The President, the Center for Disease Control, your doctor, and your child's teacher are telling you to stay home, or keep your child home, when the body aches, the head pounds, and the fever rages.
Fine. But how can you do that if you don't have any paid sick days? This was the question at the center of a hearing before a U.S Senate subcommittee today, as the impact of the current pandemic was considered, and how a ‘paid sick days’ policy could mitigate the damage of the next one.
So, what can you do with no sick days?
A: You drag yourself to work, keep your job, but infect 10% of your coworkers with the H1N1 virus.
B: You stay home, you miss work and lose your job.
C: Your child stays home, you go to work, and Child Protective Services hauls you into court, you miss work and lose your job.
D: Your child stays home, you stay home too.....and you miss work and lose your job.
E: All of the above.
Without paid sick days, the answer for over 57 million private sector American workers is "E", all of the above. We are in an impossible situation, as H1N1 has now spread to 48 states, and so many of those infected cannot afford to stay home or have no leave to call upon. Advocates in Congress call it an issue of simple fairness, a basic right, and a minimum labor standard, like the 40-hour work week or extra pay for overtime work. Those in jobs with good pay and benefits may be offered paid sick days by their employers voluntarily. But only one out of four workers in low wage jobs, usually the ones with significant public contact, gets a paid sick day. Millions of school bus drivers, food service workers, child care providers, home health aides, and others. Paid leave is provided by statute in 145 other countries, most of them industrialized, and even in some that are not. If we'd had it in this country, the virus would not be so widespread today.
Opponents say that the Healthy Families Act - the bill that requires workplaces of 15 or more employees to offer 7 paid sick days per year - would be fatal to the economy. They say that most employers offer very generous paid sick leave, and that the absence of any federal law lets them tailor-make solutions for the particular characteristics of their workforce. Requiring an inflexible, one-size-fits-all mandate would negatively impact the workplaces, which are already doing such a good job in creatively solving this problem, by implementing practices such as telecommuting, and alternative scheduling. It was not clear how this approach would afford the bus driver, the visiting nurse, the cafeteria worker, the hotel housekeeper, the child care worker, or the part-time special-ed teacher the time to combat and recover from a potentially fatal illness. Their jobs cannot be done from another location, or at another hour of the day.
Watch a video of the hearing yourself, or read the testimony submitted, right here.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Unmarried Women and Predatory Lending
Remember back when the economy was beginning its head-first pitch over the cliff and everyone was talking about subprime mortgages? As policy makers slowly get their heads around preventing such a devastating re-occurrence, they should keep in mind who got taken the worst. Unmarried women, typically the most economically vulnerable group, were most often the victims of the predatory lending and outright deception which created the credit bubble.
With their lower incomes and higher unemployment, unmarried women more frequently resort to payday loans and carry greater credit card debt. They were disproportionately targeted by brokers and lenders who sold them subprime mortgages even when they qualified for a lower-cost loan. The effect is devastating - single mothers now file for bankruptcy more than any other group. This is true even if they were comfortably middle class, owned their own homes, had good jobs and college educations.
Sometimes gender discrimination means a lower salary or slower advancement. This time it means foreclosure and homelessness for women and children. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
Read what the Center for American Progress has to say in their piece on Protecting Unmarried Women from Unscrupulous Lenders.
With their lower incomes and higher unemployment, unmarried women more frequently resort to payday loans and carry greater credit card debt. They were disproportionately targeted by brokers and lenders who sold them subprime mortgages even when they qualified for a lower-cost loan. The effect is devastating - single mothers now file for bankruptcy more than any other group. This is true even if they were comfortably middle class, owned their own homes, had good jobs and college educations.
