Blog 6 Response Alexandra Rose

1. I think more attention for the working class women and their issues would have prevented the divide that was created between upper-class women involved in feminism and working-class women. This seemed to create an association between feminism and upper-classism. This could explain why many women do not claim the title feminist and want no part of the movement, because of these negative connotations. In some ways it made being part of the feminist movement a luxury - something for women who had the time because they did not have "day jobs" and maybe also had childcare help such as nannies and maids.

Also, I think there were working class women fighting for equality in the workplace outside of feminism. They just didn't know they were fighting for the same things because they saw it as survival. In a way these women were working for more purely feminist values because they were working for workers' rights in the workplace and not always specifically women's rights. This makes me think of the award-winning film Norma Rae, based on a true story of a woman in a textile mill fighting for union rights. This is the pivotal scene in which she takes a stand (literally) and the other workers follow her lead.

This topic of working women and feminism also makes me think of one of my all-time favorite shows Roseanne. Over the years I have watched this show, researched the making of the show and also learned as much as I can about Roseanne Barr. This show purposely portrayed a lower class family with two parents with no college and how they support a family with three kids. Roseanne is famous for coining the term "domestic goddess" in a satirical effort to title the chores of a woman at home on a daily basis. This show also illustrates the concept of "second shift" that we learned about in the last chapter. Many of the scenes focus on the dialogue between the characters but if you notice there is almost always an activity in progress simultaneously. Much of the time it includes Roseanne cooking a meal, ironing and putting away groceries. Many aspects of this show that may seem like they just did the same thing over (like these activities) because they ran out of ideas were actually very purposeful in their nature. This helped show the sameness, the repetitiveness and the lackluster aspect of such a lifestyle for these families.

For the second part of the question, I'm not sure if including working women in the feminist movement would have resulted in equality in household and wages. I still see two different groups of women fighting for different reasons. An upper-class woman may have a degree (or several degrees) and has a five or six figure job that includes benefits, maternity leave, vacation, and other amenities. When she fights for feminist rights she wants her salary to match that of her male colleagues. A working-class woman with a high school diploma or GED works at a factory where she has access to benefits she cannot afford, has little to no maternity leave, has little to no vacation time and risks her job when she has to call in sick or for a childcare emergency. When this women fights for feminist rights, such as longer breaks or reduced overtime, she is fighting for survival. When I worked at a factory I knew a woman who was a mother of four kids all under 13. She worked second shift and saw her kids 20 minutes a day on weekdays. Her family was everything to her and so weekends were completely family time. But we got mandatory overtime on weekends often. That means she would go for weeks and only seeing her kids for little bits of time. It was heartbreaking and she is one of many. But here is the thing: both women are right. They both are fighting for just causes of equality, just on totally different levels. The hard part is trying to merge the two together because the worlds of the two women are so different from each other.

2. Global feminism is an even further extension to me of what I was talking about at the end of question one. The upper-class woman, the working-class woman...and now the global woman. It reminds me of something someone said to me when I was a kid "there will always be someone who will look at your life like it is a bed of roses." This had a strong impact on me because although I going through struggles, it helped me put into perspective the challenges that I did not face. I still try to maintain this outlook today. Global feminism makes me think of microloans, a concept I first heard about a few years ago. It was in an article about a woman in a third world country who did a weaving craft with her children. They needed to make and sell enough for 22 cents a day in order to eat that day, which consisted of a very minimum amount and type of food (I think it was rice and beans). If they did not make the money they did not eat. And they would never make enough money to eat, buy weaving supplies and have a profit. Never. Until microloans. Somebody somewhere was awesome enough to realize that giving a woman in this situation less than a dollar could literally, LITERALLY, change her life and the lives of her children. This is now a huge endeavor with millions of dollars in microloans usually through global nonprofit initiatives. Here are a couple of videos to illustrate this concept.

It amazes me that amounts of money so small that it is almost meaningless to me (less than a dollar) can have this much impact on somebody. It really puts it all into perspective.

3. No I do not think that women who work at home get depressed because they are not making money for
the family. A pile of money is nothing if you don't know how to use it well and that is what many women do. Many women are experts at efficiency in the home with all of the household duties but especially the grocery and household shopping. She goes to the store knowing exactly which brands of food to buy, which cleaner is best for the price and knows all of the ins and outs of coupons, buy-one-get-one and other sales.

Send her husband, who "makes" the money, to the store with a list AND a budget and see how well he does. There is so much more that goes on AFTER someone gets a paycheck that is just as important to the entire family as the time and effort put into getting the paycheck.