Wednesday, October 3, 2007

HW#17 Mum's the Word: Are Childless Women Hostile to Working Moms?

I chose the Jezabel blog to report on today. The post I chose is titled Mum’s the Word: Are Childless Women Hostile to Working Moms. The website where this can be found is as follows: http://jezebel.com/gossip/mums-the-word/are-childless-women-hostile-to-working-moms-301574.php I chose this post because I thought it was interesting. Ben Black was mentioned in the blog, he is the founder of the UK child-care company who produced “The Working Mothers’ Report.” It showed how working mothers can be hated by workers that aren’t moms. It also brought up an interesting thought about how today’s society doesn’t account for families and parenting. The world just keeps spinning and the day must go on. It talks about how the non moms have to pick up the slack when the moms are away picking up kids or going to rehearsals. But did the workers ever think that they are not even close to what the mother workers have to go through in a day. We all shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The mother worker is at work at home and at work. She has to keep track of her kids and their activities while keeping up with her workload from work. Women are just fighting against each other when they should be supporting each other. As it is stated in the quote from the report:
“The report paints a picture of women undermining and undercutting each other, vying for advancement and some times filled with resentment.”
In response to the above quote a UK feminist Louise Livesey posted her reaction on her blog called The F Word. I found her reaction very amusing and true in all ways possible.
“Why (oh why, oh why) is it that it's women being compared to women here?" But we know exactly why: Because we're all guilty of what Tina Fey, in Mean Girls, called "girl on girl crime". In some ways, the world is the same it was in 4th grade: Catty, sneaky, full of judgments, gloating over microvictories and contests of one-upmanship.”
It is amazing how such a silly statement that was found in a movie would be so true and so hurtful. We all are victims and we all are the victimizers. Is it a flaw in society or just a flaw in us? That is the question and how are we able to fix this hostility? These are many questions we have not yet been able to answer.

1 comment:

Tracy Mendham said...

It's nice that you provided the permalink so readers can read the post themselves...this is an interesting, problematic issue.
Indent long quotes--and when you have quotes within quotes, be careful that you're attributing the right part to the correct author. It's a little foggy towards the end here.