Got
Votes?
There
are dozens of organizations and web sites offering technical
information and issues guides for women voters. Voter
registration is now closed in most states, but if you want to
find out more about state candidates and ballot initiatives or
are interested in joining in the last-minute push to get out
the vote, you can find what you’re looking for online.
Here are the MMO’s top
picks; many of these sites have a list of
links to even more resources for women who vote.
The
League of Women Voters (www.lwv.org)
is always a good place to start looking for non-partisan
information on candidates and issues. Local Leagues may
also be recruiting poll watchers in your area. The League’s 5 Things You
Need to Know on Election Day and Why They Matter fact
sheet offers essential information for both new and experienced
voters, including how to get a provisional ballot if
you’ve registered but your name doesn’t show
up the rolls. The LWV’s DemocracyNet project
(www.dnet.org)
offers interactive features that allow visitors to enter
a zip code and view information about state candidates
and ballot initiatives.
Time
To Vote (www.timetovote.net)
has a list of state regulations requiring employers to
give workers time off to vote. Some states require workers
to give employers advance notice if they plan to take
voter leave, so find
out what the regulations are in your state now.
The site also offers suggestions for employers and voters in
the 20 states without regulations protecting workers’ time
to vote.
A couple of voter
guides address policy issues of special interest to mothers
who think about social change: The
National Partnership for Women and Families (www.nationalpartnership.org)
has updated its Ask
Your Candidates guide (in .pdf), and The
National Council of Women’s Organizations (www.womensorganizations.org)
offers The
ABCs of Women’s Issues (in .pdf).
For wonky types, Votes
for Women 2004 (http://www.votesforwomen2004.org)
tracks the gender gap in voting and has a list of resources
for women voters, and the Center
for American Women and Politics at
Rutgers University has a number of fact
sheets and publications about women in government
and women’s voting patterns.
It’s not too
early to start thinking about the next election cycle: the Vote,
Run, Lead initiative of the White
House Project (www.thewhitehouseproject.org)
offers information and leadership training for young women
interested in running for public office.
------------------------------------
If
You Experience Election Day Problems:
Call toll free— 1-866-Our-Vote— to
report problems and to receive advice on what to
do. This
hotline is being operated by the non-partisan Election
Protection Coalition, which is composed
of over 100 organizations including People
For the American Way and The League
of Women Voters. You can also volunteer to
help out on or before election day to keep the
2004 election free and fair.
------------------------------------
Recent
news stories and commentary of note
on women and voting:
From Salon (www.salon.com):
I
love you, Security Mom
by John Brady Kiesling, October 7, 2004
A U.S. diplomat who quit his job over Iraq urges mothers to resist the Bush
administration's fear-mongering.
Vote
your vagina!
by Rebecca Traister, June 10, 2004
Eve Ensler, the vulva-friendly playwright, hosts a fundraiser in New York in
the hopes of getting young women to vote with their... well, you know.
Sex
and the single voter
by Rebecca Traister, April 12, 2004
Single women are the hot, must-have demo for the 2004 presidential race. But
will they put out this November?
From Women’s
Enews (www.womensenews.org)
Pollsters
Call ‘Security Moms’ a Myth
by Dan De Luce, 10/12/04
“Security moms” have caught the imagination of political pundits
and reporters in this year’s presidential campaign, but do they really
exist? Pollsters say it’s a myth and that women are leaning towards Kerry.
Campaign
Coverage Ignores Women's Concerns
by Sheila Gibbons, 09/29/04
Campaign coverage is largely ignoring the issues that matter most to women.
To correct that, Sheila Gibbons offers reporters a look at what women want
from a president and advice on chasing down the story between now and Election
Day.
Women’s
Vote in 2004 Remains Great Unknown
by Robin Hindery, 10/14/04
From cell phones that leave many young women out of pollsters' reach to disputable
theories about a “marriage gap” and how the war is affecting female
voters, pollsters wonder where the powerful women's vote is heading in this
election.
