Today is Equal Pay Day…

did you know?  I didn’t.  Thanks to the girls over at feministing.com I now know, and so do you.  You can thank me later for bringing this to your attention…I can just tell you were dying to know this tidbit of information.

New research by the American Association of University Women shows that just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than their male colleagues, even when they work in the same field. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens.

Okay, so this isn’t like breaking news or anything, but still, it’s interesting.  Okay, well, it’s more like a yeah, duh, we already know, it’s kinda obvious.  Still, doesn’t mean it sucks any less.

a woman boss = an awful experience

I know, it’s a pretty harsh statement to make but it got your attention, didn’t it? And, unfortunately, in my case, it’s completely true. So the title should probably read ME + a woman boss = an awful experience. It should, but, I’m not going to change it because I doubt I’m the only woman who thinks this way.

Penelope Trunk over at Brazen Careerist posted about the idea of paying ones dues in the workplace and it got me thinking about my work experiences, and in particular, the experience of working for a female boss. It’s something I’ve wanted to write about for sometime now, I’ve even started one or two postings about it but never quite felt right about publishing them. The emotional aspect of it keeps getting in the way. Even after 5 years have passed, I guess I’m still bitter and angry about this. (And yes, I know, I am a holder-on-of-things. I’ve already established this and freely admitted to it so there is no need to remind me.)

Well, emotion and all….

a response to “An Altarnative Education”

 This is all they’re really doing here, isn’t it? They’re just biding time until somebody proposes!  -quote from the film Mona Lisa’s Smile

On Friday I came across the article “An Altarnative Education.”  It had been published in The Eye, a weekly features and arts magazine published by the Columbia Spectator.  And, yes, it has taken me this long to calm down and write something without sounding like a crazed lunatic. 

How, all the way from Buenos Aires, you may be wondering, did I find this article?  Following the lead of one of my readers I set up a Google alert that sends me a message anytime Barnard College is mentioned in a blog – which, I recently found out is how this particular reader found my blog.  Anyhow, the alert led me here, which then led me to the article.  Needless to say, my initial reaction to the article…okay, actually, let me be completely honest, my reaction to just the first paragraph of this article, was rather crazed.  My reaction to the entire article was just one of outright disbelief and shock.  

So, I did what any Barnard educated women would do, I waited to respond.  See, if there is anything that I learned during my time at Barnard it was that one’s opinion on any issue cannot be taken seriously unless you take the time to make a rational and well thought out response.  Had I wrote down the first thing that came to mind after reading this article, you would have wrote me off as a lunatic bitch who has it out for any girl who goes to college with the idea of finding a husband.  And that’s not me.  That’s not even what I think. I think college is probably a pretty good place to find a husband or wife and I know a whole lot of people who have found their significant others while in college.   

Now that it’s a day or two later, I’ve been able to think a bit more clearly. And here’s what I think:  there are still SO MANY things wrong with this article.

Here are a few of my thoughts.

• Stereotypes.  Barnard has it’s fair share.  Hmmm….let’s see. It’s a college full of feminists and lesbians.  It’s the college for the women who couldn’t get into Columbia.  Oh, yeah, and my favorite, it’s nothing more than a finishing school for those girls looking for ivy-league educated husbands with deep pockets.  This article does nothing more then perpeturate this last stereotype.  And that’s all it is, a stereotype. 

• Why did Ms. Colvin, who is a Columbia College student, use a Barnard woman as the focus of this article?  Why not use a Columbia female undergrad?  You mean to tell me that she couldn’t find one Columbia woman to profile.  There are nearly 4000 of them. Please, let’s think about this for a moment.  If you’re main objective in college is to find a husband of top pedigree don’t you think you’d go to Columbia where there are a total of 7,407 undergraduate students, 48.2% male, and not Barnard, where all 2389 students are women.  I would take guess and say that there are probably more Regina Wellington’s at Columbia than Barnard.

• Colvin writes that “Wellington is a part of a small but vocal minority of girls on college campuses across the country who are unafraid to say that they came to school not for the education, but because they wanted to find a husband.”   Tell me, where are the facts to support this statement?  Who are the vocal minority?  And do NOT show me data from places like Brigham Young University where 98% of the student body are members of the Mormon Church and over 50% are married upon graduation.

• For someone to say that she doesn’t find college “useful” and that she hasn’t “learned anything” just pisses me off especially when she’s talking about Barnard.  It also makes me kinda sad, in an I feel sad for the poor girl who thinks this way because she’s completely pathetic and maybe even mentally deranged.  To go to a school like Barnard and not learn anything is well, a shame.  It’s also, practically impossible, unless you’ve slept through all your classes, bought term papers and cheated on exams.  It’s a waste to think that there is someone filling a seat in a class that doesn’t even care about the learning that is taking place in that classroom.  It find it disrespectful to the professors and to the fellow students.