Sometimes gender discrimination means a lower salary or slower advancement. This time it means foreclosure and homelessness for women and children. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
Read what the Center for American Progress has to say in their piece on Protecting Unmarried Women from Unscrupulous Lenders.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Paycheck Feminism
Karen Kornbluh, long a hero of mine, has written an article for the current issue of Ms. Magazine. She notes the 50% workforce participation rate for women, and hails this moment as a critical opportunity to update our infrastructure, i.e. employment benefits, child care accessibility, income tax policy, and the Social Security system. Just as households and families need the mother's income to survive, so the economy needs women and their labor to thrive. Her thoughtful and practical blueprint, which she terms "Paycheck Feminism", encourages specific policy changes, many of which NAMC and MOTHERS have promoted for a long time. One special paragraph, however, drew me back to it again and again, for its insight into the uneasy relationship between compensated labor and unpaid carework in women's lives.
"The challenge that lies ahead will be to upend Americans' outdated assumptions about what constitutes "important" work. The system of rewarding only paid work with government benefits may seem gender-netural, and even good policy, but it's not. It penalizes women who work, and harms families. We must recognize that unpaid caretaking is equally important, not just on a moral level, but also in terms of investing in our nation's intellectual capital. In addition, we need to stop treating as second-class citizens the women and men who work in lower-paying jobs, who have to change jobs, or who must work flexible hours."
She's sure got that right.
Click here to read the article.
"The challenge that lies ahead will be to upend Americans' outdated assumptions about what constitutes "important" work. The system of rewarding only paid work with government benefits may seem gender-netural, and even good policy, but it's not. It penalizes women who work, and harms families. We must recognize that unpaid caretaking is equally important, not just on a moral level, but also in terms of investing in our nation's intellectual capital. In addition, we need to stop treating as second-class citizens the women and men who work in lower-paying jobs, who have to change jobs, or who must work flexible hours."
She's sure got that right.
Click here to read the article.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Changing the Conversation
Contributed by MOTHERS volunteer and guest blogger Rosanne Weston
In an October 24th NY Times op-ed piece by Joanne Lipman, once the deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, she bemoaned the stalling of women’s progress in the workplace. In the Arts and Leisure section a week earlier Katherine Dieckmann, director of the new film “Motherhood,” emphasized that a man could not have made this movie, not really having the inside view of the grit and grime of mothering work that she and the other creators did. And in the October 22nd edition of that same newspaper, an article in the Styles section (why the Styles section I couldn’t tell you) was devoted to the experts’ current view on yelling at children – to whit, don’t do it.
But with all this attention to the so-called truth of women’s lives in the 21st century, what seemed missing in all these articles was an appreciation for the reality of caregiving. Lipman notes the plateauing or decline in the number of board seats and corporate officer posts held by women, and she reports that women earn only 77 cents to a man’s dollar. But outside of revealing that she was able to work from home as an editor when her children were small, Lipman does not give a nod to how caregiving affects a woman’s relationship to the workplace. It takes a lot of hard work and networking to be offered a seat on a corporate or organizational board. Being a corporate officer often requires punishing hours and a devotion that no one, parent or not, should be expected to expend on just one aspect of life.
So how could a woman with children advance in the workplace, should that be her choice or need, without affordable, accessible, quality childcare and absent the flexibility that was offered to Ms. Lipman? She doesn’t say, although she does urge girls and women to have confidence in themselves. She also does not note that when caregiving is factored into the calculation of how much women earn in relation to men, the number drops from 77 cents to 38 cents. No wonder motherhood is considered a great risk for poverty in old age.
Turning to the world of film, I was interested to learn that the gorgeous and sublimely willowy Uma Thurman was starring as the Everymom in “Motherhood,” an expose of the lives of harried housewives. Okay, being beautiful is beside the point (mea culpa for falling into the trap of discussing a woman based on her appearance), and perhaps the movie is good. (Reviews, anyone?) But I was dismayed by the subtle denigration of the work of mothering in the article about the film.
