You are growing up in a house with no mirrors.  That’s right, no mirrors.  But wait a sec, it’s not just your house!  As you venture out into the world, you discover there are no mirrors anywhere.  You can’t see what you look like and must rely on other people to tell you about yourself.  

You are growing up in a family, a church, a school, a community that corrects you every time you speak for yourself, even if it’s only an idea in development or a dream or a wish.  They know what’s best for you to undertake as well as what’s best for you to think.

You are confronted with this education and advice so pervasively that ultimately you don’t know what you think.  You can’t tell what you really feel or what you really want and you have no authentic connection to a sense of self or agency.  You might even be angry but you can’t be sure because you can’t feel your own feelings and, anyway, you’ve been taught that angry women are ugly and will end up as lonely spinsters.

You are growing up in a family where the policy for misbehaving is to whup all the children in the family no matter who may have misbehaved and no matter what the cause of the misbehavior.  When something goes awry, all the children get a whupping right there, together.  It’s a family ritual.  It seems to really cut down on the hijinks of those kids, alright.

You are a member of a losing team and nobody on the team can figure out why they keep losing.  How can this be?  The team members practice, practice, practice.  They are perfectionists, trying so hard to please their coach, their school, their parents!  They scrutinize their performance and themselves so harshly that the sport is no longer fun. Feeling like losers has taken over their lives and they’re so desperate they’re ready to settle for one win!  Just one!  Is that so much to ask?  But no, this is a jinxed team.  This team never wins.  As the losing seasons roll on, the teammates begin to silently and secretly hate themselves.  They would never admit it, but they hate each other, too. Somebody on the team has to be the culprit, the one responsible for losing every game.

Do you have a metaphor for Internalized Misogyny?  Share it here!

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What constitutes maternal health?  The World Health Organization defines it as the “health of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period.”  How does America, the number one global spender on health care, measure up against other nations? The latest available statistics come from 2006, when there were 13.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.  In an example of a one-on-one matchup, when compared with Germany, the United States racks up figures at four times the German numbers.

Within our borders, the news is even more dismal.  Broken down by state, Maine had the best showing at 1.2 deaths per 100,000 live births.  The District of Columbia had the most disconcerting figures: 34.9 per 100,000 live births.  What, as a country, are we doing wrong?

As documented in the 138-page hard copy Amnesty International report, there is no shortage of contributing factors.

First and foremost, America has no nationally implemented guidelines and standards for a comprehensive system of maternal health care.  Amnesty has suggested that the “U.S. Congress should direct and fund the Department of Health and Human Services to establish an Office of Maternal Health.”  Projections show that improving the standard of care could prevent close to 50 percent of deaths.

A starting point is the necessity of prenatal care, which is defined by The Healthy People 2010 Goals as thirteen prenatal visits beginning at the first trimester.  Those women who do not receive this medical attention are shown to be three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than women who do.  The reasons women don’t connect with this crucial care emanates from a health system that currently sustains impediments to care, and is rife with bureaucracy, inadequate services, and even discrimination.

In 2009, more than one in six Americans had no health insurance.  Thirteen million women from the ages of 15-44 were part of that demographic.  Health care costs can be prohibitive.  An uncovered ultrasound costs $1,000.  Accessibility in both rural areas and inner cities is a major obstacle.  In these settings, it can be problematic for women to obtain transportation to clinics, and even then, many of the serving institutions are seriously understaffed.  Quandaries arise when a woman has to choose between showing up for her job and keeping a prenatal visit.  Inflexible office hours, lack of childcare for other children, and language barriers also present challenges.

Women of color (African-American, Latina, Native American), women in poverty, and immigrant women are hardest hit by these obstacles to prenatal care. It was documented that African-American women were four times more likely to die of pregnancy related complications than white women.

Jennifer Dohrn, DNP, has worked on the frontlines as a midwife since 1987, when she joined forces with the Morris Heights Health Center in the southwest Bronx in New York City. As the first freestanding birth center in the country for urban women, the MHHC served those with no access to health care.  Dohrn wrote by e-mail, “Maternal mortality is not an unsolvable problem.  We have the technology to provide safe motherhood for women in the United States and globally.” When Dohrn started, one-third of the women in the community had received no prenatal care at the time of delivery, and infant mortality ranked amongst the highest in the country. Opening a center that was accessible to women encouraged early entry into prenatal care given by skilled midwives, continuous involvement of the family, and safe delivery with promotion of breastfeeding.  There were no long waits, the staff reflected the culture of the clientele, and state financed programs for pregnancy covered the costs.  As Dohrn made clear, “This is a model of how it can be done.”

