{"id":1238,"date":"2017-05-22T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=1238"},"modified":"2017-05-22T08:00:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T12:00:35","slug":"why-work-is-good-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/why-work-is-good-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Work Is Good for Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI have always had a fierce drive for financial independence. When I was a girl child in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember reflecting on my mother\u2019s traditional suburban life as a homemaker and being horrified by her lack of independence. Although she was living a life that met society\u2019s expectations, she often told me stories about dreams she had abandoned to be a wife and mother.\nI also knew that while she and my father had rough patches in their marriage from time to time, leaving him was not an option for her. She had only a middle-school education and limited work experience. She had no financial independence. She was stuck. I vowed not to be like her. Her options were limited, and, while more types of jobs are available to women today than in her time, some of our society\u2019s assumptions and expectations about women and work have not changed.\nJill Filipovic<\/a> of the New York Times<\/em> writes about the ambivalence still present in the United States about women and work. She notes that while work is still acknowledged as important to men\u2019s sense of self-worth and identity as providers, \u201chistorically women weren\u2019t supposed to need their individual identity to be formed through work . . . women\u2019s identities have long been relational\u2014daughter, wife, mother\u2014rather than individual.\u201d In fact, this difference seems to have been a strong driver in the 2016 presidential election as white working-class women and men voted for Trump, who promised to bring back the blue-collar jobs that provided self-worth for white working-class men and paid wages that reinforced their identity as providers.\nEven though women surged into the workforce between 1950 and 2000 and the number of hours worked by both black and white women more than doubled, Americans still remain ambivalent about women working today. Filipovic notes that there is no robust feminist argument in favor of women working outside the home. I remember when early second-wave feminists did try to make this argument in the 1970s and 1980s, and the backlash was so swift and fierce that they had to back down. Remember when Hillary Clinton had to bake cookies in the 1990s when her husband ran for president to prove that she was an acceptable woman even though she had a successful law career?\nFilipovic writes, \u201cThat feminists are so often unable or unwilling to make a vigorous moral argument in favor of women working . . . is perhaps one reason we have not yet seen the political groundswell necessary to pass the workplace policies we so desperately need.\u201d\nResearch shows, however, that it is good for everyone when women work:\n\n\n