Welfare to Workfare

Deborah Little's chapter in Socializing Care reinforced for me the fact that our society places very little value on caring work.  I found Tronto's phases of care useful in that they allow us to see how some types of care ("caring about" and "taking care of") are more valued than others (the actual "care-giving").  When my grandma was in a nursing home near the end of her life, my mom and her siblings, all white, middle class professionals, certainly cared about her and took care of her by making the arrangements and paying for the nursing home, but those that actually gave my grandmother care on a daily basis held a less privileged place in society.  Nearly all of them were women, many were women of color, and they made relatively little money for the labor they performed.  I thought this chapter did a good job of explaining how caring work, especially caring for children, is pushed down the hierarchy of privilege so that women often end up caring for others in their paid employment while other, even less privileged, people care for their children while they're at work.

It is interesting that the agency Little studies used the feminist argument that women are trapped by domestic care-giving to push them into the workforce, thereby putting them in a difficult situation that is decidedly un-feminist.  I think this apparent contradiction proves that the balance of care-giving versus income-earning is one that each woman and family must be able to decide for themselves.  It is impossible for the state or some other outside entity to determine what is right for every family.

This chapter made me wonder who workfare really helps.  Men appear to benefit, since women take on the public sphere jobs they once held without accepting any additional responsibility in the private sphere.  The state also seems to benefit by pushing the burden of societal care onto the backs of women rather than "socializing care."  Regardless, it is certainly not the women who benefit, as they have to manage both paid labor and their unpaid domestic responsibilities and are viewed as selfish if they fail to do either.

Also wanted to share this link on the prison to poverty cycle with ya'll: http://www.slate.com/id/2270328/.  Excited for Friday!!

American Electra

I really enjoyed this article, and it gave me a LOT to think about! I first started thinking about what I've learned about feminism from my own mother.  She does not consider herself a feminist and when I decided to major in Women's Studies, she told me feminism was just a phase that young women go through but I'd eventually come to my senses and realize the world just is the way it is.  This experience was kind of the opposite of many of the anecdotes discussed in the article because I have ended up teaching my mom a lot about the history of feminism and trying to convince her it's important rather than vice versa.

The conflicts discussed in this article reminded me much more of my experience with the League of Women Voters.  One of my mentors asked me to join the board because they were looking to get more young women involved with the organization, but I often feel as if they don't really want me there.  The board meetings are held in the middle of the afternoon on weekdays, which makes it hard for women who are students, who work full time, or who have to care for family members to participate.  The older women on the board like to tell me and the other younger members about the things the League accomplished in their day, but they don't seem interested in what we have to offer.  It was a big struggle to even get them to email out the monthly newsletter rather than mailing out paper copies.  I think we need to strive for greater understanding of what we each have to offer rather than bickering about the way things should be done.  The best experiences I've had working with older women have been when we're able to learn from each other. 

Diversity Dialogue

I thought the Diversity Dialogue Circle was a great experience.  It was informal and unstructured enough that I felt comfortable opening up and didn't feel put on the spot, yet it was structured enough to generate a productive discussion.  It seems that this type of conversation would vary drastically depending on who is participating.  Though our life experiences are clearly all different, our backgrounds as white, college-educated women are all relatively similar.  I think doing the Diversity Dialogue Circle at the prison will be a completely different experience, since there will be more diversity in the responses.  This may make me less comfortable than our first circle because worrying about offending people or saying the wrong thing will be more of a concern in the back of my mind.

My favorite part of the Diversity Dialogue Circle was how it got us to think about our own unique life experiences and how those experiences have impacted how we think about ourselves and others.  While I understand that socialization plays a big role in determining our outlook on life, I didn't realize how many both subtle and explicit messages we get about who and what is good or bad and how we should be in the world.  I think sharing the messages we've each received throughout our lives helped me piece together some of the social constructions that have always seemed really abstract.

I also liked the part of the discussion in which we talked about stereotypes of ourselves and others.  This wasn't the first time I'd been asked to list stereotypes of other groups of people, but I think it was the first time I'd had the tables turned and been asked to name stereotypes of myself.  Doing both exercises helped me see that the divisions that exist between people aren't the result of individual hatred or bigotry but are symptoms of larger problems with the way we are trained to treat those who are different than us.