Another key factor in the maternal health equation is the Caesarean section.  Almost one-third of all American deliveries fall into this category, a number that is twice as high as the World Health Organization recommendation.  The odds of death after a C-section are more than three times higher than vaginal births.  75 percent of maternal deaths occur after a Caesarean delivery.

I spoke with Dr. Charles S. Mahan about the alarming extent of procedures taking place nationally.  His primary concern was that women were having unnecessary operations.  He has seen an escalation in the procedure over the past five to tens years.  Dr. Mahan believes that a major reason in the rise of C-sections is that women are not getting enough facts about potential complications to give “true informed consent.”   He stressed that many patients were under the impression that it was safe to deliver their babies at thirty-seven or thirty-eight weeks.  The optimum time frame is between thirty-nine to forty-two weeks.  Dr. Mahan suggested that doctors might be choosing this form of delivery based on considerations that were not purely medical.  He emphasized the inherent dangers, explaining that “the surgical procedure poses short and long term health risks to mothers and infants.”  Dr. Mahan pointed out that a “scarred uterus poses risk to future pregnancies and deliveries.”  In addition, women who have Caesarean deliveries are more likely to experience “deep venous clots that can result in pulmonary embolism or stroke.”  He referenced the CIMS website and their February 2010 fact sheet for cutting-edge data on Caesarean sections.  It should be noted that inadequate post-partum care contributes to more than half of all maternal deaths, which occur between one and forty-two days after delivery.

One of the points that the report highlighted was that “women are not given a say in decisions and do not get enough information about sign of complications and risks of interventions—including induced labor and Caesarean deliveries.”  Severe complications that almost cause a maternal death during a delivery are euphemistically referred to as “a near miss.”  Annually, 34,000 American women have that experience.

Angela Burgin Logan falls into this category.  When I spoke with her by telephone she related a hair-raising story that combined elements of medical arrogance, missed and ignored symptoms, and a form of physician brow-beating that made her feel dismissed as an “hysterical” mother-to-be.  Her mantra now is “Listen to your own voice.”

A college educated, upper-income African American woman living in western New York State, she took extreme care in researching and picking her OB-GYN.  Yet as she described, “Not too long into the pregnancy, something didn’t feel right.”  She was gaining weight at a troubling rate, and at five months she could not lie flat on her back.  She had pains in her left arm.  The red flags were up for orthopnea and heart failure.

Only at her urging did her doctor finally agree to send her for a work up.  The nurse/technician on duty alerted her to worrisome symptoms.  Despite the presence of protein in her urine—a clear indicator of preeclampsia—her doctor “sluffed it off.”

Burgin Logan spent her final three months of pregnancy sleeping upright in a chair.  When she rushed to the hospital ER at thirty-seven weeks complaining that she “couldn’t breathe,” her husband was advised that she was having a panic attack.  Rather, fluid had flooded her lungs, making it impossible for her to take in air.  An ongoing series of medical missteps meant that Burgin Logan had to be induced into a coma in order for her life to be saved.  Miraculously, she and her daughter survived the birth process.

Having been given only a 20 percent shot of survival, Burgin Logan told me, “I’m on a mission to make a difference for mothers and babies.”  She writes about her experience on her site, and blogs about related issues for Lifetime Moms. 

In retrospect, Burgin Logan believes that the issue of “gender” and “not being taken seriously” played the largest role in her ordeal.  If this is the experience of a privately insured, professional woman— one can only imagine the tribulations facing those women who lack financial resources and easy availability to health services.

This article originally appeared on the women’s health site Empowher.

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With a mixture of rage and passion that probably seemed out of whack to the full- time teachers watching me, I called him down from his seat of glory and read him the riot act.  As he skulked away, I explained in no uncertain terms to the still-shaking girl that she could go anywhere and do anything she pleased.  Then I thought to myself, It’s the 21st century and nothing has changed.

That story, and other remembrances, came to mind while I was reading the engaging anthology Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Editors Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan have fashioned a book that speaks to how much women who care about feminism have in common.  With an ongoing intergenerational dialogue between women who self-identify as feminists, that at times is tinged with a undertone of anger and resentment, these voices remind the reader of a fundamental commonality.  The high profile schisms that accompanied the Obama vs. Hillary primary race; older women questioning where younger women stand on their support of abortion rights…These divisions become neutralized and I can envision Rodney King asking, “Can we all get along?”

Reading Click will help one generation to understand and appreciate what experiences have informed another group of women—through personal histories other than their own.  The contributors range in age from 18 to 41.  As someone who is in the middle of a wave, the stories resonated for me reigniting my anger, evoking compassion, and reminding me of the days when I wondered if I were alone in thinking that something outside of me—in the culture–was wrong.

When I read Miriam Zoila Pérez’s contribution, which painted a picture of her political arguments with her “conservative” father, it made me vividly recall an afternoon when I argued with my parents about Marilyn French’s best seller, The Women’s Room. The intensity of my emotions from that conversation came back to me with absolute clarity.

What makes Click such a great read is that all of the offerings bring something different to the party.  Elisa Albert had me laughing out loud with her deconstruction of the Jewish holiday Purim in her piece, “I’m Gonna Wash That King Right Out of My Hair.”  Each of the twenty-nine essays has unique insights and observations to share.

Karen Pittelman discusses her realization that “when we bury our stories, we bury one of our greatest political strengths.”  She writes, “What I love about feminism is the idea that telling the truth about our lives is a radical, transformative act.” 

In the opening sentence to her essay, Marni Grossman states, “Sometimes it feels as though feminism was my consolation prize for surviving an eating disorder.”  She points to the tyranny of the societal message “that our value is in our sex appeal,” and imparts that “putting down the laxative and picking up Naomi Wolf was the most political act I have ever committed.”

As she evolves from questioning if the work of her war correspondent boyfriend is of greater relevance and “more serious in the eyes of the world,” Alissa Quart comes to terms with her relationship, which eventually grows into a marriage.  Simultaneously, she achieves awareness that her contributions—and the female writers that she emulates—could be “as searing, in their way, as investigating bullets, presidents, and dictators.”

Deborah Siegel shares how Anita Hill’s “ordeal” was the vehicle that “framed a younger generation’s understanding of women, politics, and power.”  More specifically, it was Siegel’s “inauguration to feminist activism” and her eye-opening recognition of the anti-feminist backlash it unleashed.

Raised by parents, aunts, and grandparents who built a foundation for her being “nurtured into feminism,” Marta L. Sanchez tells how a rape at age sixteen “instantly made me a feminist.”  Her belief system was shattered the day that a 22-year-old acquaintance offered her “a ride to church” during Christmas week.

A feminism that “fit” was the moment everything crystallized for Mathangi Subramanian, who authored “The Brown Girl’s Guide to Labels.”  In her second semester of graduate school, Subramanian discovered the work ofChandra Mohanty, “a third world feminist” who deconstructs how “western feminists fought for the right to work, while third world feminists acknowledged that women did most of the world’s work, and were…fighting for the right to rest.”

Janet Tsai examines the stereotype of being a “nerdy, smart Asian kid” who questions the authenticity of her admission to a “highly selective, innovative, start-up engineers college.”  Why is the prevailing notion that if the college has achieved a fifty-fifty gender parity, that the women can’t possibly be as smart as the men? Tsai ultimately confronts “gender differences in the sciences,” and gains understanding on why it triggered doubts about her talents and abilities.

Many of the essays are laced with individual responses to the impact and examples of mothers, and the behaviors that they modeled.  In that respect, the reactions reflect how each generation is influenced and shaped by the preceding one.

Ultimately, this volume—that pays homage to the Jane O’Reilly 1971 Ms. magazine story, “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,”—will offer a new source of anecdotal enlightenment to a continuum of women.  How fortuitous it will be if it sparks an acknowledgment of the inherent connection between everyone’s struggles.

Hopefully, Click will fall into the hands of girls growing into womanhood, including the one from the playground who was informed, all too early, of her alleged limitations.

This article originally appeared on the website mgyerman.com.

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May 30th is Military Sexual Trauma Awareness Day.  The issue is starting to get more traction in terms of visibility, Congressional hearings, and acknowledgement from agencies that span a full range of alphabet soup.

On Thursday, May 20th, a morning hearing was held. Healing the Wounds: Evaluating Military Sexual Trauma Issues, was presided over by John Hall (D-NY), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, and Michael Michaud (D-ME), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health.  A series of speakers drawn from veterans’ organizations, networks devoted to women’s health and sexual abuse, and representatives from the Department of Defense and the Veterans Health Administration were present.  They each had five minutes to offer testimony.

Just three weeks prior on April 29th, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas (D-MA) and Senator John Kerry (D-MA) announced the introduction of the Defense Sexual Trauma Response, Oversight and Good Governance Act (The Defense STRONG Act), a bipartisan piece of legislation.  Hoping to attack Military Sexual Trauma (MST) from the front end of the problem, The Defense STRONG Act will work to strengthen the pre-existing systems to “prevent sexual assaults, and provide support and guidance for victims that do report an incident.”  This would enable those harmed to access a military lawyer in order to fully understand their legal options.  Equally important, it will standardize training guidelines around MST prevention and response across all branches of the services.  When I spoke with Rep. Tsongas by telephone she explained that the act would be part of the Defense Authorization Bill (H.R. 5136), and would put a “system in place patterned after the Equal Opportunity measures.”  She said, “If a victim speaks with a victim’s advocate, it will remain confidential.  It can’t be subpoenaed.”   Tsongas added, “I’m looking forward to making sure this language stays in the bill.”

Witnesses drilled down and pinpointed problems being faced by MST survivors as circumstances presently stand.  A wide range of symptoms, on the physical and emotional continuum, was referenced.  They included: mood disorders, depression, substance abuse, adjustment disorders, hypertension, eating disorders, sexually transferred infections (STI), unplanned pregnancy, self-destructive behaviors, and suicide.  It was noted that 75 percent of homeless female veterans have been sexually assaulted.

A sexual attack is a trigger for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Susan McCutcheon, The Director of Family Services,Women’s Mental Health and Military Sexual Trauma, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) stated, “MST is an experience, not a diagnosis.  PTSD is the diagnosis.”

The FBI ranks rape as the second most violent crime after murder.  Repeatedly, those testifying underscored that rape is an act of violence, not sexual desire.  It was acknowledged that males in the military are casualties of MST as well as women.

For those assaulted, career goals are disrupted as they face “isolation, retribution, ostracism, and accusations.”  Their situation becomes untenable, as they must continue to live and work in close proximity with their attackers.  As Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, testified, “some 90 percent of victims never report assaults within the military because the culture is so hostile to them.”  She explained how the victim is treated like a perpetrator, and in addition to not being believed, “they are intimidated out of pursing justice.”

Phyllis Greenberger, President and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research, told the committee that “women are the fastest growing sector of VA patients,” with “15 percent of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan experiencing sexual assault or harassment.”  23 percent of the women using the VA services have reported MST, yet half of all cases go underreported. Jennifer Hunt, Project Coordinator, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, observed that the “majority of assailants are older and of a higher rank than their victims.” It is recognized that those who get immediate full care do the best.  Yet when women feel re-traumatized in their efforts to get help and in navigating the system, it makes moving forward problematic.

There was no lack of suggestions on how the situation could be improved. At the top of the list was the need to eliminate mixed-gender care settings. Creating separate facilities was put forth as the optimum goal. Using a civilian rape crisis model, which is not geared to a predetermined agenda, was another proposal.  Women report a dearth of properly trained personnel, with those in counseling positions resorting to what has been termed “pills and pep talks” (despite the fact that women are not responding well to commonly prescribed medications).

Benedict put forth promoting more women and distributing them across the forces to eliminate isolation, and rejecting recruits with a history of sexual violence. Greenberger dryly offered, “No victim should have to chase after their own care.”

Scott Berkowitz, President and Founder of RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) sited a lack of “institutional support, leadership commitment and resources” to fix the problem and a commitment by base commanders and Pentagon Brass to “zero tolerance and routine prosecutions.”  He did, however, comment on the progress that has been moved forward under the auspices of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), which was established in 2005 by the Department of Defense “to function as a single point of accountability and oversight for sexual assault policy.”

Kay Whitley, the Director of SAPRO, addressed prevention through training, treatment, support of victims, and system accountability.  She related that during the past three years, reports of sexual assaults had increased by 10 percent annually.  Whitley broke the best-case protocol down into “care, reporting, response, and tracking.”

Getting appropriate and timely medical care is only part of the problem.  Steering PTSD claims through the system is formidable, and often exacerbates the original trauma.  Joy J. Ilem, Deputy National Legislative Director forDisabled American Veterans, was very clear about the obstacles. She informed those in attendance, “to receive disability compensation from an MST-related condition…the standard of evidence is stricter than for combat injuries, or even for military occupational injuries. She characterized veterans’ compensation claims for disabilities resulting from MST as “an uphill battle for VA Disability Compensation,” explaining that “if an assault is not reported by the victim during his or her military service, establishing service connection later on for disabling conditions related to MST can be daunting.”

The different aspects of reporting an attack and trying to receive benefits are complex at best. Bradley G. Mayes, Director, Compensation and Pension Service, Veterans Benefits Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, offered that there was “room for improvement, but we have taken steps.”  However, many concerns have to be taken into account, particularly as confidentiality is a paramount concern.

I contacted Thom Wilborn, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, to speak further about the two options for filing an MST report, via a Victim Reporting Preference Statement DD FORM 2910. He clarified the two different types of reports that service members can file after an attack.

