We are taking a well-deserved break here at Up With Moms and enjoying a European vacation. I am luxuriating not only in the beautiful sights of London and Paris, but in the downtime between sightseeing. I came across this interesting article on The Juggle, the Wall Street Journal's blog about balancing work and kids, during a down period (yey high speed internet access in Paris!!!). What do you think, is the US waging a war against moms?
Sometimes activism actually pays off. After hearing from thousands of constituents, the US House of Representatives did the right thing and passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. But we're not done yet. The Senate still has to pass it and the President has to sign it. You can urge your senators to pass this bill here.
If you're not familiar with her story and what the Fair Pay Act is about, here's Lilly herself telling her story.
The tragedy is that the Supreme Court ruled that, according to the law, she didn't file her claim soon enough. She was supposed to have filed her claim within 180 days after she got her first unequal paycheck. BEFORE she even knew she was getting unequal pay. Yeah. Makes absolutely no sense. So clearly we need to change the law to work for us and not against us.
It also occurs to me that while these laws are desperately needed measures, it's not the only way we'll end unequal pay. Employers often justify this unequal treatment by claiming that women are less of a sure investment as they are more likely to put in less time or leave their jobs to care for their families. The cold hard fact is that they are more likely to do those things because corporate America hasn't quite figured out how to accommodate the needs of working families. If employers embraced flexible work policies to allow either parent to take their kids to the doctor, stay home with sick children, go to parent-teacher conferences, etc., perhaps they'd have a better chance of retaining valuable employees.
Remember this post (another thriller where I whine about not having enough time to right all the wrongs of the world)? Well, the National Partnership for Women and Families (another fine organization I forgot to mention in my last post) informed me today via email that the Senate is set to vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this week.
An excerpt from the email:
Your voice is needed — today! The Senate is scheduled to vote this Wednesday on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
E-mail your Senators now and urge them to vote “YES” for fair pay for working women. Then forward this e-mail to your friends, family, and co-workers.
Why is this important to you? Women in the United States are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their white male counterparts — more than four decades after Congress outlawed wage discrimination based on gender. For women of color, the numbers are even starker — African-American women earn 63 cents and Latinas earn 53 cents for every dollar paid to white men.
Outraged? Tell your Senators to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
What are you waiting for...click here and email your Senators before Wednesday!
When I first started this blog, I imagined creating wonderfully insightful and thought-leading posts about work-life balance issues. Turns out after spending most of my time thinking about how to cure cancer at my day job and trying to be the best mommy I can be the rest of the time, the brilliance just doesn't seem to flow like I thought it would.
But I have been a faithful email activist, keeping up with my action alerts from Momsrising.org, 9 to 5 and the National Organization of Women. I was thrilled to learn a few weeks ago that thanks to some heavy duty lobbying from Momsrising and several other organizations, New Jersey became the third state to pass a law that provides paid leave for workers to care for a sick family member or to bond with a newly born or adopted child. Three down, 47 more to go...I can't wait for this fight to come to Georgia. If you haven't signed up to receive action alerts from at least one of these organizations, you gotta go do it. Go ahead. Do it now. I'll wait till you get back.
At the same time, I was sickened to read that this past week, our federal government let families down yet again when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved cutting a proposed eight weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees to only four weeks. The logic completely escapes me. Our government finally has a chance to prove it's not back-assward by providing American families some much needed support and it can't seem to get it together enough to support its own employees. Talent attrition alone should more than pay for this program, but apparently Committee Republicans argued that supporting this program in a spiraling economy sends a message that our lawmakers are out of touch with American citizens. So instead, they sent the message that they're out of touch with the needs of their own employees. I suppose four weeks is better than nothing, but it's hard to get excited about a program equivalent of holding out a life preserver only to pull it back and yell, "Psyche!"
Clearly the fight for family-friendly work policies is just beginning. Although I won't be leading this fight any time soon, thankfully others are on the forefront. I just stumbled across Washington Post's blog on work-life balance and they offer a super cool widget, now nestled in the sidebar of Up With Moms, so I can offer great work-life balance content even when I'm sidetracked by devotions in soccer or being (NOT) a Top Momma. Or you can read actual thought leaders like MojoMom, who like me is convinced that fixing our corporate infrastructure to support families is the next wave of feminism. Like our predecessors who fought to make it acceptable for women to achieve in the workplace, it's now up to us to make the workplace acceptable for us moms and our dads. Whether you're a thought leader or just a garden variety email activist, New Jersey is proof of the power of moms.
Here's a lesson in balance (or laziness). Rather than expend my own energy and brain cells (of which I have none left to spare) by enthralling you with my own musings, I'm going to direct you to this fabulous post by one of my favorite bloggers. So glad she's back from the playa. I was getting tired of looking at the palm trees on her blog, wishing I was on my own playa.
In her latest post, Mom-101 confirms what us Dems have known all along. Despite all their rhetoric about family values, Republicans are not so much about valuing families.
Read her post, then while you're at it, go to this site and download a free voter guide. It'll give you a great list of questions to ask yourself about the family-friendliness of the candidates you're considering. It's time we elect someone who will do right by those of us trying to earn a living, raise a family and maintain our sanity all at the same time. Our kids may be almost grown by the time we get another shot.
