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Greetings!
Cards and flowers are nice gifts for Mother's Day but wouldn't it be nice to affect change for all mothers across the country? You can by supporting the work of the NAMC. Whether you follow Your (Wo)Man in Washington on Facebook, #WomanInDC on Twitter, sign up for the blog or subscribe to our eNews you are giving mothers everywhere the gift of inspiring people to work for change that benefits mothers and families.
Here are the topics in this issue:
Wishing you a Happy Mother's Day,
Valerie Young, Your (Wo)man in Washington
The National Association of Mothers' Centers (NAMC) provides programs that empower mothers, fathers and caregivers to find solutions that work for their families, their work lives and their personal lives.
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 A Room of Our Own
With Mother's Day less than a week away, my thoughts turn towards what change mothers can bring about by working together. Mothers are getting together all over the country, sharing their experiences and stories, and pushing our legislators to make our families stronger and safer. Researcher Jocelyn Elise Crowley, author of Mothers Unite! Organizing for Workplace Flexibility and the Transformation of Family Life, (excerpted in my last post) graciously made time to answer some questions. Her book goes on sale in June, but you can pre-order it for Mother's Day right now. Read entire (Wo)man in Washington blog post here.
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Leaning In on Our Own Terms
 Every paragraph of this article from The Atlantic was worthy of highlighting. I can only pick one to put here, but I encourage you to read the whole piece - it's not long. It puts the whole hot mess right out there. Like so many of our discussions lately, it was prompted by Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, which reports that 43% of highly qualified women with children leave the workforce for some period of time. This makes the author reflect on her own situation in " Why 43 of Women with Children Leave Their Jobs, and How To Get Them Back".
I was missing out on key moments in my daughter's life and I was an exhausted, nervous wreck. It would be an easy story to say that my consulting firm pushed me out-but it was the opposite. They tried hard to keep me. They let me work from home often and take time off for appointments. "Just get the job done," they said. That was the problem, though-getting the job done was all about giving everything to the job, and that wasn't sustainable for me once I had a child. I don't fault my firm at all. They are a scrappy service business that needs to consistently deliver high value to their clients by working better and harder. I was good at my job, which was why they were willing to accommodate me-but it was also why, after having my second child, I had to leave.
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We Didn't Get Into This Fix On Our Own!
I came across this feisty piece in an Australian publication, and it is worth reading precisely because it is not the "American" voice we are used to hearing on work/family issues. I put it up on the always engaging Woman in Washington Facebook page ("like" it right away!) but I think it is so important it certainly deserves inclusion here as well. It's true, what author Clementine Ford says in Why 'Can You Have It All' Is This Century's Dumbest Question as long as we don't inconvenience other people or ask change of their behavior, we can be as feminist as we want. Trouble is, gender equality DOES require change, of everyone - and thinking that we can get over systemic discrimination just by working hard all on our own is a fallacy.
Under our current model of supposedly post-feminist society, can women have it all? No. Why not? Because a) we're not living in a post-feminist society and the systems of patriarchal oppression that have historically exploited women as resources are still very much in operation across much of the world; and b) the matter of women's liberation is still thought to be a concern for them alone, with the demands that any efforts to secure it be done not just independently of men but with the absence of impact on them entirely. The question therefore isn't 'can women have it all?' but 'how are women systemically denied equality and who's benefiting?' Gender inequality wasn't created by women and their unreasonable ambitions. It's vital that we shift the focus of women's oppression back to its beneficiaries rather than perpetuate the kinds of meaningless conversations that imagine these things are perplexing problems for women alone to solve.
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Results Guaranteed - You Can Be An Expert On Work/Family Policy
 I was blown away by this briefing about "national family policy" (or in my words a total LACK of societal support for parents generally and mothers in particular) because of its star power. Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (mother of three), writer Judith Warner, and former White House senior staffer to Michelle Obama, Jocelyn Frye, contributed tremendous insight into this just-over-an-hour gathering. You will have a better understanding of the difficulties women and mothers face in the USA, and what it will take to improve them, if you can carve out 60 minutes to listen to this and turn yourself into a true policy expert. I guar-an-tee it, or your money back!
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Name It. Change It.
Those savvy women at the Center for American Progress are taking no prisoners - there was very frank talk recently about politics and sexism, and how female candidates are subjected to a different kind of scrutiny than their male counterparts. Talking about a woman's looks, good or bad, discredits her in the public sphere as a serious candidate and decreases her chances of a successful campaign. You will be shocked at what really goes on, because it goes mostly unreported by mainstream media. You can click through on this link and watch a video of the event - I thought the best bits were the remarks by Sam Bennett of She Should Run, and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge of Ohio, who said, among other things, she has faced more barriers because she is a woman than because she is black.
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