There’s been a lot of talk this week about women thanks to Larry Summer’s remarks and Judith Warner’s book.
I’ve provided links to the discussion on the web, but haven’t waded in. In part, because I feel like I’ve already addressed many of these issues on the blog before. Terribly boring to repeat myself. I’ve also held myself back because I’ve been really busy this week.
Ian’s not feeling well. Runny nose and fever. He needs a lot of attention when he’s sick, like any two year old. But it’s also a bit worse, since he can’t talk. When he’s sick, he screams all the time in frustration. Too ill to nap, he hasn’t given me a break in days.
Also, Steve’s home this week to tear apart out kitchen. The walls are covered in Holly-Hobby-like wallpaper — cutesy brown flowers on the top and stripes on the bottom. I’ve been peeling it off for days, which is oddly satisfying. Sort of like picking dead skin off a sunburn. My dad and Steve have been hacking away at the floor with pitchforks to remove three layers of linoleum and two layers of plywood. At the bottom of the sedimentary layers of other homeowners, we found hardwood. I hope to paint it with Benjamin Moore Industrial White before the week’s over.
It’s been nearly impossible to write something coherent this week. Life’s intervening. But I’ve got Ian playing on Steve’s computer for the moment, so let me take a shot.
First, in response to the many claims that women don’t like politics, they don’t like the hardball interchange of ideas, and they prefer to talk about other topics. Ugggh!!! I can’t stand that shit. I love politics. I have the reputation of taking the opposite point of view of whatever group I’m with, just to get debate going. Just because I write about the cute guys on Lost and art, but doesn’t mean the op-ed page of the Times is wrapping my fish.
Am I typical? My family is more political than the average family, but there are a lot of other women out there who take joy in political exchange. The last time I taught Introduction to American Politics, 42 students were female and 8 were male.
And you should know that I’ve got some game. Give me some prep time, and I’ll kick your butt in a political debate. Really. Enough said on that.
So we have interest and ability on one side of town, and we have opportunity on the other. Here’s where I’ve faced some difficulties.
Others may have been less lucky, but I faced no problems with sexism until I had kids. I went through graduate school faster than most guys, and my professors treated me with as much respect as others. If I never had kids, I am sure that I would be on the tenure track somewhere.
But I had kids (with one needing extra TLC) and I suddenly, unexpectedly hit a brick wall. While they are young, I can not compete with the guys. Even if I had them in fulltime daycare, I wouldn’t be able to compete. I’m distracted. I’m busy. I’m tired.
Does this bother me? Hell, yeah. I’m like Mary Decker Tabb who’s been tripped by Zola Budd screaming in frustration as the pack runs by. I’ll never catch up.
Kids are the number one reason that women aren’t able to compete with the big boys. Not ability or interest.
Then there are all the women who cry when they have to go back to work, because they have to. These women who don’t want a career, but would rather be home. Their situation is a worse tragedy than the lack of women in high powered career positions.
What to do about it? McArdle and Podhoretz have pooh-poohed governmental solutions. I don’t know. Republicans don’t seem shy about upping government spending when it comes to their pet issues. But I’m not going to push this point, because I’m not sure if governmental programs can rectify these problems, which are far too huge.
(It’s time to get lunch ready for sick-boy and the flooring ripping guys downstairs. I’m going to post this even though it’s still rough and unfinished. )
Update: I just can’t finish this post. I seem to have gotten Ian’s cold and am feeling rather achy.
Apt. 11d 
I’d have to say that kids are what stopped me from completely my degree, mostly from a financial point of view. We moved away from my home institution. In order to really work on my dissertation, I needed time–so daycare, which costs money (4 times what we were paying previously with no change in our salaries). I took an adjunct position which covered the daycare costs, barely. Of course, taking the adjunct position ate aways at my time. There was course prep and grading and before I knew it, I only had a couple of hours a day to devote to writing. If I didn’t have kids that woke in the middle of the night, got sick, and basically needed me to help them do homework, bathe and clothe them, I might have had the energy to stay up late and work and still be okay for my 9 a.m. classes. I’ve never been a good late night worker (watching tv, reading, yes; theorizing about motherhood in the 17th century, no). There may be some fields where sexism is more rampant. The latent sexism in my situation is simply the way the working conditions are set up for me with women at home taking care of the house.