The language used in interviews by the director and the writer of “Motherhood” clearly drew a line between women who spent their days mothering full time and those who “worked.” The director acknowledged that raising kids while pursuing a career is overwhelming, but she stated, too, that women often use this fact as an “excuse” to not find a way to forge ahead. Once again, as in the Lipman piece, the onus of the juggling act falls on the shoulders of the individual. There is no mention in the article of public policy or the cultural and attitudinal supports needed to help a mother trying to find the tricky balance. And the condescension toward full-time mothering is indicated by the filmmaker’s stated concern that, unless women find a way to transcend the stultifying role of stay-at-home mom, they risk losing their own, authentic “voice.”
Which brings me to the last article, the one that warned that yelling “is a risk factor for a family.” Really?
Come on now. Do the researchers who found that parental yelling “was a near-universal occurrence” think that those of us who have been guilty of it get up in the morning pondering ways that we can risk the wellbeing of our families? Of course it is good to find ways of limiting the amount of shouting in the household, to understand the conditions that lead to a loss of control, but the focus on how damaging the practice is will do nothing to enhance tranquility in the home. The only things enhanced will be guilt and a sense of inadequacy. Again, only a glancing mention was made of the economic pressure and unrealistic expectations underlying parental tensions.
My longtime involvement with the Mothers’ Centers movement and MOTHERS has taught me many things, and one of them is that we need to change the conversation when speaking about women, mothers and family life. We need to stop talking about how each woman has to carve out her own destiny as if we function in a political and economic vacuum. We need to emphasize, repeatedly, the need for family-nurturing public policies and cultural attitudes that are respectful and supportive of all the work that women do – inside and outside the home. We need to bring caregiving into the policy conversation in a clear-eyed and pragmatic way and recognize it as one of the most prominent factors that affect a woman’s decision on how to live her life.
Frantically funny movies about raising kids are fine, but caregiving is a fact of life worthy of serious attention. It is not something that is each person’s individual responsibility to be carried out in private. How it is perceived and supported affects all of us. One of the best gifts we can give our children is to place caregiving on an equal level with other worthy endeavors.
And another gift we can give them is to show them that caregivers, including mothers, are human. We cry when sad, laugh when happy, and, yes, even yell when we are angry or frustrated. We can apologize for going over the top from time to time, but we are imperfect. We have learned over the past forty years or so that aiming for perfection is not a roadmap for happiness or serenity.
For brief, shining moments here and there I may have been the perfect wife, the perfect worker, the perfect mother, even the perfect human being, apart from any of these roles. Maybe. But you can bet that I was not all of them at the same time. I look forward to reading articles about life as it is really lived, as it would be recognized by mothers facing the contradictory demands of their own and others’ needs and wants. That would do more to help build the self confidence Ms. Lipman recommends than all the warnings about the dangers of losing my voice or losing my temper.
In an October 24th NY Times op-ed piece by Joanne Lipman, once the deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, she bemoaned the stalling of women’s progress in the workplace. In the Arts and Leisure section a week earlier Katherine Dieckmann, director of the new film “Motherhood,” emphasized that a man could not have made this movie, not really having the inside view of the grit and grime of mothering work that she and the other creators did. And in the October 22nd edition of that same newspaper, an article in the Styles section (why the Styles section I couldn’t tell you) was devoted to the experts’ current view on yelling at children – to whit, don’t do it.
But with all this attention to the so-called truth of women’s lives in the 21st century, what seemed missing in all these articles was an appreciation for the reality of caregiving. Lipman notes the plateauing or decline in the number of board seats and corporate officer posts held by women, and she reports that women earn only 77 cents to a man’s dollar. But outside of revealing that she was able to work from home as an editor when her children were small, Lipman does not give a nod to how caregiving affects a woman’s relationship to the workplace. It takes a lot of hard work and networking to be offered a seat on a corporate or organizational board. Being a corporate officer often requires punishing hours and a devotion that no one, parent or not, should be expected to expend on just one aspect of life.
So how could a woman with children advance in the workplace, should that be her choice or need, without affordable, accessible, quality childcare and absent the flexibility that was offered to Ms. Lipman? She doesn’t say, although she does urge girls and women to have confidence in themselves. She also does not note that when caregiving is factored into the calculation of how much women earn in relation to men, the number drops from 77 cents to 38 cents. No wonder motherhood is considered a great risk for poverty in old age.