Women’s
eNews Campaign 2004 index of articles
From The
New Republic Online (www.tnr.com)
Mothers
of Invention
by Noam Scheiber, September 24, 2004
“If you’ve been following the presidential campaign these last few
weeks, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about security moms— the
erstwhile soccer moms who became obsessed with terrorism after September 11,
and, in the process, began tilting Republican. The typical ‘security mom’ story… cites
the hair-raising effect of the recent Russian school massacre. …Oh, and
the stories usually have one other thing in common: They’re based on almost
no empirical evidence.”
From Common
Dreams (www.commondreams.org)
Security
Moms Should Look Closely at Bush
by Susan Lenfestey, October 4, 2004
Security moms, the women who are said to be sliding over into President Bush’s
camp out of fear for the safety of their children, should take a better look
at the man who is courting them.
back
to top
New
reports on America’s low-wage workforce
According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov), 38
percent of all women in the U.S. labor force work in low-wage occupations and
nearly 60 percent of the low-wage workforce is female. Two
new reports on the low-wage workforce highlight public policy issues.
Struggling
to Make Ends Meet: Low Wage Work in America is
based on findings from a national survey commission
by Corporate Voices
for Working Families (www.cvworkingfamilies.org),
a non-partisan, non-profit corporate membership organization “created
to bring the private sector voice into the public dialogue
on issues affecting working families.” The survey
found that “the voting public is more concerned
about the quality of jobs being created than about
job growth overall. More than six out of 10 people
surveyed think that a lack of good wages and benefits
is a bigger problem than a shortage of jobs; 68 percent
think most new jobs being created in this country are
lower-paying, and without benefits; and only 13 percent
view new jobs as ‘good-paying,’ full-time
jobs with benefits.” The findings of the original
survey, which included a cross-section of registered
voters, were compared to a similar survey given to
a national sample of low-income workers (defined as
workers who worked at least 20 hours per week, earned
less than $11.00 an hour, and had a total household
income of than $40,000/year).
- Of the voters surveyed,
68 percent felt the government is doing too little to support
low-wage workers and their families (only 5 percent said
the government is doing “too much”). 71 percent
believe that improving conditions for low-wage workers will
also benefit the rest of society.
- 25 percent of the
general public believes the government should have the main
responsibility for improving conditions for low-wage workers,
compared to 33 percent of low-wage workers. (49 percent of
the general public and 42 percent of low-wage workers feel
employers should have the main responsibility.
- 84 percent of voters,
and 88 percent of low-wage workers, feel that employers should
provide and help pay for health care coverage for their low-wage
employees.
- 79 percent of voters,
and 85 percent of low-wage workers, feel low-wage working
parents should get more help finding and paying for child
care.
- 77 percent of voters,
and 81 percent of low-wage workers, feel that employers should
be required to provide paid sick leave to low–wage
workers.
- 76 percent of voters,
and 81 percent of low-wage workers, favor raising the minimum
wage to $7.00 an hour.
Despite widespread
support for requiring employers to do more to improve conditions
for low-income workers, the report notes that “focus
group discussions with business leaders who employ low-wage
workers indicate that employers themselves are very resistant
to new government mandates. While expressing concern over conditions
for low-wage workers, they nonetheless give very low ratings
to such proposals as raising the minimum wage, requiring paid
vacation, or mandating paid sick leave… By contrast,
employers support government policies to support low-wage workers,
such as expanding eligibility for the [Earned Income Tax Credit]
and providing discounted health insurance to workers whose
employers do not provide coverage.” It should be noted
that it couldt be difficult for most low-wage workers to pay
for health insurance— even a deeply discounted rates— unless
wages are also increased; the Struggling to Make Ends Meet report
found that only one in five low-wage workers currently have
money left over after paying the bills and 23 percent acknowledge
they do not earn enough to keep up with the bills they have
now.