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I work fulltime (I’m a guy) & my mate has wanted in the past to be a full time mother, so we’ve managed to survive on one income by skating along. Although I haven’t had a raise in years, I’m paid pretty well by corporate standards (not in the stratosphere by any means). The way I see it, the corporate powers get a great deal—not only my labor (and the surplus value thereof) but the production of two additional workers to replace us, the latter nominally for free. Raising children is harder work than any corporate job I’ve ever had. It has huge rewards but you can’t eat them (the rewards). The changes necessary to do this right would be dramatic, fundamental and far-reaching, in effect a revolution. And that’s what it would take, because the economics of the current process are very advantageous to property owners. Simple!
Also, before you paint that floor, consider sanding and polyurethane (only if you can seal off your kitchen for a few days, however). I’ve done a few of these and the results have always been great, even if you have to live with a few nail holes in the hard wood.
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Oh, do I ever know what you mean. Before I had El Pistola, I was one of the stars of my program. Now, it’s as if I don’t exist, and my advisor continually shits on me. I did a huge rant on this very topic the other day on my blog.
And Laura, I’m not a good late-night (or early evening) worker, either. About all that I’m good for is a little emailing/blogging and TV watching. Tonight that will be Survivor and The Apprentice. 🙂
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Just read Laurie R. King’s new blog, with a post on why more women authors don’t make the Edgar’s – very similar vein to this, check it out. Plus read her, if you don’t already, she is an amazing writer.
http://www.laurierking.blogspot.com
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feel better, eh?
Just a comment on the finishing the diss and parenting. I would never have been able to finish it while teaching if we hadn’t had the possibility of me leaving every weekend for a semester to go write/think/whatever in peace away from the house. I was able to teach and grade during the week, somehow less anxious because I knew the weekend was coming up, and I was productive on the weekend since 48 hours really was long enough for me to get into it and write. Don’t know how I always found a place – someone’s apt while they were away, awesome houses, once a hotel. But it took from Labor Day until Thanksgiving and that was the last burst needed.
Once I went to see my kids in the middle of the weekend and it was pure anguish. I’m not sure how juggling parenthood and really long-term academic productivity would work.
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Well, hold on. Are you not on a tenure track now because of sexism on the part of your employers, or are you not on a tenure track because you chose to bow out — to have kids and spend time with them, rather than your work, at least for now? Or are you saying that you were forced to bow out, because, as a woman, you’re the defacto primary caregiver?
Hope you feel better. Drink tea and stare at the sky for awhile; that always seems to help me!
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like you, Laura, I see these issues coming around again and again. so here’s an old tape which I think I have played before: I really think there is room in a family for only one big-deal career, if there are children. It can be the mother or the father who does the career – but it’s really hard for both. Two careers and one child, with a lot of hired help, maybe, but children – almost impossible, and not a good situation for the kids.
in our family, my wife has the career, and I’ve got a job. And when she has to go to a reception, or Taiwan for a week, or work all night on something urgent, or one of the kids is sick, I take time off from work to cover. I get home early enough to p/u kids at school, and cook dinner by the time she gets home. I have looked for work which is flexible that way – and the tradeoff is that mine is a middle level staff job and won’t ever be more. She makes quite a lot more money than I do, and that’s okay – together we have enough. It’s a very standard pattern, except that the gent usually has the career – and it’s standard because it works, it gives the kids enough parent time and attention.
To do a high level career really takes more time and attention than is consistent with being the primary care giver for children. And, if you try and fix that by lowering the demands of the career, you will fail, because there are always childless people in the workplace who have more time, and can give more, and will succeed better. What to do about this? Encourage young couples to think about what they really want, and who wants a career more, and if they both do, whether they should have children – or whether they are making the right marriage.
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McArdle and Podhoretz have pooh-poohed governmental solutions. I don’t know. Republicans don’t seem shy about upping government spending when it comes to their pet issues.
Dunno about Podhoretz, but McArdle is no more of a toe-the-line Republican than I am. She has been quite critical of the increased spending of the Bush administration.
That being said, I myself don’t know what would fix this besides some heavy-duty social changes, and that might not happen without government involvement, like with civil liberties.
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What kind of social changes?
Shortening childhood would be the only sure-fire social change that could possibly improve things in this area (and a number of others!) without throwing dozens of monkey wrenches elsewhere in our society and economy. With a shorter childhood, you get to start your real life earlier, and you spend fewer years raising your own children….
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What kind of social changes?
I was thinking it would probably require overhauling the nuclear family model.
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