I chose pretty badly, so, yes, I am very glad that my being able to work makes me economically independent. Even better though would be to belong to a society that did not make me choose between survival and work when I want to spend some time with my kids.
I had two kids and had to go back to work full time when they were three months old. Very, very painful. I would call it barbaric except it's worse than that. And, I was lucky. Many women have to go back to work almost immediately.
Joanna
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>>the big change in the labor force participation
>>>
>>>
>rate
>
>
>>during the last 5
>>decades or so has been the shift of women from
>>producing use-values at
>>home to producing exchange-values in market-oriented
>>businesses. The
>>former work does not get counted as part of the
>>labor force, but the
>>latter does not.
>>
>>
>
>That is a good thing, no? Unremunerated housework to
>reproduce labor power is a form of slavery, no? At
>least when this work is being sold on the market it is
>not only paid for, but the terms of its delivery can
>be negotiated and regulated. That is seldom the case
>in unremunerated housework.
>
>As to "proving" I agree it is too strong a word in
>this context. "Is consistent with Brad's argument"
>would be a better choice. This, however, is far from
>being a mere statistical coincidence either, as there
>are good theoretical reason why restrictions on
>layoffs keep unemployment rates high. First there is
>already "internal unemployment" within a firm i.e.
>employees working below their capacity during the
>downturns of business cycles - so the firm can simply
>increase their workload instead of hiring new people
>when business picks up. Second, hiring new people in
>that situation carries additional risk and cost during
>downturns - so the firms have an incentive to hire as
>few new people as it can get away with. That leads to
>a prediction of higher unempleyment rates, and that
>predicition is consistent with, or at least not
>contradicted by the data.
>
>As I said before, we can argue whether higher
>employment rate is always a good thing - in some
>situations (e.g. retirees having to work) it clearly
>is not. But there are many situations when it is a
>good thing - especially when it comes to women. There
>is a good reason why the "original" feminists (as
>opposed to the pomo multi-culti variety) struggled for
>the women's right to work. Earning income increases
>women's social status and power in the household, and
>makes women independent of men's will - and these are
>definitely good things. In fact, women participation
>in labor force in the US is higher than in most EU
>countries (except Scandinavia) - and it is no
>coincidence that Europeans often perceive US women as
>having "too much power." If lower employment rates
>in EU welfare states mean women staying home as
>housewives, I'd rather keep the US-style
>neo-liberalism where they "have to" work.
>
>Wojtek
>
>
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