Struggling
to Make Ends Meet: Low Wage Work in America
Hart Research Associates/Wirthlin Worldwide
Commissioned by Corporate Voices for Working
Families
September 2004
A
press releases and an executive summary are available for download
in .doc format. A Power Point presentation is also available.
------------------------------------
This month The
Annie E. Casey Foundation (www.aecf.org)
released Working
Hard, Falling Short: America’s Working Families
and the Pursuit of Economic Security. This
study found that 9.2 million American families— more
than one out of four— now earn wages so
low that they have difficulty surviving financially;
2.5 million of these families are officially in poverty.
The authors of the report state that “while our
economy relies on the service jobs low-paid workers fill— such
as cashiers, janitors, security guards and home health
aides— our society has not taken adequate steps
to ensure that these workers can make ends meet and build
a future for their families, no matter how determined
they are to be self-sufficient.”
The study found that:
- 25 million children
live in low-income families.
- Married parents
head the majority (53 percent) of low-income families; 38
percent are headed by single parent women, and single parent
men head the remaining 9 percent.
- 20 percent of American
jobs pay less than $8.84 an hour, a poverty wage for a family
of four; a full-time job at the current federal minimum wage
of $5.15 an hour cannot keep a family of three out of poverty.
- In 42 percent of
low-income families— families earning less than 200
percent of the official poverty level, or $36, 784/year for
a family of four— at least one parent has some post-secondary
education.
- 52 percent of low-income
families spend more than a third of their income on housing,
compared to 10 percent of higher income families.
- In 36 percent of
low-income families, at least one parent is without health
insurance, compared to 8 percent of higher income families.
Although lawmakers
and business leaders often endorse tax incentives to foster
economic growth and job creation rather than expanding government
programs to provide direct aid and services to the working
poor as the best solution for improving conditions for low-income
families, the authors of Working Hard, Falling
Short remark that “We hope economic growth
can reduce the number of low-income workers and families in
this country. However, that scenario has a whiff of the mythic.
Statistics show that despite the economic prosperity of the
1980s and 1990s, the percentages of families in poverty during
the first years of the 21st century are not appreciably different
from those in the 1970s.” The report also cites a separate
study that found that “during the 1990s, less than half
of low-wage families advanced into the middle class, fewer
than those that made the same transition in the 1970s.”
Working
Hard, Falling Short recommends expanding
education and training programs for low-income adults;
improving wages, benefits and supports for low-income working
families, including provisions for health care for working
adults and expanding child care subsidies; redefining national
poverty measurements and adopting “meaningful definitions
of self-sufficiency and low-income.” This report
includes a wealth of information on the characteristics
of low-income families in America, and also includes detailed
tables on the status of low-income families in the states.
Working
Hard, Falling Short: America’s Working Families
and the Pursuit of Economic Security
Tom Waldron, Brandon Roberts, et. al.
For the the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations
October 2004
Press
release (in .pdf)
Full
report (36 pages) in .pdf
------------------------------------
A 2002 report from
the Radcliffe Public Policy
Center and 9to5 (www.9to5.org)
also deserves mention here. Keeping
Jobs and Raising Families in America: It Just Doesn’t
Work is the product of a two-year
study concentrating on the work and family conflicts experienced
by low-income working parents, usually mothers. The researchers
collected qualitative data from parents working in low-wage
jobs, teachers and child care providers working in low-income
neighborhoods, and employers who hire and supervise low-wage
employees. While the sample size was relatively small, the
report exposes some of the difficult conditions that mothers
in low-wage jobs with inflexible schedules are forced to contend
with. For example, one unsympathetic employer told researchers “These
women shouldn’t have a child if they can’t afford
to.” The researchers note that this employer “was
particularly critical of mothers who ask for time off work
to care for sick children, arguing that when her husband is
ill she does not expect special flexibility.” More than
half of the parents in the study “reported they experienced
some kind of job sanction, including terminations, lost wages,
denied promotions, and written and verbal warnings as a result
of trying to meet family needs.”
