Why I wish my mother a happy Father's Day every year

Growing up, I always knew I didn't have a dad. My mother told me the story early on: She had met the love of her life. He was married and had children but was interested in my mother. My mother decided to have a child to forever be reminded of this great love.

Like many womyn, I don't think my mom truly grasped that there was still a huge possibility I was going to grow up without a dad. Not even a baby will make a man stay. He even told her that he did not want another child because his life was already made and he wasn't going to provide for this new baby. But he caved, and here I am.

For years I was angry with my mother for bringing me into this world knowing she was going to be a single parent. At a very young age I understood that my mother had made the choice to bring me into this world without a father--and that was very hurtful for me. Many of my friends had fathers in their lives and had healthy and loving relationships with them. I felt like I was missing out on something important or like I was at a disadvantage for not having that other half of me in my life.

The older I got, the more upset I became because I felt like my mom had set me up for failure. What exacerbated my feelings was our financial situation. As a janitor, my mom didn't make more than $30,000 a year. Some years she only made around $15,000. I felt like I didn't have much because I didn't have a dad, and I didn't have a dad because my mom made that decision for me.

The closer I got to graduating from high school, the more I realized that my mom set me up for success. I thought to myself, "My mom is an actual badass!" Not only could she make $15,000 last for two people for an entire year, she also kept me pretty happy. She would play Gasolina by Daddy Yankee at red lights so I could show off my choreography. She also let me do her hair and take naps with her. She was my first dance partner who taught me all my cumbia moves. She miraculously even found the time to chaperone some of my field trips and never missed a parent-teacher conference.

Of course, like any relationship, we had our problems. She's not perfect, because no one is. And like the rest of us, my mother carries serious trauma from being a Mexican immigrant in the United States who was physically and emotionally abused as a child and an adult. Not only was she a single mother to me, she was also a single mother to my three siblings. She carried that weight the only way she knew how and made sure she did better than her parents did.

The older I got, the more grateful I was to not have a dad. The person my mom fell in love with was an immigrant from El Salvador who was cheating on his wife with more womyn than just my mom. I realized that having him in my life would probably have made living my life harder. I was never "girly," and my significant other is a butch lesbian. Latinx cultural norms make it hard to exist outside of heteronormative binary roles, and there is a high chance that he would have perpetuated these norms in our household.

Since I realized how much work my mom put in to taking care of me, I decided to wish my mom a happy Father's Day. I wanted to let her know that I appreciated her decision to keep and raise me knowing she was going to do so by herself. And since she had hoped I would have a father, I thought it fitting to let her know that although I didn't grow up with a second parent, she definitely filled both roles and then some.

It is because of her that I can speak up in situations many people from similar backgrounds are not comfortable to do so. As a single mother, my mom had to fight to survive and make sure her kids survived. Nothing was ever handed to her, and she didn't have anyone to lean on. If something needed to get done, she was the one who went out and made it happen.

This was my beginning as a feminist. Having a womxn in my life who played every role (homemaker, mechanic, doctor, cook, seamstress, breadwinner, chauffeur) taught me that I could do whatever I wanted. This was further engrained in me from watching my sisters apply what they learned from my mom (both are 20 years older than me) while raising families of their own (both were cheated on and left to raise their children on their own).

Wishing a single mother a happy Father's Day is not for everyone though. Many people feel it is dismissive of the importance of a father's role. This point of view reminds me of difference feminism (how the two sexes have inherently different qualities and therefore are inherently unequal). It seems like people who feel strongly about not wishing a mother a happy Father's Day believe that a womxn cannot fill the role of a "father" do to the biological, and therefore inherent, differences among the two heteronormative sexes.

However, this idea further perpetuates heteronormativity. Difference feminism leaves queer folks (including those who are polygamous) and individuals who decide to raise a child on their own. And I would like to point out that just because my children will have two moms and no father, they will not miss out on anything because femininity and masculinity are not rooted in any one particular gender.

Although there is controversy surrounding whether or not it is okay to wish a single mother a happy Father's Day, I wish my mom one every year because she persevered through her childhood trauma and her adult trauma to pick up the slack of someone who should have assumed the responsibility of being my father. And every year I say it, she is grateful for the acknowledgment and humbled by the recognition of her 24+ years worth of double duty.

Captain Marvel (Part II): Feminist-Adjacent Themes Galore

This is the second part of my review of Captain Marvel, I encourage you to read the first part before reading this second part: Captain Marvel (Part I): The Role Model We Need. The first post dealt with the issues that most people see as implicating feminism, such as sexism in the military, getting back up after getting knocked down, and my personal favorite, women being too emotional. This post discusses issues that, while not necessarily implicating feminism at first glance, are clearly a part of feminism, such as creating your own family, first impressions, and how we as a society and as individuals treat refugees.

A SPOLIER ALERT IS NOW IN EFFECT. If you have not seen Captain Marvel, this serves as a warning that spoilers lie ahead.

One of the themes that the film tackles is creating your own family. The movie depicts Carol as this headstrong, emotional, courageous woman, from her childhood into adulthood. Her father did not like Carol's recklessness, and he seemed to almost forbid her from behaving like that. Dialogue and plot suggest that Carol had left her father, and started a new family with Maria. Maria is a single mother raising a daughter that Carol affectionately called "Lieutenant Danger". Maria was also in the Airforce and worked closely with Carol, becoming her best friend. Numerous pictures show them spending holidays together as a family unit, and Maria's daughter even refers to Carol as "Auntie Carol". A huge part of trying to defy gender expectations is having people leave your life that do not support your choice to live as your authentic self. It was great to see a new family form, and one that seemed supportive and genuinely happy. Such families are not often portrayed, and when they are portrayed, the depictions are seldom happy.