• Unrestricted Reporting – Reporting a Crime which is Investigated
• Restricted Reporting – Confidentially Reporting a Crime which is not Investigated

A restricted report allows the victim to receive health care services, but the paperwork does not enter the realm of an official charge – thereby protecting the privacy of the victim.  It does not involve the chain of command.  In an unrestricted report, all records become public.  The information goes out to the commanding officer and division commander for a formal investigation.

A problem arises when a service member, who wants to apply for PTSD benefits and has filed a restricted report, can not get their records from one department agency to another.  Wilborn told me, “There needs to be a way to report MST and be able to advance it to whatever point the service member wants.”  He made clear that the report should be able to remain confidential, while simultaneously recorded in a way to be available for disability claims. The DAV’s primary concern is that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs be able to access restricted Department of Defense Documents.
Following the testimony, I contacted two of the invited presenters.  Jennifer Hunt, Project Coordinator, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, believed that “good steps have been made, but more must be done.”  She specifically pointed to “inter-operability” encompassing improved communication between the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration.  She remarked on how many people were in attendance for the hearing, and lamented that that there was no time for follow up questions due to the President of Mexico’s visit.

When I spoke with Anuradha K. Bhagwati, Executive Director of Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and former Marine Captain, she was quite concise in her evaluation of how things stand and what needs to be done.  She said, “The Veteran’s Benefit Administration (VBA) simply does not understand how traumatic it is for an MST survivor to file a claim for compensation. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) is coming from a theoretical place.  Their system is great on paper. The VA has made overtures, but their claims officers are poorly trained.  The system is broken.  Even if victims submit evidence of trauma, it’s not enough. The VA has not been able to get up to speed.  Their services work for some people, but they are in the minority. We need people to come forward in order to prosecute offenders, but right now DOD cannot guarantee the safety of survivors. Most commanders do not handle complaints responsibly. The fact of the matter is that survivors are not sufficiently protected.

There seems like a giant abyss.  It doesn’t seem like VA is talking to MST survivors or MST advocates. MST is best understood by MST orgs (VETWOW, stopmilitaryrape.org, militarysexualtrauma.org). SWAN is advocating for third party oversight. We believe a long-term solution is to applyTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act to the military.  Service members need to have the option to sue the military, if the military doesn’t protect them. Without that, commanders have no incentive to protect survivors. The Defense STRONG Act deals with the current system as we have it. It will fix some really broken pieces of the SAPRO reporting system, but it only deals with part of the problem.”

At the conclusion of Bhagwati’s testimony, she paid homage to the women from previous generations who had “suffered at the hands of fellow servicemen decades ago” – with their ordeals still yet to be recognized.  She read into the record the request of a Vietnam-era veteran who had survived MST. The sentence was a clear but simple appeal.  “Please help me feel validated before I die.”

This article originally appeared on the website Women Make News.

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We’ve Got Issues: A Conversation with NY Times Journalist and Author Judith Warner

Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 1:00 PM EST, here

Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 74229

Host: Lindsay Reed Maines, Blogger, RockandRollMama

Are parents and physicians too quick to prescribe medication to control our children’s behavior? Are we using drugs to excuse inept parents who can’t raise their children properly? In her new book, We’ve Got Issues, Judith Warner, NY Times journalist and best-selling author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, cuts through the passion on both sides of an issue that "is ideological and only tangentially about real children" to arrive at some surprising conclusions. Lindsay Reed Maines, freelance journalist and blogger at RollandRollMama.com, moderates this interactive discussion with Warner about modern parenting, medication, and children "with issues."

As always, you can participate in the discussion through the TalkShoe chat while streaming the radio show on your computer, or through Twitter with the #fem2 hashtag. Share your thoughts and questions for Judith to answer live!
 

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It’s St. Patty’s Day tomorrow, my mother’s birthday, and I’m feeling it. Today, while paying bills, which my mother carried out so much more efficiently than I ever have, I used my solar calculator to figure out that, if she were alive today, she would be 83.  When she died at age 55, I had no idea how young she was because I was 28 and clueless. 28 plus 28 = 56, which is how old I am today. There’s a lot I don’t know about being an adult woman with an alive, aging mother. My mother was no saint,but she had moral courage. She tried to do the right thing, she wanted to do the right thing. When my very young cousins (listen to me! I was 10!) were orphaned, she wanted to take care of them like a mother. She wanted simply to open her wings a little wider, breathe a little deeper and find the way to step in to make a devastating abandonment go away.  She didn’t, exactly.

