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Pregnancy and Feminism

Pregnancy in way of work

I would not have called myself a feminist before I had kids. I mean, I didn’t reject the idea either, I just didn’t think about it much. I thought Latin and philosophy and political science were sexier than women’s studies in university. (Yes, if you pick your major based on what is book-nerdishly sexy you run a significant risk of becoming a blogger.)

Mostly, though, being a girl had never held me back from anything. As a young woman born in Toronto, Canada in 1978, the idea that my sex would at all impact my career choices and trajectory (outside of professional athletics, say) was completely foreign to me. Globally, of course, I knew it was a different story. But for me? In my life? Sexual discrimination was a non-factor.

And then I became a mother.

No, first I got knocked up and freaked the hell out. Of course, I was happy and excited and all that stuff too. But beneath that glow of eager anticipation and seriously thick and shiny hair was the gut-wrenching apprehension that I was not in control anymore. My maternal imperative to provide a secure and stable environment for my baby was matched only by the increasingly suffocating realization that I might not be able to.

Don’t get me wrong, I was never in danger of becoming homeless or otherwise destitute. I had a husband and a strong family network to fall back on. But I, MYSELF, suddenly had doors slamming in my face everywhere I turned. Job mobility doesn’t exist while you’re pregnant; you cling to the one you have or get a new one quick-style before you start to show.

You’d be hard pressed (Sarah Palin and Marissa Mayer aside) to find a new job halfway through your pregnancy and even the job you have is on life support. You will either take a maternity leave and have your salary slashed at least in half in most cases or go back to work and instead spend half your pay on childcare or forego that silly childhood dream of a career and just stay home. I am not trying to belittle anyone’s choices. In fact, I’ve dabbled a bit in all those outcomes myself. My problem is that pregnancy made me feel like I had no choice.

All three times I have felt a bit trapped. I didn’t want to leave my husband, but what if I should want to all of a sudden? What if something happened? I simply couldn’t do it on my own. I was in a temporary state of forced dependence — on my husband, my parents, the welfare system … anyone but myself. It eased up by the time my baby was a few months to a year old. I regained a sense of control, began rediscovering an array of options.

But that first pregnancy (echoed by the second and third) was the first real inkling I had that my womanhood could hold me back.

This post on pregnancy and feminism was inspired by International Women’s Day. I think we’re good to keep talking about this stuff for more than one day, don’t you?

Did you feel the same sense of constraint and dependency during your pregnancies? Is this a commonly shared experience?

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Working Parents Deserve First Dibs on Shifts

It finally happened. A court of law has ruled that caring for your children is more important than prime time TV. Earlier this week a Canadian federal court upheld a human rights tribunal’s finding that employers have an obligation to try to accommodate employee needs as they pertain to childcare.  That means if your boss can reasonably let you work the day shift so you can drop your kid at daycare, then she has to.

(UPDATE: From the Globe and Mail article linked to above, “The ruling also leaves the onus on employees to prove that they have made reasonable efforts to sort out their family obligations before requesting help from their employers, Rudner said.” This isn’t about every parent trumping every non-parent. It is designed to protect those who would otherwise be forced to leave their job.)

Before I go any further, let me fully disclose my biases. Not only am I a parent, I am also a night owl. I worked shift work in the Telus Mobility call centre for a brief stint before I had kids and I could not for the life of me understand why young, childless people made such a fuss about working until 9pm. You know that means you don’t have to be in until noon, right? And you get to skip rush hour altogether? And you can still meet friends for a drink or whatever? I just didn’t get it. I still don’t.

But I don’t have to get it to understand why it might seem unfair for one employee who does the exact same job as another to get first dibs on shifts just because she has a kid. I mean, imagine if I had to start coming in at 8am! INJUSTICE! It seems unfair, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right.

It’s common decency, for one thing. I once worked lunches as a server with a woman who had to pick her daughter up from school at 3:30. This meant that I always had to put in the grunt hours between 3:00 and 5:00 when you clean and prep and make next to no tips and she never did. Not once did it ever even occur to me (or to anyone else) to complain. She had to leave at 3:00 just like I could only work two shifts a week because I was in school and the owner had to yell at everyone because he was an asshole. It’s life. You deal with it.

Having children may be a choice, but taking care of them is not. Juggling work and childcare is hard enough for working parents on a typical schedule. (Sick days and PA days and doctor’s appointments and school breaks all have to be covered somehow.) But how would a single parent even go about finding child care to cover shift work? Daycares have set hours and round-the-clock nanny care is absurdly expensive. A parent’s need to work around child care limitations does trump someone else’s desire for a 9 to 5 lifestyle.

Okay, I lied. It’s not a choice. I mean, even if I employ my power of hypothetical thought to its utmost and imagine that I could have opted to ignore my own biological imperative to procreate — even if I, personally, could have chosen otherwise — somebody has to have the children. Reproduction is necessary for our political, economic and cultural continuation. Who is going to write all the TV shows when you get old if people stop having children?! God, think about it. (Oh yeah, there’s that social security problem too. That would have been smart to bring up.)

One more thing. What is the primary factor holding women back from equal footing in the workforce? Motherhood, that’s what. This is not to say there aren’t other factors (like blatant sexism in the tech industry, for example), but this is the biggest. Women take more time off from their career when their children are young, they work shorter hours and they choose less demanding career paths so they can be there for their families. For some women this is a choice they want to make. For many others, this is a choice they have to make.

So bravo, Canadian federal court! Bravo Justice Mandamin! This is a huge step forward for Canadian families and an even bigger one for women everywhere.

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Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle

DAILY SNACK

Gloria Steinem* has been widely credited with the slogan,

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Just what is Pepperidge Farm trying to say with this, then?

Whole Grain Goldrish Crackers

That woman need men only if they want to feed their children healthy, “whole grain” snacks?

That we need men if we want to find the time to eat right and get fit?

That feminism has become such a fragmented and meaningless word that you might as well give a fish a bicycle and sell some snacks to kids while your at it?

I’d love to hear your interpretations.

*It was, apparently, the Australian Irina Dunn who actually coined the phrase in 1970.