Turning to the world of film, I was interested to learn that the gorgeous and sublimely willowy Uma Thurman was starring as the Everymom in “Motherhood,” an expose of the lives of harried housewives. Okay, being beautiful is beside the point (mea culpa for falling into the trap of discussing a woman based on her appearance), and perhaps the movie is good. (Reviews, anyone?) But I was dismayed by the subtle denigration of the work of mothering in the article about the film.
The language used in interviews by the director and the writer of “Motherhood” clearly drew a line between women who spent their days mothering full time and those who “worked.” The director acknowledged that raising kids while pursuing a career is overwhelming, but she stated, too, that women often use this fact as an “excuse” to not find a way to forge ahead. Once again, as in the Lipman piece, the onus of the juggling act falls on the shoulders of the individual. There is no mention in the article of public policy or the cultural and attitudinal supports needed to help a mother trying to find the tricky balance. And the condescension toward full-time mothering is indicated by the filmmaker’s stated concern that, unless women find a way to transcend the stultifying role of stay-at-home mom, they risk losing their own, authentic “voice.”
Which brings me to the last article, the one that warned that yelling “is a risk factor for a family.” Really?
Come on now. Do the researchers who found that parental yelling “was a near-universal occurrence” think that those of us who have been guilty of it get up in the morning pondering ways that we can risk the wellbeing of our families? Of course it is good to find ways of limiting the amount of shouting in the household, to understand the conditions that lead to a loss of control, but the focus on how damaging the practice is will do nothing to enhance tranquility in the home. The only things enhanced will be guilt and a sense of inadequacy. Again, only a glancing mention was made of the economic pressure and unrealistic expectations underlying parental tensions.
My longtime involvement with the Mothers’ Centers movement and MOTHERS has taught me many things, and one of them is that we need to change the conversation when speaking about women, mothers and family life. We need to stop talking about how each woman has to carve out her own destiny as if we function in a political and economic vacuum. We need to emphasize, repeatedly, the need for family-nurturing public policies and cultural attitudes that are respectful and supportive of all the work that women do – inside and outside the home. We need to bring caregiving into the policy conversation in a clear-eyed and pragmatic way and recognize it as one of the most prominent factors that affect a woman’s decision on how to live her life.
Frantically funny movies about raising kids are fine, but caregiving is a fact of life worthy of serious attention. It is not something that is each person’s individual responsibility to be carried out in private. How it is perceived and supported affects all of us. One of the best gifts we can give our children is to place caregiving on an equal level with other worthy endeavors.
And another gift we can give them is to show them that caregivers, including mothers, are human. We cry when sad, laugh when happy, and, yes, even yell when we are angry or frustrated. We can apologize for going over the top from time to time, but we are imperfect. We have learned over the past forty years or so that aiming for perfection is not a roadmap for happiness or serenity.
For brief, shining moments here and there I may have been the perfect wife, the perfect worker, the perfect mother, even the perfect human being, apart from any of these roles. Maybe. But you can bet that I was not all of them at the same time. I look forward to reading articles about life as it is really lived, as it would be recognized by mothers facing the contradictory demands of their own and others’ needs and wants. That would do more to help build the self confidence Ms. Lipman recommends than all the warnings about the dangers of losing my voice or losing my temper.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The 30% Solution
Author Linda Tarr-Whelan unveiled her new book, "Women Who Lead the Way", at a recent congressional briefing. Under the shadow of the Capitol dome, she explained her "30% solution" to problem-solving and decision-making.
When women occupy 30% of any entity setting policy, they can influence the agenda, affect priorities, and bring their own particular skill set to both the framing of issues and their resolution. This is the tipping point in gender-balanced leadership. Its consequences are evident in politics, business, non-profit management, academia, and other contexts. With 30% female leadership, the political agenda can be transformed. Changes in our national priorities, as well as the allocation of our national resources, would be realized. An entirely different approach would come to bear, not just on the act of problem solving, but on the selection of the problems to be solved.
