Reflections on International Womens' Day

[Xantippe]

Hurray! We’re getting back on track! Shaddowboxer, I thought your post was great!

I wish my workplace had made more of the ‘International’ in the title. Every discussion in our workplace about women (which incidentally I feel is more for the sake of being PC anyway and hasn’t got much purpose other than that) is always about working mothers and it does inevitably become devisive and demoralising.

Having said that, there is a new trend now, which I find toe-curlingly embarassing, of trying to train male colleagues to adapt to the way women work. Apparently, ‘we’ ( yeah - I think this thread had proved we’re all the same with the same opinions and preferences …not!) are less likely to speak up on a conference call and all sorts of other 'default; quirks that mean the poor blokes in our company are supposed to feel that maybe it is all their fault if we don’t move up the career ladder swiftly enough because it’s clearly something they’ve done!

I think work is a place where we all come together to get a job done - regardless of our background, marital status of family size. At the moment, we seem to be bombarded with ‘International’ and ‘national’ days to make us either ‘be aware of’ - if it’s a nasty thing, or ‘celebrate’ if it’s a ‘good thing’ when I’m guessing at least 90% of us just want to do our job to the best of our ability without the assumption that we are either socially unaware enough to need reminding that there are women in the workplace (I know - I am one )

**I’d much rather everyone in the company came together and maybe did something simple but practical if we must ‘celebrate’ (wooohooo!) these days. Instead of focussing on working mums within the company, we could have had a cake sale in the office and given the proceedings to an overseas health or trade programme to help women who are really struggling. **That way, the activity is cohesive, rather than devisive and we actually do some good and look outwards rather than inwards.

I think I’ll suggest that next year and see what the response is.

Do you know for a fact that not one of the women you work with is “really struggling”?

Also, how do you think that women with children at home will feel about doing a bake sale? (Hint: they won’t.)

 

[Rose71]

Who said the cakes had to be home-baked? In fact, it’s just as important to have people who will buy and eat the cakes as it is to have people who are selling them!

It’s a bit of a sweeping statement to suggest working mums won’t like being asked to bake, isn’t it? I know plenty of working mums who enjoy baking. I thought we were trying to get away from the polar-opposite-stereotypes of 1950s housewife - vs- ruthless career-woman? Tray bakes are quick, easy, as cheap as you want to make them and a great way to get children interested in baking. But please can we refrain from posting detailed breakdowns of the cost of making flapjacks?

Also, define ‘hardship’? I know the women who were featured at my works all earn perfectly adequate wages to live off. They could be undergoing huge emotional struggles about the impact of their choices and they could have other financial burdens that only they know of - but that just isn’t the point. The point is that their articles all focussed soley on how their choices impacted on themselves.

I’m not suggesting what they do or how they work is ‘wrong’. I am simply stating that the way in which they and my company chose to portray them is wrong. At best it represents a missed opportunity to reflect on an international scale on issues affecting women and at worst it portrayed women who do (by choice or necessity) have children and work as being concerned more with their own needs and wants than that of their families.

I thought we were all trying to move away from the perception that working mum = selfish mum, by default? It seems a bit of an own goal to publish a series of articles boasting how great flexible working is for ‘me’ and ‘my career’ rather than ‘for my family’.

 

[bitterhope]

Do you know for a fact that not one of the women you work with is “really struggling”?

Also, how do you think that women with children at home will feel about doing a bake sale? (Hint: they won’t.)

Really struggling? Compared to most around the world, none of us are struggling.

We always did bake sales and chili cook offs at my jobs. We also did pot lucks. Most of us were moms. No one complained. It was enjoyable. We all had fun.

Why do people need to be so negative all the time?

 

[Xantippe]

Who said the cakes had to be home-baked? In fact, it’s just as important to have people who will buy and eat the cakes as it is to have people who are selling them!

It’s a bit of a sweeping statement to suggest working mums won’t like being asked to bake, isn’t it? I know plenty of working mums who enjoy baking. I thought we were trying to get away from the polar-opposite-stereotypes of 1950s housewife - vs- ruthless career-woman? Tray bakes are quick, easy, as cheap as you want to make them and a great way to get children interested in baking. But please can we refrain from posting detailed breakdowns of the cost of making flapjacks?

Also, define ‘hardship’? I know the women who were featured at my works all earn perfectly adequate wages to live off. They could be undergoing huge emotional struggles about the impact of their choices and they could have other financial burdens that only they know of - but that just isn’t the point. The point is that their articles all focussed soley on how their choices impacted on themselves.

I’m not suggesting what they do or how they work is ‘wrong’. I am simply stating that the way in which they and my company chose to portray them is wrong.

It’s not an working versus non-working mom thing, but a parent versus non-parent thing.

Trust me, people with school children have many, many opportunities to do the sort of thing you are suggesting–to do a multitude of piddling pointless tasks that are imposed on them from above. And people with tiny children that they see two hours a night are not going to feel happy about getting to get to choose between seeing less of their children and staying up until all hours working on a project. And no, it isn’t great fun to bake a cake that needs to look nice with a one-year-old. I’m an SAHM, and the very idea fills me with dread.

