Naomi Wolf: Why women still can’t ask the right questions
I love Naomi Wolf. She is one of a couple of feminists who really helped me form my views on feminism.
http://view.koreaherald.com/kh/view.php?ud=20120703001196&cpv=0
NEW YORK ― We are just recovering, in the United States, from the entirely predictable kerfuffle over a plaint published by Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning at the State Department and a professor at Princeton University, called “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All.” The response was predictable because Slaughter’s article is one that is published in the U.S. by a revolving cast of powerful (most often white) women every three years or so. (SLeser addition, here is a link to the article to which Wolf is referring --> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-can-8217-t-have-it-all/9020/ )
The article, whoever has written it, always bemoans the “myth” of a work-life balance for women who work outside the home, presents the glass ceiling and work-family exhaustion as a personal revelation, and blames “feminism” for holding out this elusive “having-it-all ideal.” And it always manages to evade the major policy elephants in the room ― which is especially ironic in this case, as Slaughter was worn out by crafting policy.
The problems with such arguments are many. For starters, the work-family balance is no longer a women’s issue. All over the developed world, millions of working men with small children also regret the hours that they spend away from them, and go home to bear the brunt of shared domestic tasks. This was a “women’s issue” 15 years ago, perhaps, but now it is an ambient tension of modern life for a generation of women and men who are committed to gender equality.
Such arguments also ignore the fact that affluent working women and their partners overwhelmingly offload the work-family imbalance onto lower-income women ― overwhelmingly women of color. One can address how to be an ethical, sustainable employer of such caregivers; nannies in New York and other cities are now organizing to secure a system of market-pegged wages, vacation time, and sick days. Or, as so often happens in a racist society, one can paint the women who care for the elite’s children out of the picture altogether.
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(More at above link)
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| I agree with Naomi Wolf on this subject, it's more of an intersectional issue where many of the solutions are readily available for us to see in other countries like the Netherlands and Canada but those solutions are blocked by corporate interests like the US Chamber of Commerce | |
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| I agree with Anne-Marie Slaughter on this subject, the issue is that the top jobs are not attainable by women if they also want to have a family. The necessary supports are not there for women. Women who have the capability of being a CEO or other top position have a choice to have that position or a family but not both. | |
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| I disagree with both of them | |
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