In the political realm, women's influence is seen in policy shifts pertaining to tax, health care, child welfare, employment law, and domestic violence legislation, to name a few. In the world of business, greater involvement of women in management correlates to highter profits and greater productivity. Additionally, decision-making begins to reflect consensus by partnerships, teams, and more 21st century collaborative management styles.
Congresswoman Rosa de Laura and Senator Mary Landrieu also took the podium, pointing out that a nation cannot succeed if it leaves half its talent pool out in the street. Our competitiveness on a global stage, our national security, and our economic stability all depend on the integration of women into leadersip positions. Women's equitable access to power and influence in all aspects of our national life is a fundamental human rights issue with signifcant ramifactions for American society.
At present, women constitute 17% of the US Congress, about 22% of state legislatures, 14% of corporate boardmembers, and 20% of non-profit directors. In the past 15 years, the US has fallen from 45th place to a current 69th place in terms of female representation in a national legislative body. The nation with the most women in parliamentary office is Rwanda.
You've come a long way, baby. But not nearly far enough!
When women occupy 30% of any entity setting policy, they can influence the agenda, affect priorities, and bring their own particular skill set to both the framing of issues and their resolution. This is the tipping point in gender-balanced leadership. Its consequences are evident in politics, business, non-profit management, academia, and other contexts. With 30% female leadership, the political agenda can be transformed. Changes in our national priorities, as well as the allocation of our national resources, would be realized. An entirely different approach would come to bear, not just on the act of problem solving, but on the selection of the problems to be solved.
In the political realm, women's influence is seen in policy shifts pertaining to tax, health care, child welfare, employment law, and domestic violence legislation, to name a few. In the world of business, greater involvement of women in management correlates to highter profits and greater productivity. Additionally, decision-making begins to reflect consensus by partnerships, teams, and more 21st century collaborative management styles.
Congresswoman Rosa de Laura and Senator Mary Landrieu also took the podium, pointing out that a nation cannot succeed if it leaves half its talent pool out in the street. Our competitiveness on a global stage, our national security, and our economic stability all depend on the integration of women into leadersip positions. Women's equitable access to power and influence in all aspects of our national life is a fundamental human rights issue with signifcant ramifactions for American society.
At present, women constitute 17% of the US Congress, about 22% of state legislatures, 14% of corporate boardmembers, and 20% of non-profit directors. In the past 15 years, the US has fallen from 45th place to a current 69th place in terms of female representation in a national legislative body. The nation with the most women in parliamentary office is Rwanda.
You've come a long way, baby. But not nearly far enough!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Women Senators Take Charge
The estrogen level on the floor of the US Senate skyrocketed last week when female Senators blasted health insurers for their discriminatory practices. In back to back speeches, they vigorously denounced charging women higher premiums and excluding coverage for gender-specific conditions. They were indignant, passionate, and unflinching in their delivery, which made a most welcome change from the typical drone and tedium of political debate.
The session was so unusual that Larry King gave the Senators air time on his show both Thursday and Friday evenings. And apparently interest is still running high - a Senate subcommittee just scheduled a hearing to occur this week entitled "What Women Want: Equal Health Care for Equal Premiums".
Your (Wo)man in Washington will be in the center of the very front row...
Read all about it here.
Click here to watch some YouTube video of the Senators in action.
Click here for The Larry King Live segment.
The session was so unusual that Larry King gave the Senators air time on his show both Thursday and Friday evenings. And apparently interest is still running high - a Senate subcommittee just scheduled a hearing to occur this week entitled "What Women Want: Equal Health Care for Equal Premiums".
Your (Wo)man in Washington will be in the center of the very front row...
Read all about it here.
Click here to watch some YouTube video of the Senators in action.
Click here for The Larry King Live segment.
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