Women’s Work and Feminism in 2011

Image via slateconsultancy.com

Regular readers of GAB are familiar with my interest in (or obsession with) gender roles at work and at home – I blog about it often. So you can imagine my delight when The Current, a popular Canadian radio program, hosted a panel to discuss women’s work and feminism in 2011, earlier this month. The discussion touched on a number of issues, including the gender wage gap, the lack of women in leadership roles, and the struggle to maintain balance between work and family life. But it quickly turned into a verbal jousting match between 25-year-old columnist Erin Cordonne and esteemed physicist and feminist Ursula Franklin.

Cordonne holds the somewhat apathetic view that women have achieved gender equality in the workplace and, “[…] within 10 to 20 years my expectation is that women will be able to hold approximately the same number of management and high-level positions as men.” Ignoring her puzzling definition of ‘equality’ (how can gender equality have been achieved if women are still underrepresented in leadership positions and earn, on average, 18 percent less than men?), many women – myself included – aren’t prepared to bank on the mere passage of time as our ticket to equality.

Cordonne goes on to argue that women are simply self-selecting out of management and other high-level positions because they want to spend more time at home with their children, and that this desire for work-life balance – which she attributes to women’s innate “nurturing element” – explains the gender wage gap.

While I don’t dispute a mother’s natural desire to raise her child, I’m highly disturbed by the notion – implicit in Cordonne’s “men and women are different” line of reasoning – that men neither share this desire nor should they be expected to. This form of sexist thinking only discourages men from further developing their own “nurturing element”.

As somewhat of an aside, I’m sick to death of the gross generalization of all women as nurturers. While it’s true that many women have a nurturing instinct, many others don’t. Perpetuating the myth that all women are born with this instinct encourages women to enter motherhood with unrealistic expectations of themselves and, if they lack this instinct, to feel badly about their perceived abnormality. Whether instinctually or not, many different types of women are wonderful mothers, partners and human beings.

Franklin responds to Cordonne’s comments with several pointed questions:

Do you really want to live in a work environment where the men have the choice to look after the family, but don’t, and women do? […] Do you really want women to be what your top executives are? Is it a problem of women, or is it a problem of social ordering?

Her questions knocked the breath out of me: they’re a powerful reminder that, at its core, the fight for equality is not about finding accommodation in the existing system, which oppressed women, but rather changing the system so that it no longer penalizes women for their ability to bear children or their desire to raise them.

Related to that point, Cordonne laments the plight of women in 2011, who face pressure to do it all – achieve in the workplace, manage the household, and care for a happy and healthy family.

Reporter: Do you blame feminism for some of that?

Cordonne: Yeah, I do blame feminism. Not that it’s a bad thing, because feminism has given us that choice and given us that opportunity to be in the workplace and I’m so thankful for that every day. I don’t think feminism has been a bad movement, but I do think that we need to work now between men and women and between just women ourselves to foster an environment where it’s not only OK to give 100 percent in the workplace but, you know, when we come home at the end of the day that we have that support system in place.

I find this comment very sad, not only because it offers such a vague and half-hearted solution to the issues faced by overburdened women, but also because it reflects a common misconception about feminism: that it merely pushed women out of the home and into the workforce, and in doing so, equality was achieved. As Franklin points out, “What Erin describes are overburdened lady patriarchs who are trying to fit into a patriarchal structure.”

The fight for equality can’t end with women entering the workforce and hiring nannies. Likewise, it doesn’t accept that becuase women have children, they should de facto earn less than men. And because Ursula Franklin puts it so perfectly, I’ll let her have the last word:  

There’s nothing wrong with women, there’s a lot wrong with the rest of the world.

Are you new to Gender Across Borders? Please read this first. We may update the site, and you can stay in contact with us through our Twitter feed and our newsletter. Like Gender Across Borders on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.