Dear All,
I forwarded the Work and Family article to the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commissioner in the Human Rights Commission, Dr Judy McGregor and the
Ministry of Women's Affairs here in New Zealand, as this is an issue with
which we also wrestle. On reading the article, I can also substitute
Black with Maori, Polynesian Islander, Asian with great ease. Finding jobs
for many highly qualified young women is a huge problem, solved by many
leaving our shores. Another form of opting out. Joan Isaacs from the MWA
responded as below.
"A cursory glimpse reminded me of the third world women at the l985
Conference on Women in Kenya. They got fedup with the first world focus ...
Reminded us that their priority before 'equality' was to get the guns out of
their back yards."
Change in the status of women, as ever, is glacially slow. The EEO's 2nd
Census of NZ women in positions of power and influence due out shortly,
proves the point even for enlightened countries like New Zealand.
I also took note of the campaign in South Africa, "Real Men Don't Rape"
which is to air shortly. See below.
"Only two months after the (South African) parliament tabled the Sexual
Offences Bill, which was in progress for eight years, the 'Real Men Don't
Rape' television campaign will now air next week on e.tv and M-Net. The
campaign was organised by Women Demand Dignity (WDD), the Trauma Centre and
Rape Crisis in order to draw attention to the crisis of rape and the
shortcomings of the Bill. "
I applaud the initiative and courage of these women and feel they deserve
some international exposure. As you are in situ, Stella, can you update us
on this campaign and new legislation?
Kind regards
Rosanne Hawarden
Massey University
New Zealand
Email:
rosanne@syspro.co.nz
-----Original Message-----
From: Gender & Diversity in Organizations Division Listserv
[mailto:
GDO-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of S M Nkomo
Sent: Friday, 10 February 2006 6:10 p.m.
To:
GDO-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Work vs. Family, Complicated by Race
Dear All: Let us really dig deep into this discourse of "opting out."
Marta is right class must be very prominent in discussion as well as the
broader global economic context and quite frankly the economic status of the
United States. Is not interesting that this debate arises at a time when
the United States has a record deficit, money being siphoned off by the
Iraq war, strains on corporate earnings.
Stella
Professor Stella M. Nkomo
Bateman Distinguished Professor of Business Leadership Graduate School of
Business University of South Africa
Office Phone: 27 11 652 0365
Cell Phone: 27 82 887 3540
Fax: 27 11 652 0299
Mailing Address:
P O Box 392
Pretoria 0003
South Africa
Federal Express or DHL Address:
First Street Extension
Midrand
South Africa
>>>
marta@MGMT.UMASS.EDU 2006-02-10 1:15:40 AM >>>
thanks so much for sending this. much needed correction to the
"opt-out" issue. now, we need somebody to also speak up to the issue being
complicated further, if not primarily, by the question of class, a very
needed discussion in the usa.
best, m.
On Thu, 9 Feb 2006
keithj@PDX.EDU wrote:
> Work vs. Family, Complicated by Race
> By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
> NY Times
> Published: February 9, 2006
>
> Mitchellville, Md.
> THE subject, yet again, was motherhood and work. Over tea and hors
> d'oeuvres in this affluent Washington suburb, a cluster of
> well-educated women gathered to discuss the work-life debate. Most in
> the roomful of lawyers, technology experts, corporate managers and
> entrepreneurs had read dispatches from the so-called "mommy wars," the
> books and articles grounded in the gulch between working and stay-at-home
mothers.
>
> But for the women in attendance - all of them black - those
> discussions inevitably fell short. "They don't speak to my reality,"
> said Robin Rucker Gaillard, 41, a lawyer and mother of two. "We don't
> generally have the time or luxury for the guilt and competition that some
white mothers engage in."
>
> Around the country black women are opting out of the "opt-out" debate,
> the often-heated exchange about the compatibility of motherhood and
> work. Steeped in issues like working versus staying at home, nannies
> versus day care, and the benefits or garish excess of $800 strollers,
> the discussion has become a hot topic online, in newspapers and in book
publishing.
