_two_workplaces#comment-225143
It seems that Kevin Drum has a study that shows that after marriage, the woman has MORE leisure time than the man, and that the man spends significant amounts of time "working" on home things in the house or outside the house.
March 28, 2007 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jerry, are you speaking of the tasks delineated as 'male tasks' by Wigmar vs. the definition given for housework in the study Wigmar cited?
If so, I think the difference is apparent in terms of the tasks. Men do not rake/mow lawns daily 2-3 times per day week in and week out the same goes for shoveling snow, trimming bushes, curbing the trash, roof repair, mechanical/auto tasks, house painting, fixing gutters not requiring 24hour on call service. I'm not sure why there needs to be data to understand what is known to be true in terms of difference in the time commitment of the tasks. Preparing meals is a daily task, child care is a 24 hour task, and laundry is daily, thankless drudgery... right along with sorting it and putting in back neat and folded for each individual..a never ending cycle.. meals are the same..preparation and cleanup are never ending, it's not just main meals, but snacking in between or meal hospitality for guests...just on and on.
Wigmar, was saying that the tasks he listed were not included under the definition of housework, while I agreed with that I also noted those tasks were far less time consuming.
Do you disagree that there is a time commitment difference in those tasks and those defined as housework?
Define leisure.
It sounds suspiciously like that misnomer phrase 'stayathome' mom some idiot dreamed up.
March 28, 2007 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure why there needs to be data to understand what is known to be true in terms of difference in the time commitment of the tasks.
How do you know something to be true unless you have data?
My point is there have been studies with presumably well defined terms for leisure (that you are free to disagree with, but well defined nonetheless) that point to something opposite from what you call "the known truth."
So you make statements about the known truth of the difference in time commitments but you seem to have no data to back that up.
The "male" activities you point out may be "occasional", but that doesn't mean that most families don't have some sort of ongoing "need to do" task list that may change from day to day, week to week, etc., but that nonetheless constitute unpaid work outside the home directed toward the benefit of the family. And Drum's study says the end result is that women have more leisure time than men.
Are you referring to any data in your "known truth" about the time commitments?
March 28, 2007 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, are you honestly asserting that trimming bushes demands as much time as preparing meals or doing laundry? Just what is the data you think you need for such? Do you believe that folks trim bushes 3 times a day, every day week in and week out, or not? Same goes for house painting, auto repairs, shoveling snow (even in Alaska the seasons change).
I don't think anyone is quibbling about the known FACT of time commitment difference in the tasks listed by Wigmar and those defined as housework in the study cited. Perhaps, you could be more specific about what you think is unknown or false about the time demand difference..
The study does not point to anything opposite of the known time demand difference , you are questioning.. Leisure was not defined. Was Wigmar citing the same study as you in terms of the housework definition being the same Drum one you are saying married women have more leisure time?
lol, if you are attempting to rebut a factual statement...you need to quantify how the time demand is not significantly different/greater on a daily or weekly basis between the housework definition and the tasks listed by Wigmar.
I did not provide the list of 'male' activities, Wigmar did. Even if you want to 'claim' there is a rotational system of tasks, where the male is doing the 'housework' it does not alter the time demand difference of the tasks. Perhaps, your point is that in situations where males rotate the 'housework' defined tasks with their spouse they have additional time demands, but the point is that the time commitment for the 'housework' defined tasks is still significantly greater than that of the infrequent 'male' task.
Unpaid or not nothing about that difference though demonstrates an increase in leisure time for the female. In the Drum study with the 'housework' definition did it include nursing, chauffeuring, refereeing, nurturing, guidance counseling, tutorials, psychology and peer relationship building skills and character development as leisure time? Not to mention grocery shopping, running to the cleaners, clothes shopping, appointment scheduling, dental and physician appointments, shoe repair runs, seam tress repairs, accounting and financial manager, concession stand duty for little league, fund raising for school activities ..were they part of the leisure time?
If not, each of these tasks also require a greater time commitment than the 'occasional and infrequent' ..tasks Wig mar listed.
While they are unpaid most folks would not classify them as leisure time, either.
BTW, I went to your link and it was for your blog which did not have the Drum study.
March 28, 2007 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point was never, not by any stretch, that what men typically do (WMTD - car, gutters, mow lawn, etc., as listed in my post) takes as much time as women usually spend doing housework.
The point was that the study I cited (which, like Hershman's study, showed that women did twice as much [19 vs 10 hours] 'housework' as men), did not address the tasks I listed, because they were not defined as 'housework.'
So the meaningful question becomes, "How many hours do men spend doing WMTD, and how many hours per week do women spend doing WMTD, and how do these figures impact on the resulting 'leisure time' tracked by the study I cited, and perhaps also by Hershman's study.
IIRC, the leisure-time stats in the study I cited are interesting. You might want to check them out.
March 31, 2007 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink