This is an excellent Broadsheet post.
The New York Times and New York magazine seem to be in an arms race to see who can produce the most stories about laid-off investment bankers (often with retro gender caricatures about the emasculating effects of childcare and the requisite high-maintenance trophy wives). “When hourly wage-earning workers enter these stories,” writes Boushey, it’s usually as ‘perks’ that wealthier families have had to give up — the nanny, the gardener, the nail technician — not as people struggling just to make it through the financial crunch.”…
The relentless focus on professional women’s “choice” in work over the past decade has fed the myth that working for pay is somehow more of an optional exercise in self-actualization than what the vast majority of adults must do to quite literally feed and shelter themselves and their families.
The post at Broadsheet notes, though, that at least some articles are starting to break from this mold. (And it gives lots of links, which I haven’t yet had a chance to read.)
This series of articles not only rightly insists that we focus our attention on the women who need it most, but also offers well-researched, concrete suggestions that can help get us there. Let’s hope it’s part of a new trend.
Thanks, Jender-Parents!
Feminist Philosophers 