I’m thrilled that my most recent column for The Daily Muse is now featured on Forbes Woman and has been generating an insightful social conversation on Twitter.
You can read the entire post here:
Category: Working It
Hey College Students: 5 Ways to Boost Your Resume Over Spring Break
Spring break is traditionally the time for beaches and comically large cocktails, but it precedes a more stressful seasonal occasion—the end of the year intern-rush, when students return to their hometowns looking for meaningful summer work. As companies continue to cope with budget constraints and entry-level workers stumble into a painfully slow-to-recover job market, employers not only see unpaid or low-paid internships as fiscally smart, they also understand that they can be picky.
So, this year, consider spending some of your time off tackling a few of the following intern strength-building activities. You’ll only have to give up a day or so of your break, but you’ll be rewarded with must-have skills that will increase your chances of landing an awesome internship at the end of the semester.
Read more on The Muse.
Paternity Leave – Why We Need it and How to Do it Right
You probably know that paternity leave is becoming much more common, and that it’s been shown to be beneficial for the whole family. But I was recently surprised to learn why it’s so advantageous—and who reaps the rewards.
A few weeks ago, Liza Mundy of New America Foundation and the author of The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Our Culture helped push the concept of paternity leave into the ongoing national conversation about “having it all” as working parents with her Atlantic article, “The Daddy Track.”
Mundy points out that fathers who take paternity leave and play an equal role in the difficult first few weeks with a newborn tend to stay more active in the child’s life as he or she grows up, creating a more even distribution of household and baby responsibilities and avoiding the “second shift” paradox (when working mothers do most of the household work, even though they work full-time). Mundy further concludes that the true beneficiaries of paternity leave are women and the businesses and nations that employ them, since paternity leave has been shown to “boost male participation in the household, enhance female participation in the labor force, and promote gender equity in both domains.” In other words, it’s a smart economic strategy for governments, because it shrinks the gender pay gap and helps ensure that women, who, in many countries, are often better educated than men, return to the workforce after having children.
Follow Up: Chivalry and Ambivalent Sexism
Earlier this week I wrote a column for The Muse about ambivalent sexism, or sexism that comes across as complimentary but originates in stereotypical beliefs about gender and ultimately has the same effects as hostile, or outright, sexism.
During my research for the piece and after its publication, I received some (anticipated) push back from readers of both sexes about how some of the examples I cite aren’t “really” sexist.
For instance, a few friends told me that when a man “apologizes” to the women in the room before or after using profanity, it’s not sexist. He’s simply acknowledging that there are ladies in the room.
Another reader, while agreeing with the article’s conclusions, noted, “This reminds me why chivalry is dead.”
Chivalry is a word that comes up a lot when we start talking about ambivalent sexism. It’s common to hear, Let’s just live in a world where no one can pay a woman a compliment or open her car door or help her carry her luggage without being called a sexist!
Let me be clear about this. I do think chivalry is dying, and I don’t think we should be sad to see it go. If I have to put up with wage gaps, double standards, street harassment, unattainable expectations of beauty, and all the other lovelies that spring forth from a society that tolerates sexism, in exchange for someone occasionally offering me a seat on the metro because I’m a woman, well, then I’ll stay standing for thirty minutes. Thanks.
Why are we trying to preserve chivalry when we should be aiming for a culture of kindness and acceptance, one in which we are polite to each other regardless of gender, appearance, social status, or sexual orientation? Instead of upholding chivalry — a tradition that stems from the view that women are in need of protection — we should focus on creating a culture that expects us to respect each other and allows us to express genuine emotion without fear of being punished for transcending gender norms. This type of culture of universal respect should be the ideal we’re working toward, not an outdated vision of white knights and damsels in distress.
Women are Kind and Men are Strong: How Benevolent Sexism Hurts Us All
A few months ago, I wrote a column about a situation I’ve experienced and witnessed more than I’d care for: being the only woman participating in a meeting or project—and thus being expected to become the team’s default administrative assistant. This piece struck a chord with readers of both genders, and many shared experiences that, although not directly related to administrative tasks, fell into the category of ambivalent or benevolent sexism.
