Monday, March 28, 2011

Main Post 3/28

In Crittenden's "The Mommy Tax", they talk about the underlying issue of being a mother and the income that you receive. In the beginning of the article, it talks about a ceremony celebrating the equality of men and women in the workplace because women's income had reached 98 cents to a man's dollar. However, this difference only included women from the ages of 27-33 who were childless. After pointing this out, Crittenden then goes on to explain her own experience of having to stop writing for the New York Times in order to carry out her duties as a mother. Her annual income went from 50,000 to 15,000, forcing her to lose between 600,000 and 700,000 dollars no including the loss of her pension. She also talked about how the French have the lowest mommy tax, and how the Bible even makes a reference to women being inferior to men when God instructs Moses to tell the Israelities that women, for purpose of tithing, are worth 30 shekels, while men are worth fifty.

After reading Ehrenreich's "Maid to Order" It was striking to find how household work in the fifties compares to household work now. Household work in the fifties was acceptable and was the equivalent or equalizer of the male work place. All women were workers with the rare exception of wealthy women who hired other women to do their work. However, now there is the connotation that house maids are associated with lower levels of education and a degrading connotation now that more people have more prestigious jobs in offices.

In "Stories from the Sidelines", Pinand talks about the balance between work and family. After taking a women's studies course in college, she applies to the Women's Leadership Scholars Program and was accepted. She observed two of her bosses and got different opinions and views on how to balance family and work. She referred to her 2nd boss as a "super mom" because she was passionate about both her work and family and was in tune with both worlds. She concludes that its not just up to the individual person and the context of their lives on whether or not they can balance both worlds, but rather it revolves around "workplace policies, federal policies, family structure, stereotypes about gender roles, and the attitudes of coworkers and management".
In Mainardi's "The Politics of Housework", he translates different scenarios as excuses of why men wouldn't want to do housework. The translation that stood out to me the most and that I can relate to the most is the one where the translation talks about how men are not good at washing dishes or cooking or laundry and they are better at the carpentry jobs. I find that whenever my Mom asks for my Dad to keep the house clean while she is away, he isn't really sure how she does the laundry day in and day out, and he likes to yard work chores rather then laundry or cleaning. However, I do have to give him credit that he is always the one who does the dishes! I thought that this reading was interesting because there was a contrast of what I could picture as reality, but another side where I could never imagine a man saying this to his wife. I think that all 4 of these articles touched upon the workplace for women and this article added a twist on it since it was written by a man.









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