Response to Readings for 11/02

These readings were really interesting in the way they each went about describing women and their subservient role in the workforce. In almost each reading, it was very obvious that women were forced by patriarchal systems to have a marginalized role. It is so easy to buy into the arguments made that women are earning close to the same amount as men now a days, but in reality those women selected in the surveys are upper-middle class white women. In reality, women as a whole are still highly discriminated against. In the "Mommy Tax" article, it was shocking the prejudices that women face as a result of becoming a mother and still trying to maintain her career. It is very unfortunate that the United States cannot be on the same page as France and Scandinavian countries with their laws protecting women and mothers in the work place. It was also shocking to see how ineffective welfare actually is in the article, "Knowledge is Power." There are so many preconceived notions about welfare the the good it supposedly does, but after reading this article it become very apparent that it just creates so many loopholes for the recipients that it is almost not worth the while.

The one article that I didn't completely agree with was, "Maid to Order." In it, Ehrenreich blames feminists for the rise in the use of maids and other people to do things that housewives now neglect or don't feel like doing. After reading it, I couldn't help but not that without this transition, many of the women would be out of a job, if there wasn't a demand for maid services. While it may be true that the work can be demeaning, underpaid, and a resulting diffusion of responsibility, it should be noted that at the end of the day, these maids have a job and a lot of them are better off doing that then something else or not getting paid at all.