Greetings!
It has been a week since my (Wo)man in Washington post on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and it is still gaining traction. The conversation on Women, Work, and the Will to Lead continues this week with Sheryl Sandberg's Most Important Words. In order to make the shift from conversation to public policy we have to continue our political activism and/or be ready to run for office to make sure we have a say at the table. Take a look at what else is in this edition:
Warm regards,
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Ready to Run™ is a national network of candidate recruitment and training programs committed to electing more women to public office. Their next training Ready to Run New Jersey is on March 22-23, 2013 at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Douglass Campus Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ
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MOTHERS AT THE BAR
 No, not that bar, silly. The one in the courtroom, as in, women lawyers with children. Law schools have been graduating women at the same rate as men for decades, yet there are far fewer female partners. Why? Motherhood, of course. A legal career, especially a trial practice, is very hard to juggle with the demands of family. Moms run from the law in droves, with significant consequences on every front. But what happens to that expensive law degree, and valuable years of practice, once you've raised your children? Some law schools now offer short courses to help these mothers work their way back into the firm ( From Stay-at-Home Mom to Back To Work Lawyers, NYT). One entrepreneur put together staffing groups largely of lawyer mothers who work from home on an hourly basis - at $125 per hour! (Home Is Right Where the Potomac Law Group Wants Its Lawyers To Be, Washington Post). Attorneys are unusually thick on the ground in Washington DC. I know lawyer moms here in a freelance network, Montage Legal Group, all highly qualified former big firm attorneys who take on substantive legal projects from law firms in need of staffing help. It's one option to manage your career and your family - but mothers ought to have more.
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THE SEQUESTER MAKES BABIES GO HUNGRY -- #POLICYFAIL
The problem with taking a chain saw to the federal budget, which is what the sequester does as it cuts all federal programs no matter what they do, is that some essential programs which matter tremendously both now and in the future get whacked. Case in point - low income women and children who depend on public funds for their basic nutrition will go hungry. "Some 575,000 to 750,000 low-income women and children, including very young children, who are eligible for WIC - the highly effective nutrition program that serves roughly 9 million low-income women and children - will be turned away by the end of the fiscal year if the budget cuts known as "sequestration" which took effect as scheduled on March 1 remain in place." So says the Center for Budget and Policy Priorites in their excellent paper about the impact of the sequester. Anybody care to guess how much more it will cost to deal with the negative impact on their health, development, education, and quality of life both now as children, and in the future when they are adults? You think we won't be paying that?
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THE PRESIDENT'S PRE-K PROPOSAL - HOW IT HELPS MOTHERS
 Many thanks to Bryce Covert over at The Nation magazine for this short and snappy chart on how universal pre-school would help the economic security of mothers. (She must subscribe to this enews - it's like she can read my mind!!) There's been lots of attention paid to how much children would gain from this proposal. But how it impacts mothers? Not so much - "Mostly missing from that conversation, though, was the other half of the equation: working parents, specifically mothers, given that women still spend the most time caring for children. The benefits for children seem pretty clear, but we have to add in the benefits that women will see if they have a quality and affordable place to send their kids every day when they head to work." Hear, hear.
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GENDER MATTERS....IN FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE POLICY
It makes a difference when you're female whether or not a new bill to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour is passed by the US Congress and becomes law. Why? First, two-thirds of workers earning minimum wage (or less!!) are women. Second, women are the majority in the 10 largest occupations that currently pay less on average than $10.10 per hour now. Third, women's wages make up a significant portion of household income - families simply cannot make it without them. (Thanks to National Women's Law Center for the data!) So, write, call, or email your member of Congress, and tell them to pass the minimum wage bill, now, please.
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LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE ... STRESSED??
 From NPR's Tell Me More, Michel Martin did a great essay this week on the US's pathetic record on work-family policies and the resulting unhappiness of parents. "In contrast with not one, not two, but nearly 200 other countries studied by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, the U.S. is the only one that offers no paid leave to have a baby and few protections for employment after children come home. And that - speaking of the happiness part - is a key reason why Coontz says that American workers express higher levels of work-family conflict than in any of this country's European counterparts." It's here, and a short read or a quick listen, at 4 minutes of audio.
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