>
> It is not that black mothers do not wrestle with some of the same
> considerations as white mothers. But interviews with more than two
> dozen women suggest that the discussions as portrayed in books and the
> news media often lack the nuances and complexities particular to their
experience.
>
> For professional black women, debates about self-fulfillment can seem
> incomprehensibly narrow against the need to build sustainable wealth
> and security for their families. The discussions also pale in
> comparison to worries about shielding sons and daughters from the
> perils that black children face growing up, and overlook the practical
> pull of extended families in need of financial support.
>
> Ms. Gaillard and others had gathered to broaden the working-mother
> debate by discussing a new book, "I'm Every Woman: Remixed Stories of
> Marriage, Motherhood and Work."
>
> Equal parts memoir, history lesson and cultural critique, the book, by
> Lonnae O'Neal Parker, a reporter for The Washington Post and a mother
> of three, celebrates the balancing act practiced by black women.
> Published in November by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, it
> takes a sometimes wrenching, sometimes joyful look at black motherhood
> from slavery and the great migration to suburbia, the corporate
> workplace and the ascendancy of hip-hop. And since it came out, Ms.
> O'Neal Parker has been invited to gatherings around the country by black
women eager to talk about motherhood on their own terms.
>
> "It was a breath of fresh air to have a conversation that resonated with
me,"
> said Pamela Walker, 41, a professor at Northwestern Business College
> in Chicago. A married mother of six, she attended a reading of "I'm Every
Woman"
> at Sensual Steps, a shoe boutique in the predominantly black
> Bronzeville section on the South Side of Chicago. "My family can
> afford expensive things, but why would I think about spending hundreds
> on a stroller when I could help a cousin buy textbooks for college? That
is not my world."
>
> Black mothers have traditionally worked in higher percentages than white
women.
> And educated black mothers are still more likely to work than their
> white counterparts. According to census data from March 2005, 83.7
> percent of college-educated black women with children under 18 are in
> the labor force, compared to 74 percent of college-educated white mothers.
>
> Census figures from 2005 also show that college-educated black women
> earn slightly more than their white counterparts, largely because they
> are more likely to stay in the work force and work longer hours than
> white women after having children.
>
> The commitment of black women to work is in large part economically
> driven. They have lower marriage rates than white women, meaning they
> are more likely to be single parents. Those who are married are more
> likely than their white counterparts to earn more than their husbands,
census figures show.
>
> But for black middle-class women from Mary Church Terrell, a charter
> member of the N.A.A.C.P., to Coretta Scott King, working has also been
> a matter of choice. For generations black women have viewed work as a
> means for elevating not only their own status as women, but also as a
> crucial force in elevating their family, extended family and their entire
race.
>
> Black women are not the only women feeling airbrushed out of today's
> images of motherhood as represented in the literature of the opt-out
> debate, which includes articles like one in The New York Times last
> year reporting that many women at Ivy League colleges plan to drop
> their careers, at least temporarily, once they start having children.
>
> Another article, by Linda R. Hirshman in the December issue of The
> American Prospect, a magazine devoted to liberal ideas, provoked sharp
> debate by arguing that women who stay home with children are in for a
> letdown, and that the workplace is the only realm where women find true
fulfillment. This is, Ms.
> Hirshman acknowledged, not a new idea. It was the theme of "The
> Feminist Mystique" written more than 40 years ago by Betty Friedan.
>
> Some white working-class and middle- class women have complained that
> both sides of the opt-out debate have an elitist tone. Recently
> members of a group called Latina Mami in Austin, Tex., vented about
> the lack of perspective in many of the motherhood books in bookstores.
>
> Some insiders in the battles have acknowledged the narrowness of
> public discourse. "The conflict seems to be pretty much driven by
> white upper-middle-class angst, and the debate has been taken over by
> that," said Leslie Morgan Steiner, a white mother of three and the editor
of "Mommy Wars,"
> an anthology of essays to be published by Random House next month.
>
> Ms. Steiner's book includes essays from Ms. O'Neal Parker and two
> other black writers, as well as a Pakistani mother who writes of her
> struggles with child care, and a Latina who was introduced to
> stay-at-home mothering through a bout with cancer.
