Work-Life Balance

This is something I am extremely familiar with. No, I am not a Rhodes Scholar, nor am I anything close to being part of the Washington elite of high powered women. But I find myself extremely wrapped up in this conversation sparked by Ann-Marie Slaughter's article because of the excessive time management and whatnot I have been through in the last year as I try to support myself and be responsible about loans while making my dream of a PhD a reality. Getting a graduate education has just become even harder as graduate students are no longer eligible for subsidized Stafford loans, which researchers cited in this article claim will ultimately "have the greatest effect on the debt levels of women and of students from under-represented minority groups."

What to me is at issue here is something far greater than just the choices women have to make about motherhood versus careers, as many commentators have already noted. It is about class, and it is indeed a feminist issue, but in my opinion, it is a feminist issue because women continue to be treated like second class citizens, not because women have a maternal instinct and feel more driven to care for their children than their male counterparts. I identified with Slaughter's struggles with the workplace's inflexibility and archaic restrictions that were not relevant to my job, which can be done remotely 90% of the time. I wanted to pursue a life outside of work -- a full life, not a part-time life outside of work -- and by and large, the typical American workplace (i.e. NOT the progressive American workplace), does not allow for that.

As an aside, I think that part of the reason I watch Mad Men -- even though it is more a show that I love to hate than a show I love -- is because it portrays one very unique and yet very typical workplace in which the boundaries between life and work are blurred, and when a life fully outside of work develops, it is a problem. I digress....

I think a more interesting article  would have been "Why White Men Can Have It All and No One Else Can." That is the real story in my opinion. Women AND minorities are paid less than white men, to name one issue included in this debate. I'm surprised that in these discussions I have not yet heard anyone mention the book Nickle and Dimed. Barbara Ehrenreich basically shouts Slaughter's woes of inflexibility, inability to get ahead, and managing time from a lower-class perspective of people trying to come from much further down the ranks and having to deal with mass transportation and other poorly developed American infrastructures that present barriers to rising up the ranks.

Sure, the workplace needs to change....and how likely is that since the Paycheck Fairness Act was just rejected (with five Republican female senators voting against it) and studies still showing that minorities AND women make far less than men?