I instead get waaay too many reminders that we're not there yet. Clues that we're still behind, that we've tripped up here and there, that as soon as we get a few steps up something knocks us a step down. And I'm not just talking about stay-at-home mamas like myself - though I was sent something recently that proves that unwritten national policy still favors childless women. Scroll down a little and read some stories that will not only make you not want to procreate - if you are female, it will make you wonder why you were even born. Thanks, employers. Thanks a bundle.
No, I'm talking about all the -isms that give us the excuse not to care. The stuff that we can also get hung up on to the extent that it holds back real dialogue, real talk about the issues, about how best we can work for change that benefits everyone. Classism that keeps us from truly looking at those less fortunate than we and seeing things from their side. Racism that judges others by their skin. Sexism that says, because you are a woman, you need to stay here, go here, do this, do that, stay out of this, keep your mouth shut and your body invisible. All the -isms that give us the gall, the tackiness, and the ignorance to make such crass judgments as the one highlighted in this post concerning the two homeless folks that froze to death in last week's icy cold temperatures. Yeah, once again, I know about those Nola.com comments. They're bad for me. I shoulda made a New Year's resolution to stay as far away from them as possible. But hey, m.d. just had to post one on his blog. Whatever.
The more I read in general, however, the more I see that we have a long way to go precisely because, over the millenia we human beings have been on this planet, we have set up some elaborate psychological systems to keep us all in our places. Try this tragicomic scenario on for size:
I saw anti-Semitism among my Iranian friends. At a gathering of a group of women at the home of my friend Nargess one evening, one woman told a joke about a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim. Another told a joke about a Jew and a Turkish-speaking Iranian. In both jokes, the Jew was cunning, miserly, and a master merchant.This morning in my synagogue's religious school, the middle school students were treated to a prayer that wasn't included in their revised, secular version of the Reform Jewish movement's most recent prayerbook: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who has not made me a gentile." At least one student recognized the negative connotations and the exclusivity and superiority implied in such a prayer. I was glad the cantor had chosen that one and not the one that says,"who has not made me a woman" - we'd have had a small war on our hands in religious school. Orthodox and ultra-orthodox sects of Judaism still include these prayers in their daily rituals. How's that for sanctioned elitism?
I had had it. After years of enduring comments like these, I protested. "I'm so sick and tired of these jokes about Jews," I said. "My husband is a Jew. You've got to realize how offensive these jokes are."
Nargess's sister, Monir, who owns a hair salon that is one of my favorite places to visit, tried to console me. "Your husband is okay," she said. "He's not a Zionist. So it's okay that he is a Jew. My best customer is a Jew. I love the Jews. When I move back to America again, I want all my best customers to be rich Jews."
The women explained that they said nothing about Jews that they didn't say about Isfahanis, adding that Isfahanis are just as cunning and miserly as Jews.
I tried to make the point again. "Monir, you're a Turk from Azerbaijan," I said. "Everyone is always making jokes about Turks. You of all people should be sensitive to this."
"I love Turkish jokes," Nargess chimed in. "They're the best jokes in the world."
"When you were in the United States during the hostage crisis and people cursed you just because you were Iranian, wasn't that racist?" I asked.
"Not at all!" Nargess exclaimed. "They were ignorant people. And they were justified. We were burning their flag. Our culture was hurting their culture."
I couldn't win. The Islamic Republic's anti-Semitism goes deeper even than cultural stereotypes. It stems directly from interpretations of the Koran and other teachings that have been passed along for centuries. The Koran reveres the prophets of Judaism, but it also refers to the Jews of Mohammad's time as the Muslims' "worst friends".*
I could go on about the suspicion, the discrimination, and the downright idiocy other cultures, religions, and microcosms of such things use to separate and/or elevate themselves above a real or imagined horde that is ready to snatch their superiority from them at any second. Mardi Gras in this city has certainly developed into one of them.
Posts such as David's, however, serve as reminders that we fritter away many opportunities to reverse the damage we have done to each other and prevent it from happening to others in the future. We missed one opportunity to look at many other ways in which we could reverse this trend with the housing demolitions and what has been promised to be put in their place (once again, no contracts, just words). Another one is heading down the drain with the approval of the Lindy Boggs Hospital demolition. Schools and private homes are looking as though they are next on the chopping block. I really don't have much hope for those entities at this point. It's sad.