Keeping
Jobs and Raising Families contains lots of
great qualitative data and some general policy recommendations;
it definitely raises awareness about the work-life conflicts
that impact the well-being of low-income mothers at a time
when workplace conditions affecting affluent mothers of
the “opt out revolution” remain front and center
in media reporting on work-life issues.
Keeping
Jobs and Raising Families in America:
It Just Doesn’t Work (in
.pdf)
A report from the Across the Boundaries Project
Radcliffe Public Policy Center and 9to5 National Association
of Working Women, 2002
------------------------------------
Related
resources:
Women
paid low wages:
who they are and where they work (in
.pdf)
By Marlene Kim, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, September
2000
From
the Economic Policy Institute (www.epinet.org)
Facts
and Figures on Women (in .pdf)
Facts
and Figures on Wages (in .pdf)
from The
State of Working America 2004/2005
back
to top
Generation
and Gender in the Workplace
The Families and Work
Institute (www.familiesandwork.org)
released a new issue brief on the attitudes and preferences
of workers in different age groups (members of Generation
Y were 18 through 22 years old at the time the study was
conducted; Generation Xers were 23 through 37, Baby Boomers
were 38 through 57 and Matures were over 58). The study
found that Gen Y and Gen X workers were much less likely
to describe themselves as “work centric” (12
to 13 percent) than Baby Boomers (22 percent). “In
contrast, 50 percent of Gen Y and 52 percent of Gen X are
family-centric compared with 41 percent of Boomers.” The
study also notes that “Employees who are dual-centric
or family-centric exhibit significantly better mental health,
better satisfaction with their lives, and higher levels
of job satisfaction than employees who are work centric.” Results
are somewhat limited as a broad social indicator since
the survey was restricted to workers with 4-year college
degree or higher (a characteristic shared by just a little
over one-quarter of the adult population in the U.S.).
Selected findings
from the issue brief:
- In 2002, just 52
percent college-educated men in Gen Y, Gen X and
Baby Boomer generations wanted to move into jobs with greater
responsibility; in 1992, 68 percent of comparable male employees
hoped to advance into more challenging positions— a
decline of 16 percentage points.
- In 2002, just 36
percent college-educated women in Gen Y, Gen X and
Baby Boomer generations wanted to move into jobs with greater
responsibility; in 1992, 57 percent of comparable female
employees hoped to advance into more challenging positions— a
decline of 21 percentage points.
- Employees who often
felt overworked and those who frequently experienced negative
spillover from work into family life were less likely to
want to advance into jobs with greater responsibility than
employees with more manageable jobs.
- In the last 25
years, the number of women who disagree with the statement “it
is much better for everyone involved if the man earns the
money and the woman takes care of the home and children” has
remained unchanged (61 percent).
- 37 percent of Generation
Y individuals in the study agreed that “it
is much better for everyone” if men and women take
on traditional gender roles.
- Generation X dads
spend over an hour more a day with their children on workdays
(3.4 hours) compared to Boomer dads (2.2 hours).
- 80 percent of the
college-educated employees in the study wanted to work fewer
hours; on average men preferred to work 38.5 hours a week
and women preferred to work 32.5 hours a week.
Generation
and Gender in the Workplace (in .pdf)
The Families and Work Institute with
the
American Business Collaboration
October 2004
------------------------------------
A
side note on working families and work preferences:
Several recent news stories have mentioned the results of a 2004 survey conducted
by LifeCare, Inc. (a
privately-owned employee benefit organization) which found that 68 percent
of working parents are contemplating reducing their work hours or quitting
their jobs because of child care issues. 22 percent of the survey respondents
wanted to quit work to stay home full time for “childcare related reasons” and
46 percent wished to work fewer hours; 65 percent also reported missing up
to two hours of work a month due to “family/personal issues, including
childcare.”
The MMO contacted
Jim Derivan, Manager of Media Communications at LifeCare, to
find out how many individuals had participated in the poll
and if there were any significant differences in the way male
and female employees responded to key questions. Here’s
what we found out: the poll in question was distributed through
a private web site open only to employees of LifeCare’s
client companies (so it doesn’t qualify as a broadly
representative sample). Just over 100 employees responded to
this particular poll (ditto).