• Colvin uses two New York Times article’s – one from 2003 and another from 2005– to support her point.  But these articles have nothing to do with her argument.  Getting an MRS degree – going to college with the sole purpose of finding a mate – and cutting back on work or leaving a career entirely to care for children – opting out as it’s being called these days – are not the same.  Not even close.  You can’t use data about one issue to support another.  It’s a far stretch to make a connection between the subjects.  Ms. Colvin really should have read them with a more critical eye. 

• There is one point that Ms. Colvin makes that I do agree with.  It’s that this topic of going to college to find a husband is rather taboo among the halls of top schools, and women’s colleges in particular.  Such a discussion is not really tolerated.  Nor is the discussion of choosing to be a stay-at-home-mom.  These topics should be discussed without the fear of ridicule.  This was never an issue for me at the time I attended Barnard since I had fully intended to have a career first and a family second but it didn’t work that way.  Had these issues been discussed, had I been privy to listening to differing points of view from women like Regina, even though at the time I most likely would have thought she was completely out of her mind, it would have probably helped me in dealing with my own feelings of betraying my education by choosing to follow my husband’s career and stay at home to raise my children.

Oh and how I could go on and on and on about Regina, about the article and about Barnard.  But I won’t.  I won’t bore you with any more of this as it has gone on way too long and I have obviously spent way too much time thinking about it.  But, as you probably have already figured out, it bothers me to read something like this and realize that there are young smart women, women with great potential to be anything they choose – even a wife and mother, because those too are important and challenging jobs – who can’t see the value of the education that is in front of them.    

somehow all roads lead to Barnard

So I was going to comment on one particular article that I had recently read this morning, but that article led to another that lead me to yet another, and well, the trail of really intersting ideas, topics, thoughts and personal points of view that I followed eventually led me to, believe it or not, Barnard. (And for all you first-timers to this blog, Barnard is my Alma Mater and I tend to talk about it quite a bit.)   

So it all started when I noticed that there had been a new post on the blog What We Said: Reflections on 21st Century Feminism.  Make Tea not War posted a link to a recent essay by E.J. Graff on the “Opt-Out Revolution.”  I like this article.  It’s thought provoking and really brings to light some important issues with regards to how the Family/Work issue is framed by the media. 

The article got me thinking about feminism, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately.  Which then led me to wonder whether the women over at feministing.com, which I tend to check in on from time to time — the blog that is, not the women, though I’ll admit that I have read all of their bios and they are all very interesting  —  had made mention of the EJ. Graff article.  And sure enough they had a link to the article listed in their Weekly Feminist Reader post dated March 18th. 

So of course, while I was visiting over at feministing.com, I decided to check out what else they were talking about. And after catching up on the evolution of “female”  and the “Southern Belle” feminist,  my attention shifted over to a March 20th posting titled Female Soldiers’ Hell.  I stopped at this post because it linked to an article about the psychological fallout from the war in Iraq for female soldiers, which interests me since I’ve recently gotten to know a fellow trailing spouse who also happens to be an Iraq War Veteran.  

Okay, so being the insanely curious person that I am, I noticed that the Female Soldier post was contributed to feministing.com by a Courtney Martin.  (I only noticed this because typically the posts on feministing.com come from one of the six women who run the site.)  Again, because I can’t help myself, I really am that nosy, I clicked on contributed by Courtney Martin.   

And where did it take me?  To Ms. Martin’s personal website obviously. And while I was there, I figured why not read some of Ms. Martin’s writing.  About two articles later, I noticed that Ms. Martin sounded a lot like me.  Or is it that I sound like her?  What does it matter.  We think alike, I think.   So, of course, I just had to check out Ms. Martin’s bio.  And lo and behold at the end of Ms. Martin’s bio page there it is.  AHA!  She’s a Barnard graduate herself. 

Knowing this, I just couldn’t leave without reading more.  And eventually, while skimming articles she had written in 2006, I came across Paradox of a Perfect Girl with it’s all too true description of Barnard. Ms. Martin writes,

When I got to Barnard College, I met a skyscraper dorm full of women just like me — perfect girls incurring a variety of eating and anxiety disorders via their rabid-dog achievement orientation. Zoloft and Paxil were doled out like candy. Girls traded all-nighter tales like war stories.

In the same article, Ms. Martin writes

The second wave of feminists — our mothers and teachers — created a world in which we feel entitled to accomplish anything we set our minds to; which, it turns out, includes just about everything. Now the task of the next wave of feminism is to turn the tide of this unhealthy achievement drive. Yes, women can be anything. But we don’t have to be everything.

See, I told you we kinda think alike. Kinda.  Must be the schooling?  Although she seems to have things a bit more figured out than I do.  Maybe I missed that class?  

Okay, so I could stop there, but….ah….I just can’t. Not yet.  One more thing. 

An article on Ms. Martin’s site led me to The American Prospect Special Report March 2007 that deals with the issues of Work and Family, and thus taking us full circle to the topic of the first article that got this all started.  And while this has nothing to do with Barnard, which as my headline would lead you to believe this post would end, I thought it fun to point out that I once worked for The American Prospect. It was my second job after having graduated from Barnard.  There I did it, I brought it back to Barnard.  I knew I could. 

more thoughts on feminism and why maybe I’m not a feminist anymore. shhhh, don’t tell barnard. they may take my diploma away.