Even if you’re not familiar with these terms, you’ve most likely witnessed them firsthand. Ambivalent or benevolent sexism refers to attitudes that view women and men in stereotypical roles, but feel “positive” or even complimentary in nature. Ambivalent or benevolent sexism usually originates in an idealization of traditional gender roles: Women are “naturally” more kind, emotional, and compassionate, while men are “naturally” more rational, less emotional, and “tougher,” mentally and physically. Translated into the workplace, ambivalent or benevolent sexism is behind the assumption that women are naturally better administrative assistants or naturally prepared to organize buying a gift for the boss. Because they’re “better” at it.
“Her” Problem is Our Problem: Why We Must Change Our Views on Working Mothers
In their book The Mommy Myth, authors Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels point out that mothers on opposite ends of the earning spectrum are often sent vastly different cultural messages.
Middle class mothers are encouraged to postpone or forego their professional development and told that doing otherwise is selfish and damaging to their children, while poor mothers are told that they’re lazy for even thinking about staying home with their children, continually being stereotyped as welfare queens. For middle and upper class women, motherhood is glamorized as the ultimate feminine endeavor, the one pursuit that proves your womanhood. While for poor women, motherhood is classified as something they’ve “gotten themselves into” and must endure as punishment.
5 New Year’s Resolutions for Working Parents
I’m thrilled that my latest piece for The Daily Muse is featured on Mashable (one of my favorite online publications) this week. You can check it out here.
“Working On It” Featured in Forbes Woman
I’m thrilled that several installments of my column in The Daily Muse have been picked up by Forbes Woman. Check them out!
Should Your Bring Your Kids Up in an Interview?
Taking Notes Isn’t “Women’s Work”: What To Do When You’re the Default Admin
5 Epic Career Lessons to Learn in Your 20s
I Didn’t Have Time to Write This, But I Did: Why Parents Must Re-think Free Time
Beating New-Mom Stress: What the Pros Say
When I was pregnant with my son, I constantly asked my older sister for advice. She’d had her first baby just a few months before and is, like me, a career-oriented woman with a demanding full-time job. Her life was like a peek into my future, and it made me simultaneously more comfortable and more terrified about all that was to come.
Response to “Sex and the Working Mom”
Late last week Herminia Ibarra published “Sex and the Working Mom” on the Harvard Business Review and aptly pointed out that in the ongoing debate about work-life balance one topic is often ignored: “A less discussable set of issues — sex, intimacy, the role that partners play in helping each other grow and develop, personally and professionally.”
Ibarra notices that when career-loving mothers discuss “the juggle,” they rarely mention how it can detrimentally affect their sex lives. She shares an anecdote from her company’s history in which a senior female employee responds to a question about the lack of diversity in high-ranking positions that require a lot of international travel with this: “Let me tell you what diversity means to me. My husband told me ‘there will be sex in this house at least once a week, whether you are here or not.'”
What I find most disturbing about this discussion is the implication that women/wives are “in charge” of a relationship’s sexual health. This assumption follows us from puberty to adulthood. Our culture teaches teenage girls that they are responsible for boys’ sexual behavior, and then, years later, tells married women that they are responsible for the abundance or lack of sex in their marriage. We assume that men and boys can’t control themselves, and so the burden of maintaining a “normal” sex life falls to the female. We peg young girls as temptresses who must be held accountable for boys’ sexual advances and married women as frigid careerists who must accommodate their husband’s needs. (And, for the record, I’m not arguing that Ibarra agrees with this assumption, but it seems like the women she quotes tacitly do.)
But there’s one universal truth about sex: it’s a joint venture. And it’s ridiculous to conclude that 50% of the participants have no part in determining its frequency. If a career-loving mother is too exhausted for intimacy, then she and her career-loving husband should work together to address the root of the issue. Why is she so exhausted? Can everyday tasks be redistributed so she feels less stressed? Are her partner’s demands reasonable to begin with? Is there a larger underlying issue? Both partners should be equally responsible for exploring these questions. But instead we frame her lack of sex drive as something that she must “fix.” From adolescence to middle-age sex — too much, not enough — is our problem.
As we continue the important debate of how working mothers and fathers can healthfully share the responsibilities of raising children while pursuing their passions, we need to reject this antiquated idea that men are uncontrollable animals that women must monitor. It’s a disservice to women and men of all ages.
Rikki writes. 