Turns out that its alot harder to rid the world of cancer (my day job) AND right the wrongs of corporate America for us moms (oh yeah, AND do that mommy job) than I thought.
Yesterday I got an email from Momsrising.org asking for volunteers to coordinate a meeting with one of our GA Senators to encourage them to pass the Fair Pay Restoration Act. This Act reverses a recent Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear that now gives employees a mere 180 days from the time a pay rate is set to discover heinous and unfair pay discrepancies based on gender, race or other discriminatory factors and to file a claim to right the wrong.
Man, I would have LOVED to have coordinated that meeting. I can just imagine strolling into that Senator's office all fired up, channeling my best Julia Sugarbaker (remember "Designing Women"? Love that show!!!):
"Senator So and So, we're here representing Momsrising.org, Mothers and More and the thousands of hard-working employees here in the state of Georgia who have a high likelihood of experiencing pay discrimination. We are asking that you vote to pass the Fair Pay Restoration Act when it comes up in the Senate. Now we don't know what our distinguished Supreme Court justices were smoking when they ruled on Ledbetter vs. Goodyear, but surely you can see the folly in allowing only 180 days from the time pay is set to file any kind of pay discrimination claim. Because unless you happen to be psychic or lucky enough to stumble upon a pile of your co-workers' pay stubs, there is no way in hell you could discover and prove potentially discriminatory pay practices in that short of a time period!"
Ok, I probably wouldn't say that. But Julia would. Unfortunately, when I looked at my calendar to see when I could hold such a meeting, it was already jam-packed with cancer-fighting meetings. And since I'm actually being paid with money that people have donated from their hard-earned paychecks to fight cancer and not the working mommy issues, I decided I'd better stick to my original schedule.
So, my working mommy issue fighting will have to be limited to signing this Momsrising.org online petition and writing a letter to my Senators ("Dear Backwoods Senator..." Just kidding. I wouldn't write that either) in my off hours for now. I encourage everyone reading this (all 11 of you) to visit Momsrising.org (haven't joined yet...what are you waiting for?) and get involved. They are looking for people in all 50 states to coordinate meetings with their Senators, sign their petition and to express their support of the issue.
Time to activate!
Yesterday, I left my straightening iron on. All day. I didn't realize it was still plugged in until I mindlessly threw a washcloth on top of it and eventually smelled something burning. It was one of those busy, overbooked days where we had one activity planned after another. I was rushing to get us all out the door, my mind focused on the long list of stuff we had to do. And in the process, I could have burned our house down. Or maybe something worse.
Of course I thanked my lucky stars that I escaped a potentially horrendous situation and vowed to be more mindful and careful in the future. But if I'm truly honest with myself, odds are something like that is bound to happen again. And I couldn't help but think of Brenda Slaby, the mother that killed her two year old daughter earlier this month by forgetting to drop her off at the babysitter and accidentally leaving her in the back of her sweltering car.
Brenda's story struck such a cord with me. I'd like to think that I would never, ever make such a careless, tragic mistake as to forget about my sleeping child in the back seat of my car. But my straightening iron incident was a sobering reminder that there are plenty of other ways that I could inadvertently harm my family by simply being scatterbrained. I've been struck by the lack of commentary on the Slaby story among the mommy blogs that I generally read. Maybe it's because we all have our straightening iron incidents and so the story hits a bit too close to home.
And so I can't help but ask, are we too busy?
Yes, most of us would admit that we're over scheduled (note to self: daughter #1 has Brownies tomorrow; daughter #2 has swimming). When my first child was a baby, I vowed that we wouldn't get sucked into that overachiever mindset where my children had to do absolutely everything. But somehow the activities just creeped up on us and the logistics and accouterments for the activities (who goes where when and what equipment do they need?) coupled with the accouterments and logistics for school (who goes where when, who needs what signed and who's doing what for lunch?), is alot to keep up with.
The activities are within our control and something to seriously consider paring back (I am). But it's not the whole story. Those of us who work know that it's also a big distraction. Joan Blades, co-founder of Momsrising.org writes about the extreme work phenomenon, where people work 24/7 leaving little time for family or anything else, in "A Peaceful Revolution" on The Huffington Post. "Might we be working stupid because we are so tired?" Blades writes. "It is time for us to consider our values." My boss and I debated this extreme work environment when I confronted him on my lack of career progression due to my mommy status. "I have all of this work that needs to get done. I need someone who can be available all the time," he lamented. While as a manager I understood his argument, I rhetorically asked why working around the clock had to be the norm and commented that it couldn't be healthy for anyone -- working moms or not.
I found this great NY Times article, "Too Busy to Notice You're Too Busy," when doing my limited research for this post. It's written by a woman who seems to have figured it out. I couldn't agree with her more that we all need to consciously find ways to make ourselves less busy. But we also need to find ways to change the extreme work environment. I'm counting on Momsrising.org and other organizations to lead the way on that front. In the meantime, I've put my Blackberry aside for the night and refuse to check my work email so that I can do what I enjoy most -- writing for this blog.
