NOW's Role in Promoting Fair Mothers' Work Policies

---

(From Sonia Fuentes, a true founder of NOW, who points out that Phineas Indritz who is mentioned in this article was actually not a NOW "founder", but was very instrumental in NOW's early work.)

New York Times

August 9, 2010, 6:00 am

Feminists at Fault? (See also, our site's button, "ERA for Moms")

By NANCY FOLBRE

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Mothers in the United States earn substantially less than women without children, and not just because they tend to take some time out of paid employment. David Leonhardt summarizes some important evidence that public policies are partly to blame in a recent column in The New York Times, “A Labor Market Punishing to Mothers,” as well as a related Economix post.

Are feminists also at fault? Mr. Leonhardt quotes Prof. Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University, who says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.” Professor Waldfogel also was quoted in USA Today, saying, “The American feminist movement didn’t want to hear anything about mothers.”

Which American feminists is she talking about? True, some feminist economists, like my good friend Prof. Barbara Bergmann, criticize policies that might encourage mothers to forgo paid employment. True, the United States has stronger antidiscrimination laws but less family-friendly policies than many European social democracies. True, the home page of the National Organization for Women says more about equality than motherhood.

But political strategies are always shaped by assessments of political possibilities. Perhaps feminists who advocate for equal pay have simply been more successful — and therefore more visible — in the United States than those who argue for policies that would require increased government spending.

Even a cursory look at the historical record of the last 50 years shows that feminist organizations have fought long and hard for two policies quite relevant to mothers and families: universal child care and paid family leave from work.

The National Organization for Women coined the slogan “Every Mother Is a Working Mother.” Its 1967 Women’s Bill of Rights called for maternity leave and day-care centers along with legislation against discrimination. In 1970-1, it campaigned for the Comprehensive Child Care Act, helping lobby it through both houses of Congress only to have it vetoed by President Nixon, who condemned its “family-weakening” implications.

A founder of NOW, Phineas Indritz, drafted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act that became law in 1978, making it illegal to discriminate against pregnant workers and requiring that pregnancy be treated as any temporary disability.

In 1987, NOW sponsored the Great American Mother’s Day Write-In to counter the opponents of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantees unpaid family leaves for many employed women and men.

A page on the current NOW Web site states, “Caregiving is a feminist issue” and summarizes a policy agenda for mothers’ and caregivers’ economic rights.

NOW has also directly challenged the way that many news organizations emphasize conflicts of interest between mothers who work at home and those who work for pay. A related report by Joan Williams, Jessica Manvell, and Stephanie Bornstein of the University of California Hastings College of the Law provides specific criticisms of many newspaper articles describing why some mothers opt out of paid employment, including Lisa Belkin’s widely noted article “The Opt-Out Revolution,” published in The New York Times Magazine in 2003.

In her widely respected history of the women’s movement, “Moving the Mountain,” the journalist Flora Davis writes that, from 1971 on, most national women’s organizations advocated federal support for child care and a federal family leave law.

The historian Dorothy Sue Cobble, going further back in time, explains how New Deal feminists lobbied for what they called “full Social Security,” including paid maternity leave, investment in child care and early education, tax exemptions and tax credits for dependents and the recognition of women’s unpaid caregiving as part of the calculation of Social Security benefits.

I count myself among many scholars who believe that feminist theory offers some crucial insights into the relationship between gender inequality and the social organization of parenting.

Sometimes it’s easier to see the failures of social movements than their successes. The artist Ricardo Levins Morales designed a famous bumper sticker to celebrate trade unions that fought successfully for a 40-hour work week — The Labor Movement: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend.

Maybe theorists need bumper stickers, too: Feminism: Why You Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Equality and Motherhood. [Editorial note from Sandyo: We don't have to. Look at the scandinavian countries where there are government supports--practical ones--to keep women in business so their country's GNP grows. Again, we need an ERA to support TRUE Family Values!]