The Wrong Kind of Equality

Ellen Goodman has an interesting piece in the Boston Globe about a new kind of equality — in unemployment.

This is not the kind of equality we were hoping for, however, as Goodman points out, it shatters the myth that women are ‘opting out’ of the workplace for full-time motherhood.

A report shepherded through Congress by Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York shows that since the 2001 recession, women have lost jobs and withdrawn from the workplace at the same rate as men. More to the point, they’ve remained out for the same reasons as men: layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing, and wage stagnation.

Needless to say, this is not the sort of equality we were looking for. But if there is any good news, it’s that this report may finally debunk the idea that droves of women are “opting out” of the workplace for a very different reason: full-time motherhood.

The “opt-out revolution” has been one of the most tenacious story lines of the new century. It arrived full-born with the New York Times Magazine article of 2003 declaring: “Why don’t women run the world? Maybe it’s because they don’t want to.” The idea was that the best and brightest daughters of the women’s movement were choosing home and hearth over “having it all.”

This was the idea that women had an ‘ambition gap,’ a convenient theory that coincided with the traditional notion that women’s ‘place’ is at home. Many women were more likely to accept the idea of ‘opting out,’ because at least that implied a choice in the matter.

Goodman points out how ‘opting out’ is a much too simple interpretation for explaining why women aren’t running the world.

he downside, the subtraction lesson, if you will, is that the “choice” frame makes it far too easy to reduce the problems of work and family to the lowest common denominator of one: one woman, one family, one personal decision. “If it’s true that women don’t want to work,” says one economist, “think of all the problems that disappear overnight. We don’t have to think about family leave or after-school or the day-to-day grind or the tough challenges of work and family.”

Now along comes the congressional report on the equality we didn’t want. “When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” said congressional economist Heather Boushey. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.” That’s what math does to you.

Turns out, it’s the economy, stupid.

We are getting a fuller picture of the real troubles women and families face these days in what we aren’t supposed to call a recession. When men are downsized, outsourced, and discouraged, we say they’re unemployed. But when women get pushed out of the economy, we like to say they “opted out.”

But now we know that women too have the math gene. And this just doesn’t add up.

 

Still Not Running

As a follow up to my post about U.S. women running behind in politics, check out this article: “Why Are Women Still Not Running for Public Office?” by Richard L. Fox and Jennifer L. Lawless. They note that women win elections at the same rate as men; they just don’t run as often. The report discusses the concept of political ambition and why it seems that women don’t have it. Essentially it’s blaming women for not running, citing an “ambition gap,” without considering the factors that affect women’s decisions not to run.

In Ukraine, where I served in the Peace Corps for 27 months, “ambitious” is a generally negative word. There, it implies that you think you’re better than other people. Here, I’ve noticed “ambitious” used to negatively describe successful women who dare to venture into traditionally “male” territory.

For example,

At the Indy 500, another ambitious woman, IndyCar superstar and swimsuit pinup Danica Patrick, looked as if she were ready to show us her fists. (Jerry Crowe, LA Times)

The caddie McNamara looked at Annika [Sorenstam], an icy one, ambitious, driven, self-absorbed, as all the great ones are. (Dave Kindred, Golf Digest)

Many voters see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as coldly ambitious, a perception that could ultimately doom her presidential campaign. So on Monday her husband made a swing through Iowa in hopes of convincing voters that she is a sympathetic figure who gave up money and power for love and marriage. (Peter Nicholas, LA Times)

Check out “‘A’ is for Ambition” over at Echidne of the Snakes for an excellent commentary on the report. It points out that a lot of this discussion depends on how we define ambitious. Synonyms (at synonyms.com) include “pushy” and “compulsive,” neither of which I’d like to be called.