Of all respondents
who agreed with the statement “I would like to stay at
my current job but work fewer hours and have more time for
my children,” 80 percent were female, and 10 percent
were male (10 percent did not indicate gender)
Of respondents who
clicked on “I would like to quit my job to stay at home
full-time for child care-related reasons,” 73 percent
were female, and 17 percent were male (again, 10 percent of
respondents did not indicate gender).
So even if the results
this small, voluntary survey can be assumed to reflect the
preferences of the general population of working parents (they
can’t), what we would really learn is that a sizable
majority of women want to cut back their work
hours or quit their jobs because of child care issues, and
most men wouldn’t dream of it. Leading us to ask: do
men and women have significantly different experiences in the
workplace and at home that would contribute to such a high-contrast
in their employment preferences?
Read
a summary of the survey from
LifeCare News
back
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60
Minutes does the Opt Out Revolution
60 Minutes (CBS)
is the latest news outlet to run a story on highly-educated
white women who ditch their promising, well-paid careers
to embrace “full-time” motherhood. The segment
(“Staying At Home,” October 10, 2004) was
fairly well-balanced and managed to portray “sequencing” moms
in a sympathetic light (unlike the expressionless Stepford-esque
moms captured by New York Times photographers
for Lisa Belkin’s 2003 “Opt Out Revolution” feature).
But like most recent reports on affluent at-home mothers,
there was no mention of the millions of middle- and low-income
mothers who also have to manage work-family conflict
on a daily basis but can’t afford the luxury of “opting
out.” The segment did include an impressive interview
with Kim Clark, dean of Harvard Business School, who
insists that businesses have a responsibility to come
up with more creative solutions to keep talented mothers
attached to their jobs. With 60 Minutes correspondent
Leslie Stahl.
Staying
At Home from
the CBS News web site
From
the MMO:
The
Least Worst Choice: Why Women “Opt Out” of
the Workforce
by Judith Stadtman Tucker, December 2003
back
to top
Elsewhere
on the Web:
From Brain,
Child Magazine (www.brainchildmag.com):
Dad
Buys Cereal:
Quiet Revolution or business as usual?
by Stacey Evers
“Even though the definition of a good dad has expanded to include adjectives
like ‘attentive’ and ‘involved,’ the primary verb still
seems to be ‘to provide.’ Maybe that's why, despite the many, many
recent stories in the mainstream media about highly educated, high-powered women ‘opting
out’ of their careers to stay home with the kids, there have been none
about men doing the same.”
From TomPaine.com (www.tompaine.com)
Whose
Conscience?
by Gloria Feldt, October 8, 2004
They’re called “conscience” or “refusal” clauses,
and they allow health care providers to refuse to provide certain services
or information against their own narrow belief system. Most often, pharmacists
use refusal clauses to justify refusing to fill women's birth-control pill
prescriptions. But a new federal version is working its way toward a House-Senate
conference committee, and it would allow all health care entitities to refuse
to even provide information about abortion to women who ask.
From Salon.com (www.salon.com)
Katy Read on The
Cult of Personality :
Yes,
I’ve had tarry bowel movements! So what?
A new book says that bizarre personality tests like the Myers-Briggs, the MMPI
and the Rorschach are overused, potentially damaging and an utter sham. (September
29, 2004) Editor’s note: Since it’s
been fashionable of late to compare “mothering personality styles” with
other moms (the program “Mothers
of Many Styles” is based, in part, on the Myers-Briggs personality
assessment), journalist Katy Read’s interview with The
Cult of Personality author Annie Murphy
Paul is quite illuminating.
A
former stepmother
by Rochelle L. Levy, September 28, 2004
I loved her as my own. But when her father and I split up, and I was forbidden
to see her, I paid the price.
— MMO,
October 2004
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Previously
in MMO Noteworthy ... |
