FEMINIST AGENDA?: GET A JOB!
(any Craptastic job)
by Lillian Hanson, San Diego Welfare Warriors
(published in the Summer 2007 Mother Warriors Voice)
[Re: Mother Warriors Voice letter to the US National Organization of Women] Awesome reply to the NOW Task Force about Hillary Clinton. Well said! Yes, looks like Hillary Clinton strikes out with the likes of us poor women, that's for sure!
And we all know feminists, for the most part, are crowing the "get a job, any job" mantra. They must keep in lock-step with the agenda that a mother is better off working any craptastic job than she is staying home. And she's "doing nothing", getting a pittance of a welfare check for taking care of her family.
The mainstream feminists insist it's all about "choices", but we know better. It's about going out there and promoting the "work-first" agenda. Children's needs are only answered by promoting "child-care", etc. I'm all for upward mobility in the right context, but it seems the only choices feminism offers is work, work, and MORE work, regardless of who's affected.
The right to stay home with one's children is the big elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge. If feminists chose to address the rights of mothers to stay home with their children, they would then face flack from the public: "Hey, I thought you feminists said women DIDN'T NEED to be SUPPORTED by anyone to stay home with their children? They have the right to go out and make a living like everyone else!" Then, feminists would lose their momentum from the bodies who support the right for women to be at parity in the workforce.
In their eyes, there's NO gray area that says mothers have the right to be in the work-force AND to stay home. The almighty dollar wins out. Reading Ms. Magazine, there are a plethora of articles touting the lives of women (and mothers) struggling to gain a foothold in the workplace, but there are NONE WHATSOEVER about mothers who wish to stay home with their children and have outside support for doing so. It's as if those women don't exist.
As a young woman coming of age in the 60's-70's, I was all for women gaining a place in the workforce, but never did I dream that being able to stay home with your children would become an obsolete option. Even many conservatives point out this aberrance about feminism, and to my dismay, they have covered that flaw in spades.
"What? Mothers looking after their babies is not Real Work?
Am I on the right planet?
"
The only thing you hear from the feminist arena is the sound of wind whistling through a dark abyss, with no answer in sight. It's as if the feminists know one tune only - "Work if the answer to all that ails women", and "You're only respected if you WORK for a living". This is all they seem to know, and all they're willing to examine. Pretty sad, indeed.
by Lillian Hanson, San Diego Welfare Warriors
Note from LIFE: The situation is a bit better in Canada where at least a few visonarly feminists wrote the Pictou Statement in 2004. However, this statement has been largely ignored since then. And even the authors of the statement have not been writing further on this topic. In fact one of the authors said that she was too innundated by email spam and her university job to find the time to write anything further on guaranteed income (huh?). Certainly there is almost a wall to wall endorsement that "get a job" is the only solution to poverty, and unfortunately those who support a guaranteed income but are not writing about it, then give their tacit consent to the job system and all the damage that this brings to peace, people and the environment.
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*What does NOW (National Organization for Women - U.S.) say about women and Poverty?
"the rally -- focusing on health care, jobs, housing, education and the digital divide -- will urge the presidential candidates to pledge to create a White House Conference on American Poverty ..."
http://www.now.org/issues/economic/081104povertyrally.html
"Ms. Jacobs [NOW] argued that child care subsidies, health care, job training, education, and jobs that pay a living wage are support services that are proven to help get and keep people off welfare. Women's rights organizations advocate programs that help women develop the life skills they need in order to become independent are an important part of the picture as well." "The long-term goal, of course, is to create jobs that pay a living wage-one that can actually support people and keep them off welfare."
http://www.now.org/issues/economic/welfare/072604tanf.html
