Elana Lyn Gross from Forbes magazine recently interviewed women
entrepreneurs Anna Auerbach and Annie Dean about the creation of their company Werk. Werk is a consulting firm which advertise and advocates for
flexible work positions in the top job market place for women. Anna says, More than 30% of the most talented women leave the
workforce entirely after having children, but 70% would have kept working if
they had flexibility. And yet, there is no job platform today that focuses on
flexible, career-building work.” (Gross 2017) Annie adds that
when her son was born she was feeling like she was never able to commit the
energy to both areas of responsibility in her life, the professional and her
family, This left her feeling like a failure at work and a bad mom at home.
When Annie and Anna got together they asked the question what the workforce
would look like if it was designed by women. This is how Werk was born.
Forbes is calling this idea the future of feminism because it recognizes
that there is a whole area of labour which is removed from the economic market
which has value but is not being supported. The future of feminism is not just
bringing women into the market place and admitting they can do the same jobs
men can. The future of feminism is recognizing there is work out there that
needs to be recognized and valued as a contributor to the market economy.
My husband Dan and I have two children and we coparent for the
majority of household labour however he is unable to stay home with the kids if
they are sick or take time off to take them to their appointments. It is up to
me to take mat leave, to use my entitlements, and to take time off because my
work is unionized and my entitlements are protected. This is not win/win
however. I have been employed with the government of Saskatchewan for 6 years
and only actually worked for 4. When I got back from my second mat leave a male
coworker with less seniority than me was assigned to temporary assignment of
higher duties in a position I had been trying to build towards since I started.
I am returning to fulltime work and I do worry about my children and their
wellbeing when I am apart from them. To compensate we pay a large amount of
money each month to secure a loving and responsible care taker.
In our course text Sheila Neysmith, Marge Reitsma-Street, Stephanie
Baker Collins, and Elaine Porter coauthored the chapter called Provisioning: Thinking about All Women’s Work, women’s
labour is discussed. What we do know is that women are busy. They are busy in
the market place and they are busy at home. Women contribute the most to
partime, contract, and insecure jobs. Women contribute the most to household
and domestic work, caring work, and volunteer and community work. The term
Provisioning for this team of women conveys the multiple tasks, time required,
and relational dimensions of women’s work in the context of the purpose for
which the work is done. This research aims to identify what work women do, what
the value of the work is and who benefits. (Neysmith Et al. 2004)
When we recognize
the need for flexible positions of meaningful work for women we recognize that
the other labours they do is valuable and we all benefit from them. I think we
should take it one more step and have both male and female workplaces be more pro-family
and flexible so that Fathers can participate more in caring roles. Research has
proven that children benefit from active fathers and my husband is an active
father and is there for us anytime he can be. If his work was more flexible he
would take time to stay home with the kids and take care of the home, however
he says that in construction since it contract to contract you can be easily
replaced or left behind. We require both our incomes to maintain our lifestyle
and if he is not working even for a while we would not be able to take care of
our responsibilities.
The future of
feminism for me is not just recognizing that women are equal to men and
therefore should be included in all levels of the economy. The future is
recognizing the types of work women participate in most are valuable. They are valuable
enough to be compensated. They are valuable enough for men to participate in.
It is not enough to simply remove women from the domestic labour to work in the
economy because then who will do the important roles of caring? Raising
families is important work and if we do not invest in this we risk squandering
human capital and potential. The care, raising and nurturing of humans must be
balanced with the advancement of the economy. I mean, who will work and who
will buy?
No comments:
Post a Comment