>
> Tension between working and stay-at-home black mothers - friction that
> seems less prevalent and intense than among their white peers, many
> women said - is often driven by a pressure for persistent racial
> striving. Smiling at the circle of friends gathered in her
> Mitchellville living room, Frances Luckett, the principal at a
> private, predominantly black elementary school, welcomed her guests
> with an exhortation. "Your journey is not just about you," Ms. Luckett
> said to the two dozen women, aged 19 to 85. "It's about adding to the
journey of those who came before you and paving a way for the journeys after
yours."
>
> There were knowing groans as Ms. O'Neal Parker read aloud from "I'm Every
Woman"
> about "bone memory" and the specter of a weary but resolute slave
> woman, who "sticks a knee in my back and squares up my shoulders" when
life feels unfair.
>
> There was empathetic laughter when she lovingly discussed the "kink
> coefficient," a term she coined to describe the extra hours black
> mothers build into their packed schedules to groom daughters whose
> kinky hair "grows out instead of down."
>
> The personal motherhood struggles that black women face are often
> complicated variations on more broadly voiced themes. Some
> professional women have mixed emotions about hiring nannies when they
> can recall women in their own families who cared for other women's
children and cleaned their homes.
>
> Some of those who consider leaving jobs to raise children worry that
> it will be more difficult for them to resume their careers than for
> white peers. "As black women who still have a hard time moving up,
> there is a fear that opting out will be one more strike against you,"
> said Linda Burke, the owner of an executive search firm and a founder
> of a Washington group called Sistermoms that invited Ms. O'Neal Parker for
a book reading last month.
>
> Linda McGhee, a lawyer and member of Sistermoms, got her son into a
> private elementary school in Northwest Washington but decided against
> sending him, in part because she wanted to help her parents, who
> raised 12 children on meager resources, with health care.
>
> Her neighborhood public school did not meet her standards, so Ms.
> McGhee and her husband, a computer specialist for the federal
> government, pushed to get him into a high-performing public school in
> the same neighborhood as the private school they turned down.
>
> "I grew up in a housing project, and without my parents always pushing
> I wouldn't have three degrees," said Ms. McGhee, 44, who just completed a
Ph.D.
> in clinical psychology. "We just decided that, in the scheme of
> things, we didn't want to spend $20,000 on kindergarten."
>
> Some concerns are more social than personal. Cheryl Roberts, a college
> administrator in Seattle, was the host at a private reading featuring Ms.
> O'Neal Parker on Martin Luther King Day. The guests at the catered
> affair included several federal judges and banking and aerospace
> executives whose successes eased worries about outcomes for their
> children. But as the discussion opened up, the women engaged in a
> passionate exchange on the lingering effects of a ballot initiative
> that ended the state's affirmative action programs.
>
> "Our discussions have to move to a socially conscious place," said Ms.
> Roberts, 48. "It is part of the ethos of being an African-American
> woman. We understand there but for the grace of God go I."
>
> Like their white counterparts, black mothers who leave careers to
> raise their children do sometimes face disapproval from working
> mothers. But even that judgment is driven less by gender politics than
> racial sensibilities, some women say.
>
> Tracie Miller-Mitchell, the daughter of Frances Luckett, was the only
> stay-at-home mother at her mother's afternoon function. Ms.
> Miller-Mitchell, who belongs to Mocha Moms, a national support group
> for black at-home mothers, said her mother was the person who most
disapproved of her choice.
>
> "A lot of financial sacrifice went into helping her get two degrees," said
Ms.
> Luckett, recalling her struggles as a divorced single parent. "There
> are no guarantees in life, and I worry that if she just gives up her
> career, is just a wife and a mother, she will have nothing to fall back
on."
>
> Ms. Miller-Mitchell, 39, replied: "I have my degrees to fall back on.
> Isn't what all that sacrifice was for? So I could have a choice?"
>
> Differences aside, the women gathered at Ms. Luckett's home said they
> felt refreshed by the discussion.
>
> "I understand and respect the issues of white mothers, I truly do,"
> Ms. Gaillard said. "But I also need for them to understand and respect
>
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