I bet dollars to donuts that the IWD stuff you disliked was exactly what your company higher-ups asked for. If all of the women profiled were saying the same thing, that strongly suggests to me that they were guided in that direction.

 

[Xantippe]

**Really struggling? Compared to most around the world, none of us are struggling. **

We always did bake sales and chili cook offs at my jobs. We also did pot lucks. Most of us were moms. No one complained. It was enjoyable. We all had fun.

Why do people need to be so negative all the time?

I really dislike that when it’s used an excuse for treating the people around us without compassion.

Also, it’s not true. Andrea Yates was struggling. So are a lot of people, and it’s often not clear until it’s too late.

 

[Rose71]

Again, I repeat: a cake sale needs people who but the cakes too. Nobody forces anybody to bake / buy on the way to work from a shop.

Of course that is the angle the ‘bosses’ wanted the articles to take! It doesn’t mean the women needed to comply. It’s not as though they would have lost their jobs had they had refused to write anything or added a bit more balance.

I’m sorry you feel you have to pick holes in everything I write because I’ve tried so hard to keep what I write balanced and respectful, but you seem determined to flag up specific scenarios that might contradict or undermine everything. Common sense says a woman with a 1 year old who only sees him / her a couple of hours in the evening isn’t going to shout hurray at the idea of staying up late to bake - but common sense also says nobody would expect her to do so. However, it would be great if she took a 5 minute break at work with her colleagues and treated herself to someone else’s baking.

I’ve said all I have to say on this topic now.

 

[bitterhope]

I really dislike that when it’s used an excuse for treating the people around us without compassion.

Also, it’s not true. Andrea Yates was struggling. So are a lot of people, and it’s often not clear until it’s too late.

No one has advocated treating others without compassion. It’s not right to always try to paint everyone with the same brush. And I stand by what I said. Most of us here and in the western world have no idea what struggling is. Doing something like raising money to help those struggling IS compassionate

Why bring up a mentally ill mom whose family turned a blind eye toward? It was clear. They dropped the ball.

 

[Xantippe]

No one has advocated treating others without compassion. It’s not right to always try to paint everyone with the same brush. And I stand by what I said. Most of us here and in the western world have no idea what struggling is. Doing something like raising money to help those struggling IS compassionate

Why bring up a mentally ill mom whose family turned a blind eye toward? It was clear. They dropped the ball.

You just said, “Compared to most around the world, none of us are struggling.”

I think you need to revise the idea that nobody in a developed country ever struggles–that is transparently false.

 

[pianistclare]

You just said, “Compared to most around the world, none of us are struggling.”

I think you need to revise the idea that nobody in a developed country ever struggles–that is transparently false.

YEs.
plus, it does paint “everyone with the same brush”.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I remember my first international woman’s day. I was I think 14, living in Italy and a boy gave me a flower, because it was “La Festa delle Donne”

I think it was the first flower I ever received from a boy.

 

[Xantippe]

I remember my first international woman’s day. I was I think 14, living in Italy and a boy gave me a flower, because it was “La Festa delle Donne”

I think it was the first flower I ever received from a boy.

Awwww!

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Awwww!

I was trying to change the tone into something less controversial… unless of course a teen boy giving a teen girl is controversial… nah…

 

[bitterhope]

You just said, “Compared to most around the world, none of us are struggling.”

I think you need to revise the idea that nobody in a developed country ever struggles–that is transparently false.

MOST is not all. Compared to MOST, we are not struggling. We have homes. We have food. We have internet. We have electricity. We have jobs (the ladies the OP is speaking of) with a livable wage. We are struggling far less than anyone else in the world. I realize some people struggle but not to the extent that many FEEL like we do. Yes, there are mentally ill people but help is there for them. Most of the world has no mental health care. The majority of struggled in the developed nations are due to choices we make or situations we won’t change. In most places people are born into a way of life without the option of improvements or help or health care. None of us are struggling like that. We have the option of hope, help, and a step forward.

 

[Xantippe]

“La feste delle donne” sounds amazing, and I don’t even know Italian.

In Russian, it’s “Mezhdunarodniy zhenskii den’,” which doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as mellifluously.

I was looking it up, and in Poland it’s “Dzien kobiet,” which is shorter, but even less pleasant to the ear.

 

[PhiloMed]

I don’t know any working mothers who pay retail for childcare or cleaning. They literally have women beating down their doors to do those things for as little as ten dollars a day, if they don’t have relatives and friends elbowing those people aside to do it for free.

From the bad end, I hear from women who run in-home daycares that the discounts come the sticky-fingers way, by just never paying enough or at all and moving from daycare to daycare. Not so sweet, but also another not paying retail situation.

And separate from that, working mothers are like everyone else and put kids in school eventually, and again, people race to cover them when there’s a sick day and the kid(s) have to stay home.