Next, first impressions drove the entire plotline of the film. Throughout the first half of the movie, we are led to believe that the Kree, a society led by an artificial intelligence (AI) and one that Carol is initially a part of, are trying to protect planets from the Skrull. The viewer is led to believe that the Skrull are the ones attaching the Kree. However, in a Pride and Prejudice-esq twist, we learn halfway through the movie that the Kree is not just an empire, but colonial in nature. Further, we learn and that the Skrull refused to submit to their rule. Because of this, the Kree essentially destroyed the Skrulls’ home planet. The Skrulls that are left are scattered throughout the galaxy and are all refugees. Thus, Carol is forced to question everything she believed, and makes the tough decision to help the Skrull.

While this may not seem directly related to feminism, I believe it very much is. Most feminist theories are based on the presumption that we should question societal norms and attitudes, especially in terms of power structures. For as far back as she can remember, Carol has believed that the Skrulls were not refugees, but rather were terrorists and aggressors. She had to re-evaluate everything she knew about the Skrulls and the Kree while choosing which side to take. In doing so, Carol shows a great example of how to be a proper feminist and how to be a good ally to marginalized groups.
Because Carol's re-evaluation is what we ask feminism and feminist to do every day. We ask everyone to re-evaluate societal norms and perceptions and ask why those norms are in place and whether they are just and correct. Feminism as movement has done the same as well. Originally focused on getting upper- and middle-class white women rights while using rather reductive and racist talking points, feminism was not all that inclusive. Bell Hooks accuses the movement of not being completely honest with itself, its origins or its focus, and encourages it to continue to reevaluate itself. And I believe the movement has continued to do so, becoming more and more inclusive towards all women, regardless of race, sexual orientation, economic status, and many other factors. That being said, this inner reflection needs to continue to ensure that all women are heard and are having their rights fought for.

Finally, the film asks us to re-evaluate the way we see refugees. The Skrull themselves are shapeshifters, and their forms, while not ugly, are also not aesthetically pleasing. The Kree tend to look more human. This symbolism is not lost on the audience. We were told the Skrull were bad, that they change their shape to assimilate into the population, and then they take over the planet. Because the Skrull look bad, the audience is more susceptible to believing the narrative the Kree give about the Skrull's actions. This is extremely relevant today when talking about refugees and the politics surrounding those seeking asylum, or even those seeking to immigrate into our country. They often just want to find a safe place to live and be accepted into their new society. And, just like the Skrull, most, if not all, refugees pose no great threat to society or those in the society unless they are threatened. It was great to see this portrayed in such a nuanced and non-preachy way.

Again, not all would see this as a facially or explicitly feminist message, but I see feminist thinking in it. The Skrull are just trying to live their lives as best they can, and they ask Carol to judge them based on their actions, and not on stereotypes or narratives she has heard about them. Most feminists want the same thing; they want to be judged on their actions, and not on the basis of stereotypes based on their sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic a person cannot change.

Overall, I loved the movie because it embedded so many themes in such a great story, all while managing to not get preachy about it. There were probably a couple other overt themes I did not explore in Part I or here, I encourage you to leave a comment on other themes you saw in the movie as well!

Captain Marvel (Part I): The Role Model We Need

I recently watched Captain Marvel. Going into the movie, I had low expectations. The reviews had not been great. And although I was excited to see a woman in the leading role of a super hero movie, I also was getting bored of the almost exclusively white genre. So, with mixed emotions, I entered the movie theater.

A SPOLIER ALERT IS NOW IN EFFECT. If you have not seen Captain Marvel, this serves as a warning that spoilers lie ahead.

Boy, was I thrilled with the movie. It touched on so many different issues, all important in feminist theory. And even though it was set in the '90s, it tackled issues that are still relevant and, indeed, hot topics today. Because it tackled so many amazing themes, I will write two separate posts about "Captain Marvel". This post will deal with the issues that most people see as implicating feminism, such as sexism in the military, getting back up after getting knocked down, and my personal favorite, women being too emotional. The second post will deal with issues that, while not necessarily implicating feminism at first glance, are clearly a part of feminism, such as creating your own family, first impressions, and how we as a society and as individuals treat refugees.

First, the movies portrayal of women in the military was brief, but excellently done. The movie did not try to sugarcoat any of the history of the military and its treatment of women, including women of color. It specifically stated and showed that both Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) and Maria Rambeau, a woman of color and Carol's best friend, were not allowed to fly in combat because they are female. It was also heavily implied that Maria Rambeau, a black woman, had a much harder time getting any flying time, but that Carol kept supporting her, and Maria kept supporting Carol. This type of portrayal is just as important now as it was then. With the high level of sexual violence in the military-and given that it is still considered a boy’s club-it was amazing to see two strong women support each other and learn to thrive an environment that is hostile towards women.

The next major theme I noticed was getting back up after being knocked down. In the film, and throughout her life, there were numerous times where someone or something knocked Carol down. The Kree AI, one of the main antagonists in the movie, when trying to break Carol, remind her of all the times she has fallen down. The Kree AI tries to show her how flawed and week she is. And the Kree AI stop the memory right there. And for a minute, we see Carol believe it. But then she remembers what happens after all those times she fell. She gets up. With no tears, with no sign of pain, with no hesitation, she gets up. She does not consider her falling a flaw, because every time she fell, she got back up, stronger and more determined than ever. While most Marvel movies push this (Black Panther being the other clear example), this was by far the clearest message of it in any superhero movie thus far. To fall is human. We are imperfect beings. It is not how we fall, but how we choose to get back up. It is not our flaws or are mistakes that define us, it is how we learn and grow from them. This message was so well done, and it was great to see it being done through the lens of a smart, strong, courageous woman for once.

