What a Load (Equality in the Workplace) By Linda Hirshman TAP

[Demeter]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12558

What a Load

In the discussion about achieving work/life balance, men are getting a free pass.

By Linda Hirshman

Web Exclusive: 03.14.07


"Mother Load" (TAP SPecial Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=MotherLoad )contains all the explanation you'll ever need for why women are opting out. And they are. (As I've written elsewhere, the opt-out phenomenon is both deeper and broader than previously reported.) The pieces in the "Mother Load" report laud efforts to make the workplace more "family-friendly." But real change will not be effected by fighting for reform at the corporate level. Ellen Bravo tells us "we need to redesign the national household." I wonder, who is this "we"? It's the husbands, stupid.

Kathleen Gerson says that women and men want "many of the same things." But women are opting out because, in Gerson's own words, if the guys "can't have an equal balance between work and parenting, fall back on a neotraditional arrangement that allows them to put their own work prospects first and rely on a partner for most caregiving." No kidding. She goes on, "From young men's perspective, this modified but still gendered household offers women the chance to earn income and establish an identity at the workplace without imposing the costs of equal parenting on men. Granting a mother's 'right' to work supports women's claims for independence, but does not undermine men's claim that their work prospects should come first." It is crucial to remember that, even if by some miracle male employers could be persuaded to enact the reforms discussed, without a real change in women's attitudes about the family most of the effect would be to make it easier for women to continue to bear their excessive share of an unjust household. And allow the women to think they chose it! .....Because Gerson's own evidence shows that men only agree if equality costs men nothing...She says the young women would rather stay single than have an unjust partnership. I hope she's right, but I fear they will simply get married and hope their husband won't be a jerk...

Here's where the dismal science comes in. Equality always costs someone something -- and usually that someone is the one on top. Sugar-coating by discussing how women and men "want many of the same things" simply allows women to delude themselves into thinking the "same things" will just fall into their laps without the nastiness of standing up for them. If everybody wants them, how hard can it be?

Why won't the men sacrifice their own ambitions, independence, earning power, and success in the interest of equal treatment for the women they purport to love? Because they understand the value of their work prospects. No opt-out revolution there. But the Council on Contemporary Families seems to think that the men who run the institutions of government and the market economy are going to limit their success and earn less money by increasing the cost of their labor force through paid parental leave, increased training time for shorter term workers, on-site day care, and the rest. These men are not going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts when they won't even do it for the women they love.

So here's a novel idea: Instead of passing around last year's Working Mother magazine and looking for help from the boys who tell Gerson they'd love to have a just family if it didn't cost them anything, why don't women use their power at the ballot box? If women used their voting power to legislate the redistributive agenda they need, including, for example, required paternal leave, Goldman Sachs would look like a Swedish cooperative nursery. Martin is correct that the mommy groups must be addressing the men in their strategy. But they should be making concrete demands, not settling for wishful thinking. In the words of the famous feminist economist Larry Summers, no one has ever washed a rented car. Until women refuse to participate in the unjust world the men embrace, there will be no forward progress.

Linda Hirshman retired as the Allen/Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Brandeis University. She is the author of Get To Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World (Viking 2006).

[Solo_in_MD]

1. Her elitest view of feminism and failure to recognize and support the choice being made

marginalizes here in my opinion. A telling quote:

I found that among the educated elite, who are the logical heirs of the agenda of empowering women

Her view is that the highly educated (and mostly white) are the drivers of the women's movement. Doesn't leave much room for the rest of the women in the use, as in 95% or more.

She also freely rejects the choices of individual women...this topic is more controversial, but if feminisim is not about choice, what is it?

[Stockholm]

2. There is no required paternal leave in Sweden

I wish there was.