Everyone's all a buzz about Oprah's latest find, "The Secret." According to its official Web site, "The Secret" is the gateway to all you've ever wanted -- unlimited joy, health, love, money, and so on.
"The Secret" is based on the law of attraction -- we attract things into our lives by what we think and believe. So if you focus on negative things, you'll attract bad things to you. If you focus on positive things, you'll attract wonderful things to you. Simple, right? So now that we all know "The Secret," we can all be ecstatically happy, skinny billionaires with fulfilling careers and perfect families (like Oprah, but thinner)! All you have to do is "Ask. Believe. Receive."
It sounds too good to be true, but I have to admit, I have seen "The Secret" work in my life. Right after college, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had been going through a rough time, all of my friends had moved away after graduation and I could not find a job. I was depressed. But after my diagnosis, my attitude changed. I knew I would live through the ordeal and adopted a positive outlook to convince my friends and family of the same. Suddenly, I was offered a contract job that allowed me to work full time but take time off for my treatment. Despite having chemo, I kept most of my hair. But about halfway through my treatment, the darker side of my reality started to cloud my positive attitude. My contract position was eliminated and my hair began to fall out in clumps. At the urging of my then boyfriend (now husband), I went into therapy, rid myself of my negative emotions and refocused on where I wanted to go. I finished treatment, found an amazing job that not only jump started my career, but introduced me to a incredible group of young dynamic people, many of whom are still my friends today.
About four years ago, just before the birth of my second daughter, I decided I'd had enough of the working mommy whirlwind. It was hard enough juggling one child and a demanding full-time job, I just knew I didn't want to do it with two children. But of course the professional in me didn't want to give up a job I loved and a career I had worked so hard to build. As I despaired, my husband asked, "What would be the ideal situation for you?" I told him I'd love to do my current job part-time so I could be with my children, yet satisfy my professional drive. Three days later, my boss asked me to consider part-time work instead of leaving all together. I've had the best of both worlds ever since.
But "Ask. Believe. Receive," is much easier said than done. Not only do you have to look past all the crappy things that may be happening to you, you have to believe that you deserve the good things in life. That's a particular stretch for us moms. We're programmed to never ask for anything. And because we're too busy beating ourselves up about all of the things we didn't do right as a mother, a wife, a friend, we certainly don't believe we deserve it.
This is core reason I wanted to write this blog. To make our lives better, we have to begin to believe that we deserve better than what we have now. We have to believe we deserve the respect of our families and our society. We have to believe that we can combine fulfilling careers with a flourishing family. We have to believe that our voices can make a difference and that we can, eventually, "Have it all." The secret to "The Secret" is believing that we deserve to live the life we want to lead as mothers and as dynamic women. All we have to do is believe.
Ever since I joined the working mom ranks, I've been pissed at Gloria Steinem. I don't know the woman. I don't even know much about her. But for a long time in my mind she represented a failed experiment that has been the bane of my existence for the past seven years.
Wasn't it she and her feminist pals that espoused women having successful and dynamic careers like our male counterparts? Wasn't it their movement that inspired that #%@! "I Can Bring Home the Bacon" commercial that indoctrinated us as little girls and misled us all to believe we could, "Have it all?" What were they thinking? Did they not think through the ramifications of adding children to the mix? Did they not realize that women would continue to carry the burden of childrearing and that it would be simply impossible to compete with our male colleagues in the workplace and still give our children the full attention they deserved, leaving an entire generation of women to feel like complete failures?
Realizing that my anger was somewhat irrational and likely misplaced, I decided to educate myself about my nemesis and the feminist movement she ignited. As I searched the Internet, I came across a fascinating history of the women's rights movement. I was surprised to learn that the women's movement began way back in 1848 when a woman named Elizabeth Cady Stanton wondered why women did not enjoy the same freedoms as their husbands in the New World despite suffering the same risks and sacrifices to earn those freedoms. Since then, the movement has progressed slowly but surely -- from earning the right to vote, to drafting the ERA, to winning Roe vs. Wade -- incrementally improving the lives of women. It is clear from this history that each time we make gains in the women's movement, it is thanks to "a small group of people questioning why human lives were being resticted."
Gloria's contribution came when, in 1963, Betty Friedan published, "The Feminine Mystique," a survey that documented the oppression of average American women due to limited life options. This led the way for Gloria and her co-horts to champion equal rights, reproductive rights and sexual liberation. Thanks to their efforts, we now enjoy things like birth control and free choice to pursue a career. But these gains are only another incremental step toward fully realizing Elizabeth Cady Stanton's dream of women enjoying the same rights and freedoms as men.
Fortunately for those of us who feel the restrictions of working motherhood in the 21st century, the next wave of the women's movement is upon us. Today's New York Times article rightly points out that the proliferation of mommy blogs has sparked the modern mommy movement. Groups like Mothers & More and MomsRising are gaining traction and the Internet is making it easier than ever for us to jump on the bandwagon. Rather than blaming Gloria and the activists that came before her, we should borrow a page from their handbook. The only way to advance the female cause is to let our voices be heard and ask the tough questions. To quote my new friend Gloria, "Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself."