The last theme, and my personal favorite theme in the movie, is the stereotype of women being too emotional. Two scenes on this theme come to mind. Both involve Carol and Yon-Rog, her captain who is portrayed by Jude Law. In the beginning, Carol and Yon-Rog are training together. Yon-Rog tells Carol that she can never best him because she is too emotional, so she cannot think clearly. This was a clear use of the trope "women are too emotional to think rationally." And Yon-Rog said this while Carol was being no more emotive than an average person, male or female, in a hand-to-hand combat situation. And while the scene itself is not significant, it sets up second scene perfectly. At the end of the movie, Carol has clearly won, and Yon-Rog has lost. Knowing that he cannot beat her if she uses her powers, he tries to bait her. He says that she never was able to beat him at hand-to-hand combat, and because of that, she will never know true victory until she does. Yon-Rog wants her to fight him using only hand-to-hand combat because he knows he can beat her, but if she uses her powers, he would not stand a chance. Carol's response: she uses her powers to blast him hundreds  yards across the desert, flies over to him and pronounces "I have nothing to prove to you."

Yon-Rog tried to rely on Carol being "overly emotional" to win the argument. The issue: Carol was never "overly emotional." Having feelings and showing them does not make you overly emotional, at least not in the way that Yon-Rog thought Carol was. Carol cared about people, but her instincts to protect those and serve the greater good were always there. And in that moment, she was thinking logically. She may have or may not have been able to beat Yon-Rog in hand-to-hand combat, but she did not need to risk those odds. She was infinitely more powerful than him, so why risk it? These two scenes turn the emotional female trope on its head; they show that just because you care about people, does not mean that you are overly emotional.

Overall, "Captain Marvel"was a fantastic movie with a lot of positive messages, and I would highly recommend the movie for those seeking strong female representation.

Built-in bathroom bias

The patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in our lives that it has followed us to our bathrooms.

When architects design and create separate bathrooms for men and women, they include features in each bathroom that account for sex. For example, the women’s restroom typically includes a tampon and pad dispenser, and the men’s restroom typically includes urinals. Interestingly, one design feature that does not account for sex but appears in women’s restrooms and is missing in men’s restrooms is a diaper changing table. Diaper changing tables are supposed to provide parents and guardians a safe and hygienic place to change their baby's diaper, yet these tables are – more often than not – accessible to only one sex.

This disparity came to the national forefront when Donte Palmer's picture of himself changing his son’s diaper went viral. Faced without a diaper changing station, Palmer squatted on the floor of the men's restroom to change his son's diaper. This phenomenon is not uncommon as a number of fathers reported to changing their child's diaper in a restroom sink or directly on the floor because a diaper changing table was not accessible to them. Not only does this design choice and/or oversight not serve single fathers and gay parents, but it denies fathers the ability to serve as fully engaged partners when it comes to performing a basic parental function in a public setting.

In response to the picture, Palmer stated that “[i]n society, we have this thing where men are supposed to be macho providers and protectors, while women are the nurturing and caring ones. I'm trying to shred that.” Palmer’s sentiment reflects how this seemingly innocent design choice and/or oversight feeds into gender inequality by reinforcing traditional gender roles.

As explained by the separate spheres doctrine, these traditional gender roles involve women primarily serving as their family’s caretaker and homemaker. Conversely, men are considered to serve as their family's breadwinner. In relation to the design choice and/or oversight to include diaper changing tables in women’s bathrooms, women have been relegated to diaper duty, while their “breadwinner” husbands have been relieved of such responsibility.

This antiquated separate spheres notion does not account for the fact that domestic responsibilities have shifted dramatically in the past few decades. According to a Pew Research Center study, men were found to spend more time with their child (almost three times more!) in 2016 compared to 1965. Further, women "constitute fully half of the American workforce and serve as breadwinners for [forty] percent of households."

Yet, while these statistics illustrate that domestic responsibilities have shifted, our patriarchal institutions still expect women to be relegated to the role of “caretaker” – especially when it comes to childcare. As a previous blogger on this forum has noted, this phenomenon is known as the “second shift” where “[e]ven though today’s women spend more time in the paid economy, they are still expected to complete most of the domestic responsibilities and chores.”

Many thought-pieces have noted that one solution to tackling the second shift phenomenon would involve co-parenting where responsibilities are divided and shared equally between domestic partners.

Shared parenting has been long-championed as a vital element of gender equality in two-parent families, and is now emerging as equally important for separated and divorced families. It is neither desirable nor viable that mothers work a “double shift” as full-time wage earners and parents; fathers’ assumption of responsibility to share the care of children in dual-earner households in particular is an important concern of women.

In light of this solution, I hope to engage in this form of co-parenting where domestic responsibilities are divided equally with my future partner. But how can I ensure that these responsibilities are truly divided equally when public spheres design roadblocks that reinforce into gender inequality?

Luckily, progress has been created towards achieving "potty parity". In 2016, President Barack Obama signed the Bathrooms Accessible in Every Situation ("BABIES") Act into law. This Act requires federal buildings to install baby changing tables in both men's and women's restrooms. California followed suit in 2017 with Assembly Bill 1127. This law requires "baby diaper changing stations to be installed in men's and women's restrooms in publicly owned state and local buildings and private businesses." Most recently, New York enacted a law that requires "all new and renovated buildings with public bathrooms to include changing tables in men's restrooms."

While these laws have been a step in the right direction towards tackling gender inequality and stereotypes, their impact has been stymied by slow compliance. This, coupled with the fact that few states have enacted similar laws, means we are still far from eliminating the disparity.

