Paycheck Jobs, Paycheck Feminism
Posted October 30th, 2009 by Nanette FondasI’ve been on a one-woman campaign to resurrect the phrase, paycheck job, used by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique forty years ago.
Friedan was referring, of course, to jobs outside the home for which people receive money. She recognized that the unpaid job of caring for children and home was also “work”—as do most people today. But by placing the adjective “paycheck” in front of “job,” she implicitly elevated the status of stay-at-home mothers’ (and fathers’) equally important job. Words have power.
Now Karen Kornbluh and Rachel Homer write in Ms. Magazine that we need “Paycheck Feminism.” They argue that public policy must better value women’s work—in both paycheck jobs and at-home jobs. They take us on a walk through the history of the employment deal in America in which we learn how New Deal era policies still in place today fit an ideal worker of the mid-1900s who was male, working full-time, and who had dependents relying on him only for wages and retirement, health, and educational benefits.
Over the past 40 years the work force has changed dramatically—with immigrants, women, single mothers, and Generations X and Y moving in. Yet the country has not updated its policies accordingly. Kornbluh and Homer lay out a succinct agenda for revamping U.S. work-life policy to take into account a variety of ways women work across their life course.
My favorite recommendation is this:
Although women now make up almost half of the workforce, the average woman spends 12 years out of the paid workforce, often to care for children or elderly relatives. Since workers’ benefits are calculated based on their 35 highest-earning years, that means seven more years of zeros to figure into the benefit calculations of a woman whose worklife spans 25 to 65—which substantially lowers her Social Security benefits. Instead, caregiving years should not be entered as zeros, and either be taken out of the equation or given a dollar value.
Others include changes in health insurance, family and medical leave, childcare, and payroll taxes to bring us up-to-date and aligned with today’s workforce realities.
You can check out the article in the Fall, 2009 issue of Ms. on the newsstand or they’ll send you a copy.
Cross posted from the Huffington Post– feel free to leave comments here or there.
2 Comments
thank you so very much for the thoughtful article.
i have been struggling with the concept of paid vs. unpaid work and the term working mother vs. stay-at-home mother. i am college-educated, raised by a well educated mother who always worked and who was supported by her husband in her pursuits. during my adolescent years and until i did become a mother myself i scoffed at the idea of slipping into a perceived traditional role and yet i find myself here.
i am currently not working at a pay-check job and yet i am working harder than ever before in my life taking care of my two children. it takes all my strength and effort to create a home, staying involved in and creating community while my husband works to financially support the family. i haven’t really “opted out” of working. i would much prefer to have more balance between pursuing my own career and weaving a family and community fabric for us all.
there is a range of effort that can go into parenting. there is a range of outside support a family can be fortunate to have or lack entirely. we don’t have family, we are a tv free household and all these differences matter in the amount of work that parenting takes.
when working parents can’t volunteer in school, i take over for them, this helps the teachers, the families and ultimately all of society. instead of receiving respect or support, mothers who don’t have a paycheck job often are viewed as indulgent, as simply privileged, as lazy, as traditional etc. ironically if i were to take care of someone else’s child and receive a paycheck for it, my status would improve in the eyes of society (if only a little since childcare is not truly respected either). our family is paying a prize for this, too. we don’t own a house, we live relatively modestly and we know financially we will have to make up for these years for the rest of our lives.
a healthy society might consider supporting mothers who don’t have paycheck jobs for a few years by providing access to healthcare, retirement provisions etc. if my husband’s work supported him in his role as father and allowed him more flexibility, i could find the room i need to work at a paycheck job as well.
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