Working Moms

The desire to stay at home to raise the kids, to cook and clean, and to be a good wife has never appealed to me. Needless to say, I judged any friend or family member who decided to “waste” their education and careers to become stay-at-home moms. My friend recently told me that she was no longer applying to medical school because her fiancé was recently accepted into a medical program and “they” decided that it would be best for one of them to stay home and raise their children. I nearly fainted (they don’t even have children). Couldn’t she balance being a mom and having a career? Isn’t that what women of the 21^st century do?

Of course, it is easy for me to say that balancing a family and a career would be an easy task. My mom made it seem easy. She worked full time as a social worker. But she was always there in the morning to wake me up and always there in the evening to tuck me in. She attended every school play and back-to-school event, and she helped me build every science project. Needless to say, I assumed it was normal for a woman to have a career and have a family. (But I really don’t know anything about balancing a career and being a mother.) Until recently, I hadn’t had the opportunity to appreciate the difficulties that come with being a working mom.

This summer I had the privilege to work with a solo practitioner. She is assertive, eloquent, respected, capable, and great at her job. She graduated at the top of her law school class and now owns her own law firm. She is respected amongst her colleagues and is often asked to talk on radio shows to discuss emerging issues in her field. Although she is busy, because her office is close to her family’s home, she frequently sees her children either by driving them to and from school or them spending time in the office. She is able to balance a high-pressured career and have a family. At least it seems on the surface.

One day, after a busy but successful day in court, I asked her what is one thing that she knows now that she wish she had known before becoming an attorney. Her response, “I wish I didn’t go to law school. I wish I was a stay-at-home mom.” At first her response didn’t shock me. Grass is always greener on the other side. But as I let the words sink in, I thought to myself: Why do I think being a stay-at-home mom is such a bad idea?

The role of a woman has changed drastically over the last few generations. When my mom first applied to graduate school my grandmother cried for a week and asked if she would ever get married (which also could be because of cultural differences). But when I applied to law school, my grandmother told me to finish school first, then “talk” to guys. My grandmother has clearly made a dramatic shift, and she does represents the change and belief that women are and should be educated and valued highly.

We are educated. We work hard. We can do and be anything we want. But if this is true, why do I have a negative stigma with being a stay-at-home mother? Does being a modern day woman mean you cannot or should not take on roles that have traditional been viewed for women? The simple answer is to cut off all gender related roles, but how can we do that if we ourselves hold on to them?

The N-word vs. the B-word.

At the height of the 2008 presidential elections, a recurring debate I came across on many of my bookmarked, tongue-in-cheek, Huffington Post-esque political blogs was the pressing question of whether or not this country was more racist, aka if you were anti-Obama, or more sexist, aka if you were anti-Clinton. I began contemplating this ad nauseum. That contemplation bled into my everyday observations and resulted in me being hyper-aware of how I reacted to comments that may have been tinged with covert (or overt) racism or sexism.

I noticed when I had blood-curdling moments of anger if a racist slur was used in casual conversation, if white privilege was apparent when people spoke to me, or if someone was just blatantly ignorant about my culture, without any desire or genuine curiosity to learn or care. Then I made note of every instance where male chauvinistic behavior was displayed amongst my male friends – whether it was completely in good fun or meant remotely seriously, if obviously misogynistic males were making inappropriate comments about my skirt, my shoes, or my makeup. With our law school’s OCI program in full swing, the best example I can conjure up to succinctly articulate all of this was this: if an objectively attractive male friend of mine was hired over a Plain-Jane looking girlfriend of mine, I would not be as offended. If that same male friend was an Anglo-Saxon white guy and the girl was of Middle Eastern descent . . . it would garner a much more passionate reaction from me.

The general consensus that seems to be out there is that racism is more offensive than sexism. But if so, the pressing question is: why?

Both race and gender are stemmed with their respectively oppressive history. Both aspects are pressing issues in this day and age still, because they are rooted in serious issues of inequality and disproportionate justice in the way different people are treated because of their anatomical structure or because of their ethnic makeup. If you call someone Black the N-word or an Asian person “Oriental,” you are essentially dehumanizing them, marking them as inferior to the rest of humanity, and namely you. There is no doubt about the fact that racism is wrong. Because at the very core of it, the injustice lies in the fact that they are being viewed as an unequal based on an inherent quality of theirs.

But, the same is definitely said about sexism. When you call a female the B-word, you’re essentially chalking them up to the same level as a dog. In other words, the word is, by definition, dehumanizing as well. When males instinctively assume they have a one-up over a female when it comes to applying for jobs, schmoozing at the bar with a female bartender, or in offering to help move a heavy box for a girl in a way that suggests that you instantly assume they don’t want to, on top of being incapable of such, and not just because of their biological makeup that lends to a more fragile bone structure and/or physical build. The latter is often not even really considered so much as the whole “damsel-in-distress” image conjured up from the get-go when it comes to certain males.