If national, statewide, and local change has been slow, we can still achieve "potty parity" on an individual level. To do so, we should recruit our male allies who come across public and private facilities that lack diaper changing tables to speak to managers to remedy this exclusion. Hopefully these private complaints can build into a movement where we begin dismantling the patriarchy one diaper changing station at a time.

Denying women credit for their critical roles in military combat

In part because I have a step son in the military, and in part because women's proper role in the military has been a subject of great controversy over the years, I took special note of this story in yesterday's New York Times,   Her Title:  Cryptologic Technician.  Her Occupation:  Warrior.   Richard A Oppel, Jr. reports on the life and death of 35-year-old Shannon Kent, who was killed a few weeks ago in a suicide bombing in northern Syria.  Oppel writes that Kent, officially a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, wore body armor and carried an M4 rifle and a Sig Sauer pistol when she was on patrol with special forces like the Navy SEALS.  Oppel's point: "for many years women have been doing military jobs as dangerous, secretive and specialized as anything men do."

Oppel quotes extensively Shannon Kent's husband, recently retired after a 20-year career with the Green Berets: 

She’d tell me, ‘You can say what you do in two words, but I have to explain over and over to people what I do, and half of them don’t believe me.’  ... As the years went on, she wished she could just say, ‘Hey, I’m Joe, and I’m a Green Beret.’

In many ways, she did way more than any of us who have a funny green hat.

* * *  

Her job was to go out and blend her knowledge of cryptology and sigint [signals intelligence] and humint [human intelligence] to help the task force find the right guys to paint the ‘X’ on for a strike or a raid.

She understood how all the pieces came together. She wasn’t just relying on local informants. She knew how to fill in the gaps through her knowledge of different intelligence capabilities. She was kind of a one-stop-shop for finding bad guys.

Kent spoke half a dozen Arabic dialects and four other languages.  Kent was also a mom; she leaves behind two children, ages 3 and 18 months. 

Women like Shannon Kent certainly challenge the image of women as the inferior sex, as somehow less capable than men.  She also challenges gender stereotypes that would consign women to domestic roles.  Lastly, they remind us that women often don't get their due--they don't get full credit for their contributions, including the risks they take.  The story leaves me wondering, among other things, how much a Chief Petty Officer earns, compared to a Navy SEAL.  Is Kent's death benefit any less than the other military personnel who died alongside her in that suicide bombing?

Don't miss prior posts under the military label, most on the very topic of women being excluded from combat roles and/or not getting credit for effectively performing those roles.

The "Motherhood Penalty"

Because of the normative conceptions of what a “normal” family looks like and what a “normal” mother is (e.g. SNAF-encoded households), women are faced with a two-fold set of obstacles that inhibit them from reducing the wage disparity between men and women. The first obstacle is the unequal distribution of labor within the private sphere, which burdens mothers with a disproportionate amount of household chores (the “second shift”). The second obstacle is the culturally perceived tension between what it means to be an “ideal worker” and what it means to be an “ideal mother” (the “motherhood penalty”).

As stated by Dorothy Edith Smith in The Standard North American Family: SNAF as an Ideological Code, SNAF is a normative conception of the family as a legally married couple sharing a household. Within this household there are distinctive roles for both the adult male and adult female. The male participates in paid employment to fulfill his role as the primary breadwinner of the family, whereas the female may or may not participate in paid labor.

Under the ideological code of SNAF, it is not necessary for the female to make income, because her primary responsibility is to take care of the husband, child, and household. As such, her potential income is merely viewed as supplementary.

As a result, women who take work outside their household duties are not viewed as standard, and are considered to be deviating from the normal structure of the nuclear family. Because of the primary identification of women as mothers and being primarily concerned with the rearing of children, the burden of caring for the child is placed entirely upon the mother.

Additionally, a mothers formal identification with caretaker often times lead into their decision to not pursue professional careers, which directly contributes to the unequal pay between men and women. The most frustrating aspect of this dilemma is that women feel the need to choose between either marriage or work, whereas men operate under the assumption that they can have both. Namely, because they do not have to be burdened with the household affairs

Shelley J. Correll in Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty, argues that in addition to workplace discrimination based on sex, mothers face an additional penalty because of their status characteristic as mothers, called the “motherhood penalty”. This occurs because the salient feature of “motherhood” is a devalued status characteristic in the eyes of prospective employers, due to the perceived tension between the normative conceptions of “ideal mother” and “ideal worker”. What it means to be an “ideal worker” is the ability to devote endless amounts of hours to one's work, whereas what it means to be an “ideal mother” is to devote oneself entirely to her family and children.

Accordingly, in the eyes of employers, mothers are not ideal candidates for employment and are discriminated against for their status as a mother. When evaluating a candidate, Correll argues that employers judge “performance capacity” upon two criteria: competence (ability) and effort (commitment). Mothers are viewed as lacking in both criteria due to the aforementioned conceptions of mothers.

Structuring her experiment around these ideas, Correll’s lab experiment showed that when all other status characteristics were held constant, (e.g. race, class, gender) whereas “motherhood” was made salient, the results confirmed the hypothesis of the motherhood penalty. Mothers as opposed to non-mothers were hired at a lower rate, were offered lower starting salaries, and were also less likely to be considered for promotion. Also, in support of the SNAF-encoded nuclear family, fathers were offered a higher initial salary as opposed to non-fathers, probably because of the belief that fathers should be the primary bread winners and support the family financially.

Thus, we can see how the cultural beliefs of the normal family serves as an obstacle in the fight against unequal wage distribution between men and women. Primarily by i) restricting women from participating in the workplace because of being overburdened with work in the household and ii) facing real and material consequences for being labeled as mothers.