They have work stresses, but I have yet to see anyone actually pay out much of their salary for daycare or babysitting like the meme goes. Even the working moms with five kids have free childcare and cleaning (grandma).

Are you delusional or just living on another planet? My nanny makes about $25/hour and she’s about to get a raise since kid #3 is coming. Add to that a 2x a year bonus.

If she’s sick (which doesn’t happen often) I need to work from home. Good thing I gave up clinical medicine for a research/office job or I would be up a creek with an office full of patients waiting for me and no childcare. Those kids usually end up sitting in their mom’s office for the day being “babysat” by the office staff. Oh, there was the time I had to leave my 3 month old with a hospital security guard whose name I think might have been Ed while I went to see a patient in the middle of the night. Yeah, I really had people beating down my door that night to help me out.

Nobody races to cover anything for me when there’s a crisis. I have to manage on my own which often means paying double (nanny gets paid even if she’s out for the day).

This is not an unusual scenario. This is basically the life of every working mother I work with. My manager keeps reminding me that I’ll get to keep the money I make once the kids finish graduate school- just like she did.

Daycare around here is about $1200-$1300/month for the first kid. Add another $700-$1000 for each additional kid.

Like someone else said on this thread, we are often blinded by our own world view and forget that how we live is not what everyone else also has to deal with.

 

[PhiloMed]

My problem with IWD is that as always it takes a feminist perspective which celebrates women for achievements in business, science and politics - thereby implicitly anc even explicitly ignoring and undervaluing women who are wives and mothers and who’s vocation is at home.

And I think this is where the thread went off the rails.

IWD, firstly, has a very different meaning in other countries as I have learned from this thread. It has not always celebrated anything specific because it is done differently by region/culture/company. In the US I think it has only recently been adopted to varying degrees of success. Mostly in the workplace.

Secondly, what you are describing is called Mother’s Day and in the US we celebrate it in May.

I think companies have tried to adopt IWD as something it really isn’t in places where it is an actual “holiday”. What the OP described was very different from what my company did. Our internal web site had quite a bit of information on women who worked for our company at various times, but since I work for a 100+ year old pharmaceutical company, it focused on achievements of female scientists and their accomplishments and contributions over the years in the development of molecules and various drugs. There was also information about some of the women working at the executive level and their path there. It was nice to read about some of the scientists and their contributions at a time when that was less common for women.

 

[ThePCWife]

Are you delusional or just living on another planet? My nanny makes about $25/hour and she’s about to get a raise since kid #3 is coming. Add to that a 2x a year bonus.

If she’s sick (which doesn’t happen often) I need to work from home. Good thing I gave up clinical medicine for a research/office job or I would be up a creek with an office full of patients waiting for me and no childcare. Those kids usually end up sitting in their mom’s office for the day being “babysat” by the office staff. Oh, there was the time I had to leave my 3 month old with a hospital security guard whose name I think might have been Ed while I went to see a patient in the middle of the night. Yeah, I really had people beating down my door that night to help me out.

Nobody races to cover anything for me when there’s a crisis. I have to manage on my own which often means paying double (nanny gets paid even if she’s out for the day).

This is not an unusual scenario. This is basically the life of every working mother I work with. My manager keeps reminding me that I’ll get to keep the money I make once the kids finish graduate school- just like she did.

Daycare around here is about $1200-$1300/month for the first kid. Add another $700-$1000 for each additional kid.

Like someone else said on this thread, we are often blinded by our own world view and forget that how we live is not what everyone else also has to deal with.

Your first and last sentences conflict with each other. But it’s nice to see someone from a top 2% income household in the wild.

Does anyone’s company celebrate International Worker’s Day?

 

[Xantippe]

Your first and last sentences conflict with each other. But it’s nice to see someone from a top 2% income household in the wild.

Does anyone’s company celebrate International Worker’s Day?

Probably not, but they celebrate Labor Day, so close enough.

 

[Javan]

In the US I think it has only recently been adopted to varying degrees of success. Mostly in the workplace.

I must admit, I had never even heard of this holiday until reading this thread.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Like I said, it can be stressful and lonely. I’m not sure I’m the type of person who could ever do it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that being a full time mom is unskilled labor, the result of biology, and requires no real work or training to achieve. It isn’t an accomplishment, and I resent it when people (usually women) claim that it’s “the hardest job in the world” and should be as respected as a career. No, in my mind, it shouldn’t. It’s insulting to look at a female doctor and a SAHM and say that their positions should be equally valued and respected. No, one worked, sacrificed, learned, and demonstrated enormous aptitude. The other was just born female and found a husband who worked, sacrificed, learned, and demonstrated enough aptitude at something that she doesn’t have to. That outlook cheapens the accomplishments of women and of the men who make it possible for SAHMs to exist.

That is ridiculous. I know of at least one family where a woman was a nurse and quit her job to be at home with her kids.

The idea that stay-at-home moms can’t be as educated as working women is a false narrative put forth by feminist secularists.

Also, I don’t see anyone “allowing” stay-at-home Moms exist except in their private decision-making.