She had never had her own needs met. A person who is invisible, taken-for-granted, seen as her husband’s "helpmeet" rather than as a full, complex, mysterious human being, cannot be all things to all people without breaking down. Chances are she would have broken down even without adding four orphans to her own brood of three with their own problems of stuttering, obesity and depression. She had not been a wanted child and she had been orphaned by age sixteen. She did not go to college. She was working as a salesgirl in a department store when she met my father, who was studying for an advanced degree. She was beautiful (though never thin enough by some cultural standards), she could really really really sing, and she was desperate to be recognized in ways I didn’t realize until her deathbed. She was angry and became angrier; she was bitter and became disfigured by embitterment. She was lonely and demanding and sometimes disconnected from the present moment.

Toward the end of her life, when she would spill to me about everything that had turned out not to be what she thought it would or should or could, she would say "I did my best." But nobody believed that she had done her best, and nobody cared, including me. She was a terrifying woman to all that knew her, one minute warm, gracious, giving, compassionate, and the next…we never knew when she would explode in rage. I believe it ate her up. I believe she died of cancer at age 55 because she had never been seen as a person.

On the day she died I stood by her in the ICU as she scrawled notes on a pad. She was yellow and swollen beyond recognition, intubated so that speaking was impossible. I have never seen such fear in a human being’s eyes. She scrawled GOLD. GOLD. GOLD. I didn’t understand. Her maiden name had been Goldberg. She jammed her pencil stub against the pad in my hand. Why didn’t I understand? How could I not understand? I had always been the one to understand. In fact, she’d dumped way too much of it on me when it was inappropriate, when I was still a child. Entirely inappropriate. But here she is 55 and dying and I am 28 and surely nothing is inappropriate now.

Then I got it. "You were gold," I said. Yes. Yes. Yes. There was a fluttering, a release of solitude, a whole body sigh, a gratitude. That I understood meant everything. I understood everything in that moment. A woman who did the right thing for the children of relatives who committed suicide, who knowingly sacrificed her own children in order to do the right thing, only felt her own innate worth while facing death, an early death, a sudden death. Only in the terrifying retrospect of sudden separation from everything that had mattered did she receive validation of the essential quest of her life: to be valued for her SELF.

It matters that she tried to do the right thing, but it’s not her story alone. Many women have mothered past their capacity, have dug so treacherously into their own emotional reserves that there is nothing left. Many women have mothered the lost children of dead sisters, sisters-in-law, even strangers. Historically, women have been morally courageous, generous with their love and resources, self-sacrificing and expecting little in return. They have had to be. I want this to change. I want the burden for compassion, caring and giving to shift. I want it to be shared by all human beings. I want women to be freed from valuation for the services they render to their husbands, their mothers-in-law, their children, their fathers-in-law, their fathers, even to their mothers, and to organizations that prey on their ability to hurt for others. I want all women to feel the value of SELF, to feel it long before the deathbed reckoning. I want them to know it before birth, at birth, during infancy, during childhood, during adolescence, during young adulthood, during adulthood, during maturity, during the aging years, during the breakdown years, surrounded or not surrounded by grandchildren, lauded or not lauded for their "good works." I want it, period. I want it for all women, worldwide. I want it, goddammit. I want it now.

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Our blog radio series approached work/life from many directions, and the likes of Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and NY Times Motherlode blogger Liz Belkin helped us make the point that this is an issue that effects us all. If you missed the series or want to revisit any of the programs, all 11 are available as podcasts, which you can download and freely share with your own communities.

The blog carnival spanned a dizzying variety of perspectives and issues, and here are some highlights:

This Is Reality, WomenCount, 2.5.10

The reality is that we are all trying to make it work. We are all struggling with childcare, finances, finding work, keeping up with work, trying to be the best parents we can be with sometimes limited time and energy to do so.  There is no such thing as a perfect work/life balance. But there is such a thing as friendship, a positive attitude, and doing the best you can.

My Mother’s Story, Say It, Sister! NOW’s Blog for Equality, 2.8.10

As I’ve been helping my retired mother prepare to move closer to me, it occurs to me just how much her life illustrates the relevance of key feminist issues – such as women’s economic security, their ability to juggle work and family responsibilities and their access to adequate, affordable health care. For more than a decade, I’ve been writing about issues like Social Security, pay equity and caregiving, and as I look closer at my mother’s history, the importance of NOW’s work on these issues becomes clearer than ever.

Do You See Yourself in this Picture?, Speaking of Women’s Rights…, 2.9.10

Family-Friendly. Family Values. Family First. Ever notice how saying a word over and over eventually turns it into gobbledygook? Sometimes it seems that way with "family": we all use it, but what do we mean when we say "protect our families"? Or "have a family-friendly workplace". More fundamentally, what do we mean when we say "family"?