Airing Ireland's dirty linen

Moving to America has made me realise how proud I am to be Irish. While my migration to Davis was inherently daunting, the fear and uncertainty about being so far away from home has been tempered by the genuine warmth of those who detect even the slightest hint of my accent. In many ways, it has helped me combat the sense of feeling like an outsider.

While I consider it a privilege that the utterance of my nationality enjoys a largely positive reception, my absence from Ireland has imparted on me a large deal of objectivity in it’s assessment, particularly from a feminist perspective. The reality is, although I’m proud of certain facets of my Irish identity, as a woman I’m also deeply embarrassed by it.

Earlier last week, a New York Time’s video titled ‘The lost children of Tuam’ circulated my Facebook newsfeed. This deeply poignant video documents the discovery, and subsequent cover up of a mass burial chamber, where the remains of at least 796 ‘illegitimate’ children and infants were dumped by the Bon Secours sisters in an act of what can only be described as pure sacrilege. You see, the Republic of Ireland, since its nascence in the early 20th Century, has been ensnared and indoctrinated by the Catholic Church. The result? The systemic enslavement and abuse of thousands of unmarried mothers in ‘mother and baby homes’, otherwise known as Magdalene Laundries, which were run by four religious orders of the Catholic Church and covertly financed by the Irish State.

The Magdalene Laundries have left a gaping wound across the social and political landscape of modern Ireland. Often referred to as Magdalene Asylums, they appeared on the surface to be institutions where women were expected to work in a laundry in return for bed, board and atonement for their sins. Behind this façade a different story. The nuns that ran these laundries quietly profited off washing the linen of local wealthy families while at the same time physically, emotionally and spiritually abusing these women.

They functioned as institutions for ‘fallen women’, so firmly believed to be in the clutches of depravity for daring to, or having the misfortune of becoming pregnant outside of marriage. With contraception only barely being legalised in Ireland in 1980 (another string of society the master puppeteer Church controlled), accidental pregnancies, not to mention pregnancies arising from the abhorrent acts of rape and incest, were almost inevitable. Among these “fallen women” were sufferers of mental health illnesses as well as women with petty criminal convictions, however the vast majority of those enslaved were unmarried mothers averaging at the tender age of 23.

The short film gives a voice to some of the survivors of this particular mother and baby home in Tuam. One man painfully detailed that when his mother had gotten pregnant outside of marriage “the priest in the parish got to hear about it and told her parents that it was an awful disgrace. That she couldn’t be seen out because she’d be a bad influence”. I assure you, this was not an isolated incident. We have to remember that practically until the turn of the 21st Century, the Catholic Church ruled supreme in Ireland. A priest paying attention to a particular person or a particular family was akin to God himself sitting down with you for tea. This monopoly on society meant that a priest telling a family how disgraceful their daughter was would often garner a visceral reaction of shame and disgust, resulting in their ‘beloved’ daughter being coerced into a mother and baby home in order to escape the toxic scrutiny of the insular Irish society. Almost always the families were told the same lie; “the nuns would look after her there”.

While the government closed this particular mother and baby home in Tuam in 1961, it continued to operate similar homes across the country right up until 1996. I wouldn’t have enough space in this post to fully detail the abuses women faced at the hands of the supposedly ‘trusted’ clergy, however at least 23,000 unmarried women were put in these homes and forced to give up their infants. Whether they were starved, neglected, left to fester in their own waste, smothered, beaten or illegally bartered off to rich American families, their children were most brutally punished for being the fruits of a perceived union of ‘sin’. They were punished for the innocence of their mere existence.

I was born a year after the last laundry was shut. However, growing up in a supposed ‘post-laundry’ landscape doesn’t rid the horrors from Irish memories or consciences. In 2013, our former Taoiseach Enda Kenny was moved to tears in the Dáil while issuing a formal apology to all women whose suffering had long gone unnoticed. This apology was accompanied by a plan to provide reparations to the few remaining survivors of the laundries, with the Church so piously refusing to contribute.  However, it was not until February 2017 that the mass grave in Tuam was addressed by Kenny in the Dáil;

“No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns' care. We gave them up maybe to spare them the savagery of gossip, the wink and the elbow language of delight in which the holier than thous were particularly fluent.... Indeed for a while it seems as if in Ireland our women had the amazing capacity to self impregnate”.

While State-issued apologies can do little more than affirm an injustice was committed, I struggle with the fact that my country propagated such a disgraceful, inhumane treatment of women merely because society deemed them to have "fallen". It’s a topic I can do little justice to in a blog post other than highlight its existence. However, to end almost where I began, in times such as these when I find myself marooned from home undergoing bouts of homesickness, I can’t neglect this. As a feminist, my national pride is wholly eclipsed by the embarrassment flowing from my country’s acts against women, and no number of Americans warmly telling me what percentage Irish heritage they are will ever override that embarrassment.

The feminists in our own lives

In last week’s Feminist Legal Theory class we had the opportunity to watch an episode of PBS’ Makers, a documentary film about the revolutionary women’s movement that blossomed and swept through American culture in the 1960’s and 70’s. As we watched the women onscreen, my thoughts naturally turned to the women in my own family. My mother and my aunts were born in the 1950's and came of age in the era of the National Organization for Women and the women’s liberation movement, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. While I was familiar with the general contours of the feminist movement, I had never taken the opportunity to ask my family members about their experiences growing up during this time period and how these greater cultural and political changes affected their own lives.

