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Greetings!
Baby, it's cold outside and the children are home for yet another snow day. Maintain your inner calm with a soothing beverage and a few minutes of grown up conversation right here.
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Best wishes,
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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DC Dispatch: Mad Men Workplaces
The President's State of the Union speech created a vortex of its own last week as he criticized the persistence of "Mad Men workplaces", i.e. those lacking pay equity, paid sick leave and family leave. Twitter took off, as upwards of 33,000 tweets per minute echoed the "Mad Men' reference, and women's advocates in DC and elsewhere roared with approval, both on and off the internet. Even the Wall Street Journal took note, going so far as to trace a large part of the pay gap to women's family caregiver role. "But economists believe one of the biggest factors is that women end up working fewer hours because they spend more time caring for children or other family members." Of course, women are paid less anyway for those hours they do work, so it's really a pile on effect that makes women with children more likely to be poor, less likely to run for office, attain leadership positions, or reach political, social, or economic equality with men.
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 Congress is Paralyzed, Yet Women are Reaching Across the Aisle
 In a press conference yesterday, 12 Democrat women senators came together to urge Republican lawmakers to join them in efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, now at $7.25 an hour, to $10.10 an hour. Their comments echoed President Obama's State of the Union remarks about income inequality, in which he committed to issuing an Executive Order raising the minimum wage for new federal contractors to $10.10. Feminist Daily News
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Please Get Sheryl Sandberg Off My Back
What needs to change is how and when women work. Being told to "lean in" by itself is not useful. Instead, women need to come together and demand that we are given the flexibility to excel in our jobs; to admit that we have kids and not hide that fact in fear that it will stunt our career opportunities; to occasionally bring a child into the office to quietly do homework on a day when school is out or daycare is unavailable. From "Leaning In Isn't the Answer", Business Insider
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Will Abortion Coverage Disappear From Health Insurance?
The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 7), sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), would prohibit insurance plans sold in the new health care exchanges from covering abortion, and it would eliminate tax benefits for small businesses that purchase insurance plans covering abortion. The bill would also prevent the District of Columbia from using its own locally raised funds to subsidize abortion care for low-income women. Huffington Post
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Invisible at the Top
We've been waiting for decades for the women in the pipeline to get to the top, and ladies, if it was gonna happen, it woulda happened by now. Evidently, getting the same background, job experience, and paying your dues just does not end up for women at the same place as men. This important article from Business Insider, "Why Women Vanish As They Move Up The Career Ladder" shows why, and concludes with this: "The final and most damaging reason that women are vanishing from the corporate ladder is the traditional belief that women are simply less effective leaders than men. That belief is the one that our data completely refutes."
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Education Means Money, But Not Equal Money to Men
 Those super-smart girls at the Institute for Women's Policy Research have just let fly a report called "How Education Pays Off for Older Americans" Among other finds: "Women, however, earn less at every age and education level than men, and often earn about the same as men who are at the educational level below them." (emphasis in original) Doesn't that just chap your khakis?
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Book Review: All Joy and No Fun by Jennifer Senior
 Raising children is terribly hard work, often thankless and mind-numbing, and yet the most rapturous experience available to adults. Senior begins with the supposition that parents are both happier and more miserable than nonparents, that child rearing dictates a wider emotional range than people have generally known before it. She tackles the problem of ambivalence, demonstrating that most parenting stresses its participants to their limits, no matter how much they love their children. Salted with insights and epigrams, the book is argued with bracing honesty and flashes of authentic wisdom. New York Times
Lots more titles for your bedside table on mothering, women, power, parenting, politics and other great stuff. Check it out!
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- Find needed support
- Advocate for our children's needs
- Discover valuable resources
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- And so much more!
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