Balancing on Guilt, Career Life Connection, 2.11.10

Today’s guest post is quite timely as I spent yesterday afternoon listening to a radio show where parents discuss how work/life stress affects kids and how that stress is somewhat self-imposed and how guilt plays into it.  My take is that parenting is wonderful and also very hard and also simply boring.  I try very hard not to do guilt as a parent…it’s unproductive.  And I’m lucky to have very supportive friends who understand and know the realities of parenting and are happy to be honest about it.

Everyone Gets Sick, But Many Workers Don’t Get Time to Get Better, SEIU Blog, 2.11.10

The CDC strongly recommends that you stay home if you or your child gets sick, whether it’s with the flu or H1N1 virus. What the CDC doesn’t report is that that’s not an option for a lot of people-they leave this part out. "Most voters assume people have sick leave-that their employers just provide it," said Lake Research Partners’ Anita Sharma during a Fem2.0 podcast discussion last week on work/life policies and issues.

What Could Be More Exciting?, National Association of Mothers’ Centers, 2.13.10

The perspective on the work of parenting in our society seems to be colored by undertones of menial, less important work that gets in the way of the really important stuff we need to do. Yet, what could be more important, critical – and yes, exciting – than raising the next generation?  I think we need to reframe how we think of motherhood and fatherhood. When you stop and think about it, it really is one of the most exciting and amazing endeavors a human being can experience in life.

Here are other great posts in the carnival:

• Work-Life Redefined – a Blog Carnival of Ideas, About.com’s Working Moms Blog
• Your Lack of Paid Parental Leave Is a Human Rights Issue: HELP HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH PROVE IT, Fem2pt0.com
• Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations, Authentic Organizations
• Bottom Line on Work-Life Effectiveness, Catalyst, Inc.
• The Part-time Worker, AFT’s Faculty and College Excellence
• Let’s start talking about work/family balance, 9to5
• Work/Life Balance and the LGBT Community, Mombian
• Managing Work and Family is an Early Learning Issue, Birth to Thrive Online
• What Do Kids Really Think About Their Working Parents?, Motherlode
• Work/Life and the Military: What It’s Really Like to Work and Serve, Blue Star Families
• A Woman’s Nation Demands Changes in Workplace Policy, 9to5
• Working Conditions for Women in U.S. Lag Behind Europe, Say It, Sister! NOW’s Blog for Equality,
• Black History Month Challenge: A Youth-Led Jobs Revolution, USW Blog
• The Fem 2.0 Blog Carnival: Shifting the Public Narrative, The Brodsky Blog
• Generation Y: As In, Why Not Change Now?, Say It, Sister! NOW’s Blog for Equality

Thanks again to all that spread the word, participated and even hosted their own blog carnivals. Fem2.0 gives a special shout-out to Judy Martin of Work Life Nation and Katherine Lewis of About.com’s Working Moms blog for their enthusiasm and support throughout the campaign, and to Marcia G. Yerman and Ananda Leeke for helping get the word out and keeping the online conversations lively – the Fem2.0 community would be nothing without the passion and commitment of members like Marcia and Ananda.

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Although Enterprise 2.0 and Work-Life Fit strategies do not share all of the same goals, the two initiatives are complementary. Both aim to help us manage an ‘always on’ environment, where resources are used efficiently and effectively, in ways that sustain rather than drain an organization’s capacity. But currently, only work-life fit strategies intend to make work life better for us people.

Quick overview: Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 is technology-initiated organizational change centered on ‘emergent social software programs’ that facilitate networked communication within and across organizations.  Enterprise 2.0 is conventionally and initially a technology-focused strategy, but it can (and should) encompass more.

Like all technological changes, Enterprise 2.0 will shape and be shaped by organizational culture and change. Even if your organization currently uses Enterprise 2.0 software and approaches in limited ways, chances are E2.0 technologies will permeate and reshape your organization and your work life sooner rather than later.

Enterprise 2.0 strategies start with tools to connect employees and make information gathering, sharing and using easier. Among many other benefits, Enterprise 2.0 approaches promise to make work more efficient by removing unnecessary barriers and building in flexibility so that resources move more fluidly to where they are needed, when they are needed. This should mean that better results are achieved with with less wasted effort and less effort overall.

The downside of this technology enabled flexibility reach is that the technology makes it convenient and normal to expect individuals to participate wherever and whenever they are ‘needed’, even when they are not at work. You probably already experience the incremental incursion of work technology into your non-work life.