It's also why I have little hope for the recent crop of presidential candidates. Mario Cuomo once said of politicians that "We campaign in poetry, but when we're elected we're forced to govern in prose." If the politicians won't speak of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, maybe they can speak of getting this country's crumbling infrastructure propped up and working again instead. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are apparently not poetic enough for this bunch.
And so, I have vented out my negativity online, hoping it won't seep into my everyday life too much. A good friend of ours is moving to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and, in a moment of prosaic weakness, it looked a little too good to my husband and I. A tad further from those pesky, hurricane-harboring gulf waters, from a high murder rate, from having to negotiate the school systems for a better education minus the drain on our pursestrings: "If we can't get the little guy into a good high school in New Orleans, we could rent out our apartment in the house and schlep up to Mandeville!" Dan said.
The trip back across that wide divide known as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway tempered those thoughts quite a bit. I thought of how much I did not want to return to the small Pennsylvania town my parents lived in at the time I graduated college. It was a nice town - there just wasn't much for me there. I thought of how much I loved New Orleans, and yet of how fragile our ties to it really could be, especially with a husband with a two-hour round trip commute (on a good day) to work every day, the fact that I don't have a nine-to-five job myself and am easily transplantable on that fact alone, the fact that the little guy is still young. What passes for common sense these days says we ought to be moving up there, too.
Common sense sucks sometimes. Thank goodness we don't listen to it all the time.
Where would the fun - and the poetry - be in that?
* Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
8 comments:
I see both sides of the "maternal profiling" article because I'm living it. One major reality is that a woman CANNOT have it all - it is impossible to be super SAHM *and* power corporate chick at the same time. a choice or a compromise needs to be made, always.
I was given the uncomfortable congrats speech when i announced my pregnancy at the mega corporation, and now they treat me very delicately like i might sue them at any moment. at the same time they have cut back my duties, and let little offensive remarks slip out about about people who aren't workaholics. honestly, mandatory benefits aside (which i think would rock), a lot of this problem could be alleviated if the corporate world would agree to flexible schedules for mothers. i don't see what difference it makes if I write a press release at 10am in the office or at 4am at home in my pajamas - as long as i make the deadline. they seem WAY too preoccupied with people punching their cards and less concerned with the amount of productivity involved - and i think that's pretty stupid.
It's incredibly stupid. It penalizes people for having families in the first place, in favor of that almighty bottom line. It's an overall trend that has prevailed for waaay too many years - indeed, centuries. And it also highlights how much women have had to become like men to get someplace up the corporate ladder, yet the big companies will STILL treat women as though their biology is their destiny.
Ugh.
Leigh,
I was thinking of you at the Orange Bowl. Off in a corner of the concessions area was a small stand selling kosher sandwiches. I still have a question about the kosher Italian sausage and peppers.
As an employer we have tried to be family and pregnancy friendly. We have always offered maternity leave and held jobs open for people but probably about 75% of the new mothers didn't return to work. Many women have worked out well, probably our best ever employee had two children over the years working for us. She decided to retire after the third. There are real issues with many working mothers and it would, I think, be unfair to other employees not to consider them.
We have tried to allow a reasonable amount of time for parents to care for sick children. Once I asked a male employee why he always seemed to be staying home with the kid. His completely unembarrassed answer was "Because my wife's boss won't pay her if she stays home".
Wow. Two-hour commute? It totally sounds like you should move.
I would have liked to move too, but my husband refused. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the Deep South.
The two-hour commute is Dan's daily schlep to Baton Rouge. We really don't want to live there, though, and moving to the north shore won't cut down his commute by THAT much. Plus, there isn't much of a Jewish community up there: the North Shore Congregation only recently moved into a brand-new building after operating out of a strip-mall storefront for a number of years. It's all just so...white-bread up there. At least, that's the impression I get...
And Mom, the Swedish have still got it right with regards to that first year of family leave for both mothers AND fathers - the first year is indeed the toughest, and three months of leave is too short a time.