My mother (Deb) and my aunt (LuAnn) were kind enough to spend an hour on the phone with me and let me pepper them with questions about their memories of the prominent figures and organizations within the movement. How much did they remember? Did they ever read TheFeminine Mystique? How many bras did they burn? While the specifics were foggy (and, sadly, no bras were burned), both my mom and my aunt were cognizant of the feminist movement. My aunt told me that while she didn’t really understand the movement’s significance at the time, she did feel inspired by it and wanted to learn more about it. Both my mom and my aunt expressed feeling somewhat removed from the greater women’s movement, perhaps an effect of growing up in rural, Catholic East Moline, IL.

While the totems and highlights of the feminist movement don’t loom large in my mom and aunt’s memories, the women in their own family did. They told me stories about their grandmother, who drove the family car since grandfather never learned how to drive. They told me about their own mother, sort of a legendary figure on my mom’s side of the family. Lucille Petersmith was a powerhouse. She worked, like many residents of East Moline, for John Deere, and was the only woman working as a loan manager for the John Deere Credit Union. While she was respected for her business acumen and had a reputation for treating customers with dignity and professionalism, she still experienced sexism in the workplace, not only from men but from other women as well. Both my mom and aunt said that Lucille was known for speaking her mind, standing up for herself and others, and piping up when she saw something that “just wasn’t right.” My mom and aunt carried Lucille’s values and attitude of fearlessness as they started in their own careers.

The most eye-opening parts of our conversation pertained to the sexism my mom and aunt experienced in the professional spheres. My mother moved from the Midwest to California in her twenties. Her first job after college was working at Pacific Gas and Electric. Despite being in a more “progressive” locale, my mom was surprised to find she was still expected to adhere to a strict dress code… skirt suits and dresses only—and this was in the 1980’s!

My aunt, like her mother, began working at John Deere and was one of the first women to be promoted to Distribution Service Center supervisor. She was often the only woman in meetings and, as such, she was the “default” note taker. One day having had just about enough, she placed a pen and paper in front of a male colleague and said bluntly “Today it’s your turn to be the scribe.” They didn’t ask her to take notes again. 

Another incident occurred after my aunt became a mother. She had marked her calendar to let coworkers know she would have to leave work to take her son to a doctor’s appointment. Thereafter, a manager assigned her an important report, due the same day as the appointment. Yet this manager was curiously absent from the office when the report was due. The manager had expressly told my aunt that she couldn’t leave the office until the report was submitted; as a result, she missed the doctor’s appointment. The manager returned hours later, at which point my aunt handed him the report and told him she would not be missing another doctor’s appointment. These were only two highlights (or lowlights) out of many slights and hurdles my aunt dealt with as a powerful woman navigating a male-dominated company in a male-dominated industry (agriculture and engineering).  However, my aunt’s take no sh*t attitude and passion for her job served her well… ultimately she retired as manager of the John Deere Pavilion, the most popular tourist destination in Illinois outside of Chicago.

Our conversation eventually segued into a discussion of what it was like to work and raise children. My mother spoke about the stresses of balancing her own career goals with family goals after she and my father moved from San Jose, CA to Auburn, CA. She grappled with the fear of leaving her children for long hours with “strangers” while she made a daily commute to and from Sacramento. She also explained the isolation she felt after moving to a new town, where she lacked the support network necessary to feel comfortable extending herself professionally. Ultimately, while she loved her job, she ended up shifting gears career-wise and went from a supervisory position at a PG&E service center to an office assistant position at my elementary school. She never regretted her decision (and I was a happy child and lucky to have my mother so accessible). Additionally she explained it made sense financially since my dad made more money at the time.

As a hypothetical exercise, I asked “If you made more money than dad at that time, would you and dad have agreed him quitting or taking on a less time-consuming career?” She admitted it was a difficult question, one she wasn’t sure she was able to really answer.

I had two major takeaways from my conversation with my mom and aunt. The first was the importance of cross-generational feminism and the value of having these conversations and sharing common experiences. It’s inspiring to hear about the challenges women in my own family have overcome. It makes me feel like I am part of a larger, more personal feminist story. Furthermore, it feels great to “share notes” and strategies I can deploy in my own life. The other great takeaway I had from this conversation is the importance of recognizing the feminist icons in our own lives. The feminism prevalent in today's pop-culture emphasizes personalities, celebrities, social-media savvy. I do recognize the value of charismatic leaders who can mobilize and advocate for the feminist movement on a more national level, but sometimes the best role models are your own family, friends, and coworkers. After all, while my mom and aunt knew of Gloria Steinem… they attributed their feminist awakenings and journeys to their small-town mom and grandmother. The idea of looking to women in your own life for feminist inspiration isn’t revolutionary, but I can certainly say that the older I get, the more important it feels. I'm grateful I have such strong women in my life who've done this before and can help show me the way.

Reproductive justice, birth justice, and criminal justice

With the help of a recent grant, the University of California, San Francisco collaborated with the Birth Justice Project and Black Women Birthing Justice Collective to form a new nonprofit, the East Bay Community Birth Support Project.

In 2011, UCSF students began providing doula support for pregnant women in the San Francisco County jail through the Birth Justice Project. A doula is an experienced and trained professional who provides continuous emotional and physical support to a mother before, during, and after a birth. Doulas are also able to provide emotional and practical support during a mother's postpartum period. Additionally, birthing communities have shown an increased amount of support for abortion doulas. An abortion doula also provides emotional, physical, and informational support to a pregnant woman, however they support the woman through the process of having an abortion and after the abortion. (For an interesting read on abortion doulas, see My Year as an Abortion Doula).

Through the Birth Justice Project, doulas are able to provide support and companionship to women giving birth at San Fransisco General, the public hospital that treats women from San Francisco County jail. Because of safety concerns and regulations, when incarcerated women go to the hospital to give birth they aren't able to have friends or family visit for more than one hour. Doulas are able to provide consistent companionship and support throughout a labor. Nicole Sata, a co-founder of the Birth Justice Project, said her goal is to provide "loving, respectful and empowered birth and postpartum support to women at San Francisco's jail."

