Working for More Than Money

In a recent post over at Double X, Linda Hirshman heralds a new era of working women.  She points out that because of the recession and some very public examples of men failing their stay-at-home wives, women are now re-entering the workforce in higher numbers.  In other words, the “opt-out revolution” is winding down.
I like [...]

Dinner Friday: Quinoa-Stuffed Squash

Winter squash is one of my favorite fall foods.  I especially like the small “single-serve” versions because they require little cleaning and prep — no peeling or chopping, and not a lot of de-seeding.  Stuffing these mini-squash with a mixture of quinoa, onions, vegetables and cheese makes for an easy, hearty, healthy vegetarian meal.
You can [...]

Can Opting Out Be a Feminist Choice?

Last Friday The New York Times ran an article titled “Recession Drives Women Back to Workforce,” profiling several long-time stay at home mothers, all highly educated former professionals, who were re-entering the job market for financial reasons.  The comments, many of them mommy-wars bitter, raised the question: is choosing to stay at home anti-feminist?  As [...]

More Working Mothers = Better Birthrates?

Last week two interesting articles about working mothers in Germany turned up in the London Times and the Globe & Mail.  The pieces pointed out that Germany — for all of the benefits it offers families — is a difficult place for working mothers, who are strongly discouraged from maintaining their careers while their children [...]

Using Our Purchasing Power To Get Real Power

There is a wonderfully optimistic article in this week’s Newsweek about demographic and workforce shifts that are leading women to have significantly greater purchasing power than men.  This is good news for many reasons, but two big ones are that women who have money are more likely to get themselves and their families out of [...]

Should Flex-Time Always Be An Option?

This week an article in the Indianapolis Star reported that Eli Lilly will limit its flexible work program, asking most employees to go back to traditional business hours.  The announcement comes on the heels of a 13% overall reduction in Lilly’s workforce.  Work life advocates are decrying the move, and expressing concern that a previously [...]

Helping Women Take Risks

Over the past few months Deborah Spar, president of Barnard College and former professor at Harvard Business School, has been promoting the idea that if there had been more women on Wall Street, the financial crisis could have been averted.  Her reasoning goes that women are more risk-averse than men — possibly because they have [...]

Going Green for Working Families

Last week in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote an interesting critique of some of the latest eco-living books including No-Impact Man, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet, and Sleeping Naked is Green, all of which set artificial limits on their protagonists to force them to live “greener” lives.  (No Impact Man, for [...]

Back To School = Back to Stress

A few weeks ago I sheepishly approached my boss to let her know that I would need to take a bunch of mornings and afternoons off this week and next for back to school activities.  Between “phase in” (the gradual process of introducing your child to a new school), parent orientation activities, and finding childcare [...]

Changing the Corporate Culture: Mothers Can’t Do It Alone

With reports of more men than women facing lay-offs, there has been optimism from the work life community about the workplace changing to better meet the needs of parents, especially mothers.  An article in The New York Times last week bursts that bubble, pointing out that women were likely to be retained because they are [...]