Quick overview: Work-life Fit

Work-Life Fit is the strategic organizational initiative centered on building organizations that can adapt and respond to the changing needs and commitments of individual employees and members. You’ve been hearing about work-life fit since the dawn of the industrial revolution. You may have heard of it as work-family balance, or duel career dilemmas (highlighting the two most prominent forms of work-life misfit). The problems existed before the entry of women into management, but the increasing numbers of women managers and the feminist movement have worked together to raise our consciousness.

We now understand as we haven’t before how much the structure of our work organizations and the jobs within them precludes prevents us from staying authentic, present, and nourished in our lives outside work.

Put these ideas together

Work-Life Fit is a problem caused by how we design our organizations and the jobs within them. Enterprise 2.0 is a strategy about redesigning our organizations so that we use technology to improve how we work together.

So my recommendation is:

Let’s redesign organizations to maximize the potential of Enterprise 2.0 approaches. Let’s make organizations more networked. Let’s become more collaborative, more innovate and more flexible, in ways that let us find a healthy, authentic fit between work and the rest of life.

Let’s approach Enterprise 2.0 in a way that embraces the needs of the whole employee and the human organization so we no longer work in organizations that squeeze the life out of us.

Is there anything, really, that prevents us from doing both at once?

Cross-posted with permission from AuthenticOrganizations.com for the Wake Up! This is the Reality blog carnival. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

He squeezed into the hole in the…from Laura Mary on Flickr

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Comment here, or work it up into a piece for the Wake Up! blog carnival!

Fairness/Earning: People who work hard deserve a decent wage and a minimum level of benefits for the hours they work.  Working people have earned a decent wage and a minimum number of paid sick days. That’s only fair. For part-time workers, paid sick days and other minimum benefits should be proportional to the hours they work. It’s not fair to work hard, pay taxes, play by the rules, and then be afraid to lose your job or the pay you have earned because you are honestly out sick for a day.  It’s time for a new agreement between business and employees.

Families First/Smart Business: We can re-build American businesses through policies that protect families. A number of studies have found that businesses that provide flexible leave policies for workers benefit from higher morale, reduced absenteeism, lower turnover and training costs, and more employee loyalty. Deloitte & Touche estimates savings of $41.5 million annually as a result of their leave program. It’s just good for the bottom line for businesses to treat their workers with basic dignity and fairness. Putting families first and strengthening the family with modern work standards is smart business and smart family policy.

Family Havoc: Dramatic changes in the work environment have created havoc in American families. Parents are stretched to the breaking point by the demands of a 24/7 work environment and shrinking paychecks. Basic needs such as health care and child care are unavailable to most employees and all too often, families have to choose between a living wage and being able to take care of children, aging parents, and their own basic needs.  It’s time for new work standards that protect families.  Only by providing basic protections, such as paid sick days, can we ensure a strong America.

Today’s Demands: Today’s economy demands that both parents work in order for most families to make ends meet.  It’s not the way it used to be in 1946 – when Grandpa came home from the war, got a job working for GE or Ford, got married, bought a house, and Grandma stayed home with the kids. Back then, you could live a middle class life on one income. Today, if you want a basic, no frills middle class lifestyle both parents have to work. We need to give modern families the tools they need – flexible work policies, paid time to care for family and themselves – so they can do their job and take care of their children.

Outdated: In 1960, only 10% of mothers worked, and only 10% were unmarried so it made sense for employers to shape jobs around the ideal of a breadwinner who was available for work anytime and anywhere. And it made sense to design governmental benefits, from Social Security to unemployment, around the same breadwinner-homemaker model.  Today 70% of mothers work and 40% of mothers are unmarried, but employers still enshrine the ideal of the breadwinner who takes care of business, while his wife takes care of family. For most Americans, that’s not real life.  It’s time for a new deal between employers and their employees.

Future Workplace: America should be a leader in the world, defining the best and most family friendly workplaces, but America is losing its place in the world.  We should make the US a better place to live, work, and raise a family.  We need to modernize our workplaces.  Work is now 24-7, and most families have at least two jobs to keep up. In that context, we need new work rules so that families can match 21st century global jobs and modern benefits.  We need to make the economy work for all hardworking people and families again.

Populist: We need an overhaul of how corporations and big business do business in this country. Their bad decisions created the global economic recession, yet banks and Wall Street got bailouts, bankers continue to receive huge bonuses, and CEOs get paychecks of more than $10 million. However, their outdated work standards are destabilizing the American family and these companies are increasingly engaging in policies that hurt working families – demanding workers work shifts 24/7 that constantly change, increasing health care costs, and not offering paid sick days. Somewhere, America’s big businesses lost their way and we need to change the rules so that they are responsible players again.

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