In all of the situations described above, and if you brought them up with me hypothetically, I would obviously adamantly agree that they are all offensive to me, as a female of color. But I know that realistically, if they were to play out, the racist scenarios would speak to me much more personally. Why is this? Does societal influence or the fact that sexism is a much more universally accepted prejudice have anything to do with it? Are the radical feminists working on what is a dulled-out injustice that is tapering off or just falling by the wayside? Or is it something else altogether than I’m missing?

A Letter To My Fellow Women

"I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves." - Mary Wollstonecraft

Dear Ladies,

I write to you tonight to ask you to join me in a movement, to come together, empower each other, and agree on a set of goals to establish a permanent equality for ourselves and for our children. Our unity is needed to implement great change.

Let us agree to be supporters of one another. Members of a single team. Let us help each other become masters of ourselves. Let us never tear each other down, in secret or in public. Let us stand up for one another, and never expose each other. Let us evolve, and laugh, and create, and explore. Let us love each other completely for our common responsibility.

Let us not be fooled by our cultures, our religions, the media, our families claiming our place is in the home, inferior to that of a man's. Let us never lose sight that women are equal to men. Let us remind each other of our strengths, of our intelligence, of our talents, of our creativity, of our progressiveness. Let us work together to prevent men from believing we are nothing more than their sexual playthings, and let us never be the ones to promote this illusion.

Let us change society's rigid rules by not changing our last names, or by showing the world our loud sense of humor, or having our men be stay-at-home-dads. Let us change the channel on the radio when we hear a song that is degrading to women and let us speak up and defend each other if someone tries to put one of us down.

Lets work harder in our education and our careers to show ourselves and our men that we can do anything a man can do. Let us raise our daughters to believe they can and should pursue any career they desire. Professor, doctor, judge, teacher, writer, athlete, engineer. Let us raise our sons to respect women and their careers, and to believe them to be their equals. Let us be sisters to each other.

We need each other greatly, and the world needs our unity.

If we can somehow do this, maybe then the men will follow.

"Woman must not accept; she must challenge.
She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her;
she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." -Margaret Sangar

Why I didn't challenge our naming conventions when I had the chance to do so

Recently, I had to explain to my 7-year-old daughter why she was to address her new teacher as Ms. White (not her real name).  We were sitting around the dinner table discussing Back to School Night, and my husband was praising "Mrs. White."  I corrected him politely, "I think she should be called Ms. White."  He looked at me puzzled.  After all, I had no trouble in taking his name when we got married, right?  And I don't object vehemently when people address me as Mrs. Vanegas.  That's right, I don't.  But I would prefer to be called Ms.  He raised an eyebrow.

In our decade-long marriage I never mentioned to him that I thought Mrs. Vanegas was strictly reserved for his mother (she, by the way, prefers to be referred to as such).  Oh, well.  He knows quite well of my feminist views, so there should be no surprises there.  He was still perplexed, because to him it seemed I had no problem wearing his beautiful Latin last name as if I were born with it.  But my decision in abandoning my maiden name had little to do with abandoning the old honorific "Missus." 

The alternatives before women are, as you know, few: you may keep your maiden name, take your husband's last name, hyphenate, use your maiden name as a middle name, and couples may even make up an entirely new last name from their two unmarried names.  I have heard of couples who both decided to hyphenate their names, and salute them for this choice, although, in the end, it would yield ridiculously long last names.  There is something endearing in taking our husbands' name, abandoning our fathers' last name and tribe, and joining the new tribe, a new life, as a new entity.  It is quite an accomplishment to find a life-long partner, and we all love to celebrate weddings and anniversaries.  Being called a member of his family was especially important for me, because I moved to this country to spend the rest of my life with him.  So, there: I had plenty of justification in taking his last name (and I didn't have any to keep my maiden name, which I never particularly liked).

Still, I crave to be remembered as my own self, not as somebody's wife or mother.  My mom, a professional woman, and second-generation feminist, never took my dad's name, and was quite annoyed when they called her the wrong name in my school.  I wanted it to be easy for my children's teachera, yet I would, in exchange, expect them to address me as Ms., and not Mrs.  If our name is a matter of our identity, that is where I definitely draw the line.

I am not alone: even in traditional societies, for example, in Italy, women are remembered and memorialized by their maiden names on their tombstones. Scottish women, when widowed, reverted to their maiden name, as this article tells us.  And, according to The Emily Post Institute, Ms. is the default form of address for women, regardless of marital status, in the U.S.  I rest my case.

The importance of power in women's tennis?

The 2010 U.S. Open in tennis is currently under way, and on August 25 the New York Times ran an article entitled How Power Has Transformed Women’s Tennis by Michael Kimmelman. The crux of the article is that female tennis players today are “stronger, bigger, faster, and better trained” than in the past. Commentators have attributed this trend toward physical dominance to two players in particular – Venus and Serena Williams.

At least one major contender, Kim Clijsters, has conceded that the Williams sisters have raised the bar for female players by forcing them to increase their power. By the end of the article Kimmelman questions whether the Williams sisters have redefined the paradigm of what it takes to be a perennial champion in women’s tennis. For example, teenage girls (who have historically found success in tennis, but are not as physically developed as full-grown women) are being held back by professional organizations in their development of the game. The "all-around package" of a good game seems to have taken a backseat to raw power.