Warning: The inner workings of my sometimes marvelous, though, more often, fucked up mind are no where near logical and/or organized.  In other words, what follows may just seem like huge mess of random thoughts.  I’d tackle this in a different way if I knew how, but I don’t. So that while I can’t promise that this will make any sense, I can almost guarantee it to be thought provoking and maybe, for some, polarizing.

The other day I had planned on writing something meaningful about it having been International Women’s Day (IWD), but instead, I only came up with this.  I guess I could have blogged against sexism had I paid attention to the fact that it was blog against sexism day.  I’m still quite disappointed about it. No, not that I didn’t blog against sexism that is, but that I didn’t write anything meaningful on March 8th.  Made worse, of course, by the fact that I had come up with some great stuff earlier in the day but I just couldn’t get it out of my head and on to paper, it got stuck along side 50 other ideas that I’m working on.  (Did I ever tell you that I think way too much?) 

And that’s the dilemma I’m having these days.  Taking on this whole project of self exploration and self discovery and writing about it has been on the one hand really cathartic and on the other hand quite stressful.   What I’ve come to realize recently is that I have SO many issues just piled up inside me that I either A) haven’t really dealt with, or B) have dealt with but are holding on to for some unknown reason.  (For that second point, I should really reread this.) 

It’s amazing how the brain works.  Smells, images, sounds, particular words, they all conjure up memories.  Some good, some neutral, others painful.  You just never know what will float to the surface.  

So here’s what’s risen to the top most recently: feminism.  You see, the other day, having been IWD, I got to thinking a lot about feminism and my own feelings and issues on the topic.  

There was once a time when I would have considered myself a feminist, without a doubt.  Today, I’m not so sure if that label applies to me.  Actually, I’m not so sure what that word even means anymore, but that’s another topic all together.

When I was in high school people thought it amusing to call me a feminazi.  I was outspoken about my views on women’s rights, I did not hide it.  I gladly took on projects and assignments that flexed my feminist muscle.  As a senior I even wrote a paper on the negative effect of Barbie on a young girl’s self image.  I didn’t mind being labeled a feminist, I actually embraced it. (I didn’t like the term feminazi however, but what could I do? We’re talking about teenagers here.) 

I went to college.  I took classes in women’s studies, I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman, bell hooks, Andrea Dworkin.  I studied the lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger.  I knew what the women at Senaca Falls had started and I knew what Betty Friedan fought for.  I knew all of these things and more.  I got it, I saw where I fit in.  I thought I would go out and  conquer the world, break the glass ceiling, show everyone how my gender would not set me apart from others.   That I was just as capable as any guy.  That I would be successful, a trailblazer, a pioneer.  A fighter for a cause.

Slight problem.  At the end of the day, when I ventured out into the real world, there was no cause.  Yes, there was and still is the constant debate over abortion, but I don’t see this as much a feminist issue as a political one. (Go ahead, argue with me on that one if you want, but it’s just how I see it these days.)  And no, women have not achieved equality.  Still, I couldn’t find a cause worth fighting for, at least not one that I could relate to and be passionate about.   

A generation of women had fought before me to create a landscape in which I could do anything I wanted to.  Now, it was up to me.  I didn’t experience gender bias or blatant sexism.  No one told me I couldn’t do something because I was female.  In my world — and yes, I’ll be the first to admit, it is a somewhat privileged white middle class world — all seemed pretty darn good.  I still considered myself a feminist.  I think. 

The second wave feminist movement succeeded in giving my generation something very important – choice.  And I’m not talking about choice with regards to abortion.  Choice with regards to almost everything.  My mother’s generation fought and paved the way for the next generation of women to follow.  We don’t have to fight the same battles, we don’t have to prove our worth in classrooms or in boardrooms the same way they did.  In fact, we don’t have to fight at all if we don’t want to.  We are a generation of women who have the luxury of being able to choose to have a career, to be a wife, a mother or any combination of these roles.  And I am grateful for these women for giving me the ability to choose.  

So what’s the problem?  

Here’s the thing, I grew up reading and learning about the trials and tribulations of the second wave feminists.  The rhetoric of the fight and the struggle.  I incorporated that into my psyche.  It became part of me.  So much so that upon making my own choice to get married at a young age, have children right away and put my own career on hold to follow that of my husband’s kicked off an internal struggle that to this day rages on inside me.  How could I be a feminist after choosing to be a wife and mother above all else? 

To this, I do not have an answer.  Only more questions. 

Why, tell me, do I feel like I’ve let my mother’s generation down?  That I’ve let my mother down? That I’ve let myself down?  That I’m setting a poor example for my daughter? 

In the end, though, I must remember, feminist or not, today, I am a mother and a wife.  And right now that’s what matters most.  Is that so wrong?