With the help of a 2014 grant from Alameda County's Innovations in Reentry, the East Bay Community Birth Support Project was able to expand their doula services to Santa Rita jail and begin a doula training program for formerly incarcerated women. Innovations in Reentry grants help to support projects that reduce recidivism in Alameda County. By offering doula training programs, the Easy Bay Community Birth Support Project hopes to ease women back into their communities upon release from jail, while also fostering strong relationships with their new babies. Additionally, the women will have a supportive space within the doula community when they are released.

The program in its entirety is a poster child for the reproductive justice movement. Not only does it focus on the intersection of both birth justice and criminal justice, but the program places women of color in positions of power within their own communities.

To date, sixteen women have gone through the doula training program and not one has returned to jail. The program's goal to "give them the skills and self-esteem necessary to earn a living and, if they chose, to further their education and purse other careers, including health care" appears to be successful. The doulas have supported over 60 births and as awareness of the program grows, the demand for their services throughout the Bay Area is ever-increasing.

Recognizing stay-at-home dads to challenge traditional gender roles

As a mother I feel disappointed when I read articles that report statistical findings suggesting that working moms are happier than stay-at-home moms or vice versa.  The first time I came across such a report was in 2012 as I was taking the light rail to work.  At the time, my child was two years old.  As a working mom, I was curious to know who was the happier group, but I couldn’t help wonder why I had not read articles about the happiness of working dads versus stay-at-home dads.  To me the lack of articles about men on the same issue reinforces the traditional notions of women as caregivers without recognizing that in many families men are also primary caregivers. 

Today, at-home dads may represent a small percentage of at-home caretakers, but statistics show more dads are staying at-home to care for their children than ever before.  The Pew Research Center’s 2014 report estimates that more than 16 percent of fathers are at-home caretakers.  Nevertheless, child rearing is still sociologically considered a woman’s role.  This prevailing attitude not only hurts women by reinforcing gender stereotypes, it is also a factor that prevents shifting to a more egalitarian view that it is acceptable for fathers to be caregivers.   

Recently I read Beth Burkstrand-Reid’s, “Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers, and Making the Law Work for Families.” I found her article compelling because she argues that at-home fathers may be subtly reinforcing gendered family notions of breadwinner and caregiver roles instead of subverting these stereotypes.  She based her findings on about 430 news media articles reporting on at-home fathers.  However, I disagree with Burkstrand-Reid’s conclusion that balancing work with family life is not an issue that resonates with men.   

Burkstrand-Reid’s argument is mistaken because it does not account for a recent societal shift in which many fathers are purposely working less and spending more time with their children.  For instance, the Pew Research Center reports that from 1965 to 2011, fathers reduced the number of hours they devoted to paid work from 42 to about 37 and increased the number of hours they devoted to child-care each week from 2.5 to 7.  Furthermore, a survey of 1,023 professionals by Citi and Linkedin reveals that balancing work life with family life is the number one career concern for both men and women.  Thus, to state that the issue of work-family life does not resonate with men is at odds with empirical evidence of today’s trends. 

I  believe Burkstrand-Reid’s argument is further misguided because it conflicts with my own experience where the men in my life have been just as concerned with the issue of balancing work and family life.  Five years ago, my own partner willingly took time off work to care for our son when he was born.  This permitted me to recover and return to part-time work.  My partner’s decision to take an extended work leave was not financially motivated because it was unpaid and actually prevented him from being promoted.  Growing up, my father would take time off when the occasion called for it.  To this day, my godfather takes care of his two little girls while my godmother works as a full-time teacher and spends evenings in a masters program. 

            

Perhaps I am biased from my own personal experience, but the men in my life have demonstrated that they are as concerned as women are about balancing work and family life.  The notion that men are “breadwinners” is quickly becoming outdated as more women are challenging the notion by becoming the breadwinners of their own households.  

Women should have the ability to take on any role they want instead of being restricted by society’s construction of appropriate roles for men and women, especially for fathers and mothers.  Therefore, I believe that for men to take on women’s traditional roles of caregivers, employers should be more accepting and encouraging of male employees who take family leave.  It is not enough that men and women alone take the initiative to defy traditional gender roles.  After all, employers can be highly influential in shaping employees’ beliefs about what is acceptable in the workplace.

Changing Katherine’s perspective: the anti-motherhood mindset in the United States workplace

Employers and employees in the United States workforce place high value on "masculine qualities," and correspondingly less value on "feminine qualities" like caretaking and motherhood. It's not only men who devalue employees with familial obligations. Women can be equally judgmental on this score.

A recent Fortune.com article illustrated this point. Katherine, a former executive, described her mindset as highly judgmental and unaccepting of her coworkers with children. She would question the commitment of mothers who couldn't make last minute happy hours with her work team, and she even supported the idea of firing another woman before she became pregnant, because she believed mothers were less committed to their employer. In her article she stated:

For mothers in the workplace, it’s death by a thousand cuts – and sometimes it’s other women holding the knives. I didn’t realize this – or how horrible I’d been – until five years later, when I gave birth to a daughter of my own.

Katherine underwent an awakening after having a child. She wrote this article to apologize to all the women that she judged for having caretaking responsibilities. When I read her article, I thought it was great that Katherine finally valued the obligations that come with being a mother.

However, I found myself wondering if Katherine would have changed her attitude if she hadn’t given birth. Stated another way, how can men and childless women with mindsets similar to Katherine's reach this place of understanding without going through a similar awakening? Does the awakening have to be because of one's own parenthood? The mindset continually perpetuated—commitment to the employer over caretaking—needs to change in order to stop pushing mothers out of the U.S. workforce.

