The following is the fifth post in a series covering aspects and angles on the DC Women’s Agenda’s recent white paper, Voices and Choices for D.C. Women and Girls: Recommendations for City Leaders 2007. The DC Women’s Agenda promotes the advancement, equality and well-being of women in D.C. This series of blogs is an extension of a very important proposal of recommendations to city leaders to truly make tangible changes in the Washington metropolitan area.
There has always been a conversation around working mothers and the balance between protecting their career growth and being able to spend time with loved ones.
Most of us would prefer more flexibility at work, so that we could go to every one of our daughter’s ballet recitals or our son’s little league games, or heck, even a PTA meeting every once in while.
But when our hands our tied, putting food on the table and a roof over our heads tends to be a higher priority.
If everyone could have it all, I’m sure they would. For most though–and particularly for low income families–they can’t.
It is because of this that the Washington Post article, “Part-Time Looks Fine to Working Mothers: 60% Prefer it to Full Time or No Job” falls short in accounting for the true realities of women–and particularly low-income women–to say the least.
The article reviews a recent study that claims that the proportion of working mothers who prefer to work part-time has jumped by 12 percentage points since 1997. More importantly, despite the fact that 60 percent of working moms find working part-time as the ideal, only 24 percent of them have part-time hours.
The article attributes the cause for these numbers as being due to a differing value system that Generation X possesses over the Baby Boomers. As Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, claims, “We found that the younger people are more family-centric than Boomers are. Most young people have seen someone lose their job, and they have lived through 9/11. It’s not that they don’t want to work. They just want to work more flexibly.”
But what the article nonchalantly sweeps under the rug is that taking part-time hours “has meant some financial cutbacks and compromises,” which most low-income (or even moderate income) mothers can’t afford. The article explains, “Jackie Wyche, a married mother of four in Stafford who took part in the research, said part-time work is best — even though it is simply not possible in her life. ‘I have to pay the bills,’ she said. She wishes it were different.”
So, let’s make a difference and provide job training to mobilize women so that one day they may have the ability to weigh their options–which many cannot do as they work for low, hourly wages, do not have paid sick or vacation time and often, have little to no health insurance.
Much of today’s workforce–a large proportion of this working mothers–cannot afford to take a day off work sick, much less cut back to part-time.
Currently, according to the Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s Portrait Project, 65 percent of women in the D.C. area are employed. Yet, a third of women-headed families who work (which tends to be the trend of low-income mothers) are impoverished and 11 percent of women in D.C. are unemployed.
Many of these working women have dead end jobs that pay low wages and offer no benefits.
These women are therefore stuck in a vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. As the DCWA white paper explains, these jobs “keep working poor persons well below the poverty line and just one small step ahead of homelessness. In fact, 31.6 percent of homeless DC adult residents are employed.”
They’re holding on by a thread and we need to do something about it.
Funding for job training, particularly for low-income women, would:
- Provide women, especially mothers, with the skills that they’ll need to advance in a career that provides self-sufficiency and mobility in the company–not just a job;
- Improve literacy and basic education levels;
- Help women overcome barriers to living wage employment, such as child care, mental and physical health problems, a lack of a driver’s license, and housing;
- Assist trainees in developing soft skills such as better communication, team building, self-esteem and better confidence to help them progress and advance in higher paying, more stable careers;
- Provide job development support to ensure that trainees can search for and obtain a position within their chosen career path in the future; and,
- Create networks to link trainees with jobs in high-demand sectors and which pay at least $11.75 per hour ( D.C.’s new living wage) and offer benefits.
Contact your D.C. councilmember and tell them that we value our families and a healthy work-family balance for all of the working mothers in the District of Columbia. Tell them that one of the best ways of accomplishing that is through job training to mobilize working mothers so that they can afford to scale their options and remain self-sufficient.
For more information on how job training programs funded with support from The Women’s Foundation are making a difference in the lives of women throughout our community:
Constructing futures, one woman at a time.
Street Sense vendor finds a stepping stone in Goodwill course.
WAWIT: Welding a new world for women.
Women hammering their way to social change, not just another job.
The DC Women’s Agenda, DC Employment Justice Center and Wider Opportunities for Women are all Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation.
About the blogger:
Natasha Pendleton is a summer intern with Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), a convenor of the DC Women’s Agenda. She is currently a senior attaining a bachelor of arts degree in sociology with concentrations in law and society and urban and regional planning at Cornell University. She serves as theatrical director of an anti-oppression theatre troop, which performs for more than 5,000 people nationwide (annually) to promote diversity and racial harmony on college campuses. A native of Chicago, Natasha was motivated to come to Washington, D.C. this summer to work with WOW by issues of social and economic justice that have pressed upon her heart for some time. Natasha truly believes that not only is the government accountable, but it is our responsibility to be informed citizens to challenge the state of local policy. And furthermore, as those informed citizens, it is our responsibility to raise voices and awareness so that all people, especially women and girls, can live in safe, fair, and thriving communities.
