They have been angry before. But now they are taking to the streets and
speaking out in numbers not seen in decades: American mothers are on the
march.
Take Jenny Kaleczyc, a Montana lawyer and mother of two. Last month she went
to Helena, the state capital, to demand that state and local governments
provide unpaid break time for mothers to pump breast milk — and somewhere
other than a toilet cubicle to pump it in.
Erin Faunce-Stoltzfus set off with her two young sons on a two-hour car ride
from her home in Pennsylvania to Washington one recent morning to join a
rally demanding paid sick days for workers across the US. She wasn’t alone.
More than 17,000 women sent messages to their US senators supporting the
legislation. The direct action has been ignited by MomsRising, a new
internet-based group that is bringing fresh energy to long-fought battles
over childcare, healthcare, sex discrimination and other issues.
“This is about feeling powerful and knowing that together we can make a
difference,” says Joan Blades, a mother of two who co-founded the group last
May. Blades helped to start MoveOn.org, the left-wing political group that
used the internet to build a grass-roots movement and activate millions of
voters, and she hopes to do the same for mothers, making it easier to sign
petitions, send e-mails, organise demonstrations and learn about issues.
“The telephone on steroids, I sometimes call it.”
MomsRising has quickly grown to more than 80,000 members and Blades thinks it
could reach one million — or even more. Women are encouraged to host small
house parties to watch The Motherhood Manifesto , a documentary film
that sets out the challenges of modern American motherhood and ways to solve
them. They are also invited to rallies, hearings, even “nurse-ins” hastily
organised last November at airports after a woman was kicked off a flight
for refusing to cover up sufficiently while breast-feeding.
“MomsRising really sparked me,” says Faunce-Stoltzfus, who was politically
active as a student but less involved as she focused on work and then
building a family. “It really got me going again.”
“What is astounding about MomsRising is how fast they’ve made a difference,”
says Jodie Levin-Epstein at the Centre for Law and Social Policy in
Washington. “It’s not just a list. It’s a list that takes action.”
“MomsRising is definitely getting noticed and listened to in the halls of
Congress,” says Laura Capps, a leading aide to Senator Edward Kennedy, a
chief proponent of the paid sick leave law.
Until now, most of the energy among activist women has been in the battle to
protect abortion rights, which peaked in 1989 when hundreds of thousands
marched on Washington. The new “mommy muscle” groups are building ties to
research centres and policy wonks, as well as to established feminist
groups. They are even calling for a ceasefire in the “mommy wars” — the
tension, often hyped by the media, between working and stay-at-home mothers.
Part of the enthusiasm in the “mommy” movement comes from the prominent role
that mothers are taking in US politics. Nancy Pelosi, who in January became
the first female Speaker of the House, is a mother and grandmother (“Don’t
make me use my ‘mother of five’ voice,” she jokes to unruly crowds). Hillary
Clinton is trying to ditch her early reputation as a tough liberal feminist,
highlighting a more gentle, motherly side.
There are other explanations. Good, affordable childcare and healthcare have
long been worries for poor people. But with more families in which both
parents work, and fewer employers covering family medical costs, anxiety has
spread to large swaths of the middle class. And young mothers who thought
that an earlier generation of feminists had sorted things out for them are
discovering that the work-life balance remains difficult.
The new networks are also showing American women how far they lag behind the
rest of the world. The US does not guarantee paid leave for mothers after
childbirth, placing it among five of 173 countries studied in a report by
McGill University. The others were Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and
Swaziland. Nor is the US among the 107 countries that protect a working
woman’s right to breast-feed, or the 137 that mandate paid annual leave. A
forthcoming study from two Cornell University sociology professors offers
proof of a “motherhood penalty” when it comes to getting a job. They
responded to real job ads with CVs and covering letters from a pair of
fictitious, equally qualified applicants, who differed in one respect: one
listed “parent-teacher association co-ordinator” among her activities, while
the other was described as a fundraiser for a neighbourhood association. The
results were stark: childless women received 2.1 times as many callbacks as
equally qualified mothers. There is even a new push to pass the Equal Rights
Amendment, the 1972 Act that fell three votes short of enactment and stalled
in the 1980s.
“When people realise that this is not normal, that what we’ve assumed to be
normal is in fact not, it makes it much easier to say, ‘Oh, OK’ and get
involved,” says Blades.
Kaleczyc and a friend organised a cake sale at the state capitol, at which
people were asked to pay for their biscuits and cakes on a scale that
reflects the wage gap that women face: $1 for men, 73 cents for mothers, 60
cents for single mothers, 50 cents for Native American women.
They plan to use the $75 they raised to buy changing tables for women’s and
men’s lavatories in the capitol building, or to cover the costs of a
lunchtime screening of the film for state officials.
MomsRising hopes to make itself a force in the 2008 presidential election,
pushing candidates to talk about how they would tackle the issues. The group
is also fighting battles across the states, bringing its national strength
to women such as Kiki Peppard, who has waged a ten-year battle in
Pennsylvania to make it illegal to ask women if they have children and if
they are married when they apply for jobs.
With all that, Blades recognises that there is one more thing she must do, and
soon: start a dads’ group. Already, 5 per cent of MomsRising members are
men. “But we need to make a place where men feel comfortable too,” she says.
“These are family issues.”
Women fighting for women
–– Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel
formed the Women’s Party in 1917. After the campaign for women’s suffrage
(in 1918 women over 30 got the vote), they fought for women’s employment
rights, equal marriage and divorce laws, and maternity benefits.
–– Margaret Sanger was an American birth-control
activist. She opened the first birth-control clinic in the US in 1916. It
was raided and she spent 30 days in prison. Sanger died in 1966, a few
months before birth control was legalised for married couples.
–– Cherie Blair is a working mum and in her capacity as an
employment lawyer she has called for changes in the law to improve the
“intolerable burden” on women in the workplace. She has stressed that
employers will have to find ways of implementing family-friendly practices.
It's a progressive idea. I have not a wife and children but a few years and i hope i will have. When my child will born i would like a better world. But we must be careful that the balance is changing easily and the women are able to everithing.
greg grosz, budapest, hungary
Let's Start a Women of the World Day. Let all women in every State march on a special day and voice our feelings for change though out our country as well as the world. Then each and every year at the same time we will meet again and again until things change for the better. We are voters, as well as consumers, In this area we can make our voices heard. Yours truly, Sally Reilly
Sally Reilly, New York, New York