The need for this change is not only apparent from anecdotes. The White House recently released the 2015 Economic Report of the President. The report discussed prime-age female labor participation rates between 1991 and 2013. In the early 1990s, the United States ranked 7th out of 24 OECD countries for female participation rates; well above average. Since then, U.S. female participation rates have plateaued and drifted downward.

While the downturn in labor participation among females is unsettling, the decline is worse when compared to participation rates in other high-income countries. In other OECD countries, female labor participation rates have continued to rise since the 1990s, demoting the U.S. to number 19 out of OECD countries for the statistic. The White House report primarily attributes the rise in other countries to the expansion of leave.

When it comes to maternity leave, the United States is not only an outlier among its peers, but also amongst most countries in the world. In a study of 185 countries by the International Labour Office, the United States and Papa New Guinea were the only two countries that did not legally require paid maternity leave. The report found that while 12% of private sector workers in the U.S. have access to paid family leave, only 5% of low-income workers currently have access to the entitlement. 

Paid Maternity Leave Around the World
Country	Weeks of Paid Maternity Leave
Australia	18 weeks
Azerbaijan	165 weeks
Germany	57 weeks
Honduras	8 weeks
Japan	58 weeks
North Korea	11 weeks
Qatar	7 weeks
Russia	78 weeks
Sudan	8 weeks
United Kingdom	39 weeks
United States	0 weeks
Source: Buzzfeed

Is the United States stuck in the past because there are too many Katherines in political office and in the workforce? I think so. The overwhelming majority of countries in the world have mandated paid maternity leave, because they value caretaking as a public good necessary to protect the economic and physical wellbeing of women and children. It's rather pathetic that the most powerful nation in the world has yet to recognize the value of motherhood and caretaking through a Federal law requiring a minimum period of paid maternity leave. It's time for the United States to take note of the leave practices in 183 other countries around the world, and initiate systematic change here. For a discussion of maternity leave practices in Switzerland compared with the United States, read Child Cost (Part 1): Maternity Leave.

Child Cost (Part 2): Parental Leave

As great as I think the system of maternity leave is, it is not yet fully satisfying and it could be improved by a parental leave system.

A paid parental leave is a set amount of time that two parents can allocate between themselves after the birth of a child. One of the downsides, but also one of the strengths of the parental leave, is precisely that it will be based on the choice of the parents. The mother, the father, or both, can take the leave, simultaneously or not. For instance, if there is a parental leave of 6 months, the mother and the father can take 3 months each. They also can decide that the mother will take 5 months and the father one month or that only one of them will stay with the baby during the entire leave.

Single mothers can take the whole leave. And families that want to live in a traditional way where the woman take all of the leave can still do it.

There are two principal reasons why I advocate establishing such a parental leave.

First, women are still doing much more than men in the matter of household chores in the family. However, young couples seem to have a more egalitarian distribution of the tasks; a lot of things change at the arrival of a baby. By establishing a link between father and children as soon as possible, the father should naturally become more involved in child care going forward.

As women carry all the burden of child caring, we could find some more radical means to make men involved in it (for instance, a mandatory paternity leave). Parental leave is actually not one of these radical means, because it is a soft measure. More and more men nowadays want to be involved in the care and education of their children. Parental leave that is not mandatory for men, will simply let the possibility for some fathers to access that.

The second point I want to talk about is linked to a characteristic of women. But before I go on, let me say that “Cultural Feminism” does not convince me, simply because most of the time, as I am reading characteristics that women are supposed to have, I do not see them in my own personality. Furthermore, I find them in a lot of my male friends’ personalities. Neither I think that biology has such still a huge impact in every aspects of life. However, some biological characteristics should be taken into account, and the recovering need of the body after delivery is one of them.

A friend of mine, a medical school graduate, told me about his experience as a volunteer in Guinea. After giving birth, women there must rest. They focus in feeding the baby and resting in order for their body to recover. Other members of the family (generally mother, grandmother, sisters) assume most part of the care given to the children, except feeding. In our occidental society, the presence of other members of the family is rarer nowadays. But physical tiredness still exists. In this sense, and in order to compensate the absence of other members of the family, the involvement of the father could really help during the first days following birth, a stressful and difficult period even when there is no post partum depression.

I also found a significant number of articles mentioning researches that demonstrate the benefits of the mother-newborn relationship at the beginning of their lives. I am pretty sure that the father-child relationship has some great benefits, too, at least the one to build a strong link between them that will lead to more implication of fathers in matters of child caring.

However the support of the father could be important in the first days after birth, most of the couples will try to optimize their leave. They will generally not take the leave in the same time, in order for the child to spend longer time with one of the parent.

Moreover, the choice of the parents will actually not be a true one, because it is linked with other aspects. Indeed, money will be most of the time a decisive factor. As women’s salaries are still not equal to men’s salaries everything else being equal, neither the assessment of “typically” feminine jobs, the decision will probably be made by the couple relatively to the higher salary. So it may not help as well as a more coercive measure, but it will at least let men who consider paternity as something important and valuable to be a part of child care and rearing.

Parental paid leave may be considered as a feature of formal equality, in the sense that the law will show that there is no reason to treat men and women in a different way. As a measure that can be considered as tending to formal equality, it could be addressed the same reproach than previously, namely that women are fighting for men to benefit from some advantages which only women had. But from my point of view, it will benefit women and children, also, even if it’s in an indirect way.

Moreover, I find it deeply fair that men have the same right as women to take care of their children, because as most of the feminists, my goal is to reach equality among human beings. At the end, everybody wins from this improvement, children, men and women. And I hope that at the time of a pregnancy, my family could benefit from such a system.