As for that kosher Italian sausage and peppers - there are certain rules for how the animal is to be killed, and for one to be certified as a kosher butcher, or a shochet, one has to know how to kill the animal and salt the meat. Certain cuts of meat are not considered kosher, so there are parts of the animal that aren't consumed. For things like sausages, as long as the meat is from an animal deemed to be kosher (i.e., it has a split hoof, chews its cud, and has been handled by a kosher butcher), it isn't mixed in with any other meats or nonkosher animal parts, and it isn't combined with any dairy products (serving a calf cooked in its mother's milk was apparently a biblical-era delicacy, one that is the reason why there is a separation of milk and meat in keeping a kosher kitchen and eating kosher food), then it is kosher meat. To keep it a kosher SANDWICH, the bread must not have been made with any dairy products, and no condiments such as cheese or mayonnaise (also dairy) are permitted on the sandwich.
I was pretty much knew about all of the rules, although almost all Italian sausages I'm familiar with in a sandwich are pork based and have all sorts of animal parts, so they are pretty much off limits. I've never really experienced beef or lamb Italian sausage. The bread is easy, most French bread would qualify.
I had two employees with no children under a year old who racked up about 60 paid days off each in one year.
And the male employee's child was about 4. In that case I really realy like I had "SUCKER" tattooed across my forehead.
Funny how people talk past each other about this stuff. I'd really like to know what is considered acceptable, before it becomes excessive.
The thing about kids when they are still young is that they will still get sick on occasion. They can't nurse themselves back to health all by themselves. Even the healthiest children are gonna pick up whatever passes through their schools from time to time. My son's pre-K class sounded like it was warming up for a cough chorus shortly before the winter break.
And the way the school day - indeed, the school YEAR - is run necessitates financial investment in after school child care, mini-camps and summer camps during extended vacation times when school is not in session, and other child care gymnastics just because the general 8-to-3 school day and 180-day school year don't match up with an average 9-to-5 work year with a couple of weeks vacation time. All of this can take its toll at some point.
Something is wrong SOMEwhere. It entails sifting out the folks you mentioned who might find a way to subvert the system and earn some paid days without doing anything, keeping the ones who clearly manage their time better and get their work done, and taking another look at the way work and life intersect. People definitely HAVE to work, 'cause the average standard of living is only getting more expensive, so employers have that in their favor 8-).
Something's got to give somewhere. In our current system, the one who has traditionally made the sacrifice of staying home, and who largely still does, is the mother of the child. In terms of this being unfair to women, women still don't have equal pay for equal work, so right off the bat, there is a bias in most places whenever a woman applies for a job - most entry-level salaries are gonna be low, anyway, with few benefits. Throw in a kid, and all of the abovementioned stuff about child sickness and scheduling gets taken into account as well. And if a parent has taken those few years out of the traditional workforce to raise their kid to school age, well, where are the current references from employers? You gonna interview the five-year-old?
All of this just sucks. I can see it from both sides and it stinks for everybody. I wish I had the magic wand to change it - but I think the only way it's gonna come about is if parents band together as a political entity all their own and put some financial weight behind their concerns - then, take it to Congress and throw that weight around like the best oil lobbyist on the planet. Problem with that: we're still working our asses off just to survive.
Ugh.
I wish I could think that would happen (that parents would become a political force), Leigh, but I don't. The $$$ will prevail, always. I've been listening to this same hue & cry since my firstborn came into the world almost 26 years ago, and it wasn't a new discussion then. Most companies will exist in the stone age and a few will be enlightened employers. Those enlightened employers will continue to get taken advantage of from time to time. It just is what it is. I *do* believe, though, that the more we/you stomp and holler about it, the more norms will shift so that the numbers of the enlightened employers will increase and the numbers of neanderthals will decrease, some industries more quickly than others.
As for what a mom returning to the work force puts on her resume to fill the gap: volunteer leadership and skill enhancements. I found a great resume structure that wasn't a strict timeline in which I could put things like running a Little League program and mastering certain software. The trick is to stay current and you're doing that.
Me? I'm on the "blogger track" here at work, since my kids are grown. *sigh* Back to work. ;)
Nice post.
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