Before I share my own thoughts on this situation, I should mention that I do not follow tennis anymore, though I used to watch my fair share when I was younger. With that said, I do not know if there is something that a tennis fan would understand about the fundamentals of the game that I do not, but I do not see the Williams’ domination as particularly shocking or surprising.

As the article seems to suggest, there are two possible ways of approaching the game: power and an all-around game. Furthermore, it seems possible that in the past women maybe were not expected to have power games. However, tennis players, like professionals in any other sport, push the boundaries of what is physically possible - or maybe more accurately, the physical minimum of what it takes to win. For example, just compare football players back when they still wore leather helmets to players today who look and move like human steam engines. My point is, that tennis, like any other sport, must necessarily require physical exertion. In some sports physical power and speed are more important than in others. (Compare football and golf.) In a solo sport like tennis, where the playing field is a large area for one person to cover, maybe the Williams sisters have figured out that raw power and speed trump finesse, balance, and strategy every time. Which brings me to another talking point of the article.

In the article, Jelena Jankovic, a former number one, now ranked third stated:

In the last couple of years, as women’s tennis has become more popular, some of the girls on tour have also been trying to look nicer, more feminine, and, face it, there are fans who like to look at girls in nice tennis dresses … It has become very competitive in this sense, but the level of tennis is very high. It all depends on how you want to develop your brand. Some players want to be known as great tennis players, others for something else.

I think this is a critical point to consider in this discussion. What do people want out of women’s tennis? How “should” the women’s game be? Why are these relevant questions? I think peoples’ expectations of women’s tennis ultimately frame this discussion. As I mentioned earlier, maybe people did not expect such power-focused performances from women’s tennis. And as the above quote points out, some players are known less for their playing ability than their striking beauty. (Anna Kournikova, one of the most famous tennis players of recent memory, never won a major Grand Slam singles title.)

My ultimate point is that physicality is, at the very least, important in a game where the (simplified) goal is to hit the ball past your opponent. Certain strategies (hitting a ball harder and faster than your opponent can) may be better than others (good ball placement), especially if your opponent has the physical capabilities of countering your “other” strategy (running down well-placed hits).

Along similar lines, if the goal of a female tennis player is to win, physicality is also a better attribute than looking good in a tennis skirt. (Not that the two are mutually exclusive.) It seems to me that the Williams’ have not adhered to either society’s or the tennis establishment’s conception of how female tennis players “should” look, “should” develop, or “should” play – and they have found success in doing so.

As a final note, Jamie Foxx offers another perspective in song form: Can I Be Your Tennis Ball? (Credit to a fellow King Hall friend for the video, as well as for the article upon which I based this post.)

Female pioneers in the law

I've always thought of women's entrance into the legal profession as something that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I was therefore shocked to read that Yale Law School did not admit female students until the late 1960s. (Deborah L. Rhode, The "No-Problem" Problem: Feminist Challenges and Cultural Change, 100 Yale L.J. (1991)) Upon rereading I realized that I was mistaken- it was Yale’s undergraduate school that was only desegregated in the 1960s. Its law school had been open to women since the early twentieth century.

Still, this got me thinking about, and then researching, women legal pioneers. As it turns out, the history of women in the law is much longer and more varied then I would have expected, and women have used a wide range of strategies to secure their entrance into the legal world.

One strategy was simply hiding gender. According to Rhode, Alice Rufie Blake Jordan tricked Yale Law School into admitting her through the simple subterfuge of putting her initials, rather than her full name, on her application. Yale responded by banning all women from the law school until 1919.

More dramatically, 13th century Italian Bettisia Gozzadini disguised herself as a man to study law in Bologna. Interestingly, the 13th century Bologna university seems to have been more tolerant of women than 19th century Yale. After Gozzadini's gender was revealed she continued to teach law at the university, albeit behind a screen so she would not distract male students. (Perhaps someone should have suggested this trick to the 19th century law schools that worried female "Portias" would distract male students.)

Another way women entered law was by turning sexism’s own stereotypes about the “gentler sex” and the “angel of the home” against it. Also according to Rhode, 19th century American feminists argued that “[u]nder some circumstances, a woman lawyer's ‘silver voice’ might ‘accomplish more than theseverity and sternness of a man could achieve.’”

Similarly, women have often gained initial entrance to the world of law through family law. British lawyers initially entered law through this area of practice in the early twentieth century and, more recently, the Saudi Arabian government proposed that female lawyers be allowed to appear in family law courts. Of course, women should be able to practice in all areas of law, but I appreciate these pioneers success in getting a foot in the door and opening up the legal field to present and future generations of women.

A few other notable female legal pioneers:

Margarte Brent was the first American female lawyer, trying over hundred cases beginning in the 1640s (!).

Lucy Terry Prince was a poet, farmer, and former slave, who, in 1797, waved aside her lawyer and became the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

Cornelia Sorabji was the first woman to earn a law degree from Oxford, the first female Indian barrister, and an activist for women's rights.