Can you tell I come from a newspaper background? Even though papers are a media dinosaur, I still love ’em. Here’s one reason: Killer editorial columns (the original blog).
The Boston Globe‘s Ellen Goodman wrote one today that I had to share. It’s about how despite all the sentimentality about moms for Mother’s Day, society needs to address its “deep-seated bias that puts the image of a ‘good mother’ at odds with that of an ‘ideal worker.'”
A well-written, solid op-ed piece. Check it out.
6 thoughts on “Is Mom the Third Gender?”
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Wow! Go, Ellen! Thank you for posting this.
I especially like the part where she talks about women supposedly having all these choices. It’s supposedly our “choice” to go to work. Then many women “choose” to leave employers who make life difficult for them. Talking about choice is so convenient when people don’t want to help improve womens’ situations. Yet when we start talking about other types of choice, we’re all of a sudden in dangerous territory.
I’m loving this blog. What a great read, and yet very tragic too… Thanks.
I sent my boss a huge thank you after reading the piece. I have it pretty good – it sucks that so many women find themselves in such a place. Where do the priorities lie in this country??
VERY good article, thanks for bringing it to more readers! I’d like to forward it to as many people as I know.
Yeah, good read. I like the part that she says it’s not that women are choosing to leave the workforce it’s that they reach this “take this job and shove it” attitude. That’s exactly why so many women I know left their jobs. They get sick and tired of the mommy discrimination and get to a point where they say “see ya suckers” and jump ship. If an employer doesn’t start addressing the problem of losing valuable women employees… pretty soon, that ship is going down.
Excellent editorial (and an excellent blog, too!).
It strikes me that “choice” is only available for those who can afford it. Women who are struggling to make ends meet very often don’t can’t choose to walk away from misogynist bosses. They’re stuck, in more ways than one.
In my own professional life, the sexism I’ve experienced is often worse from the hands of other women. Women who are 10, 20 years older than me are often quite bitchy about how “easy” Gen Xers have it, how we have cushy mat leaves (I’m in Canada) and benefits they had to make do without. They are often the hardest managers to work for, because they figure if they had to slog through work and baby hell, you should too. It makes me angry and sad, because the benefits I have are the ones they fought so hard for. Why, then, do they resent me having them?