Fem2.0 Twittercast: Mommies and Feminists – The Great Divide

I am a mom and a feminist. However, I wonder if one thing that prevents moms — especially young moms — from becoming feminists is simple exhaustion. Also, some people are less apt to “label” themselves politically. Politics is something “other people” do. That’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for Moms Rising — they seem to take issues of real immediate concern to moms and help their members make political hay out of them. Who, for example, wouldn’t support paid sick days for moms — especially in the midst of a swine flu scare. Who doesn’t enjoy a video of themselves as the best mother in the world, with the *subversive* ;o) message of pay equity running along the bottom of the video? Anyway – to bring people in that don’t self-identify politically, you have to speak to their self interest and make it easy for them. Especially if they’re already juggling motherhood, jobs & etc etc etc.

I just want to add: active feminist mom bloggers, such as the MOMocrats, are great ambassadors into the parenting community. The best premise for a chat is how to expand upon and advance our mutual goals, rather than creating a construct of a divide and focusing on what’s allegedly not being done—when it is being done widely and largely—and expect that to be appealing to feminist moms. We can’t start at “there is this divide” and expect that to be motivational and inclusive to parents. We shouldn’t start by talking about what all moms aren’t doing and why they aren’t doing it. Clearly (oh so-too-painfully-clearly) there is a disconnect, as NONA states, between some feminists (nonmoms and moms) and feminist moms knowing what each are doing for the feminism cause. Why not instead start with “we want to connect more, let’s build a bridge…okay now how can we expand and advance our goals?”