women & work:

New study criticizes media coverage of "opt out" trend:
WorkLife Law experts say workplace/workforce mismatch and gender bias push mothers out of the paid workforce

Related news and commentary on women & work/life issues

child care:

National study: Non-maternal child care has little impact on
children's healthy development
Researchers find family characteristics are more influential

Related articles

mothers & mothering:

Selected news and commentary

women & girls:

New survey finds U.S. girls face mounting pressures from
gender stereotypes

Other news and commentary
on women's representation in mainstream and progressive media,
gender and violence, more.

social policy:

Articles on the Next New Deal, child care, health care, marriage promotion spending, regulating snack food and more.

time & money:

The summer of "staycation," income inequality, more.

reproductive health & rights:

Selected articles on pregnant women's rights, genetic selection,
anti-abortion activism, more.

New study criticizes media coverage of "opt out" trend

WorkLife Law experts say workplace/workforce mismatch and gender bias push mothers out of the paid workforce

Based on a systematic analysis of over 100 news articles, a new report from the Center for Work Life Law at UC Hastings College of Law finds that since 1980, major press coverage of women and work-life conflict has failed to tell the full story of why women leave the workforce. The study recommends and provides background data for a more accurate, alternative story line that counters misleading reports of women happily trading in their careers for at-home motherhood. According to "Opt Out or Pushed Out?: How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict, media coverage highlighting mothers' choices to work less or stay home full time obscures the real structural and cultural factors that squeeze mothers out of the full-time workforce and lock fathers into the primary breadwinner role. Overall, the study's authors found that "Opt out stories continue to depict women as wisely recognizing they cannot be 'supermoms'," reinforcing a narrative of gender, work and family that "leaves inflexible workplaces, unsupportive husbands, and failures of public policy below the horizon, silently taking them for granted." As they explain in their introduction,

Our review of these articles finds that the Opt Out story predominates in American newspapers, which focus overwhelmingly on psychological or biological "pulls" that lure women back into traditional roles, rather than workplace "pushes" that drive them out. Furthermore, Opt Out stories focus overwhelmingly on white, affluent women with white-collar jobs, a skewed demographic from which to draw conclusions about the majority of women in work, given that only about 8% of American women hold such jobs… Additionally, Opt Out stories are often presented as soft human interest stories that underplay the serious economic consequences of female unemployment to society, to the women themselves, and to their families.

Instead of more trend stories on high-potential women being pulled out of the professional workforce by the magnet of maternal love, "Opt Out" or Pushed Out? suggests the stories that ought to appear on the front page and in business sections of leading newspapers include the macroeconomic problems posed by systematic deskilling of a critical sector of the U.S. labor force, the workplace/workforce mismatch created by increasing and competing demands for workers' time, the position of the United States as an outlier among industrialized nations in providing public policies and social insurance to support workers with family responsibilities (and the potential impact on the ability of the U.S. to compete in the global market), the prevalence and effects of subtle and overt gender bias in the workplace on both male and female workers, and the serious, long-term economic and employment consequences of "downshifting" or "sequencing."

The material and conclusions in "Opt Out" or Pushed Out? will be all too familiar to regular MMO readers, but the authors do an excellent job of summarizing the subtext of the "Opt Out" narrative and patterns of reporting that minimize or erase the role of inflexible, all-or-nothing workplaces, public policy and gender bias in limiting women's work opportunities. For readers who are not activists or journalists, the CWLL report offers valuable insights into the hidden cultural narratives we perpetuate when we talk about mothering in a certain way, particularly when we talk about work and family as "choices:"

…[C]hoice and discrimination are not mutually exclusive. People who experience discrimination must still make choices within the reality of their lives, but a choice by someone who is stuck between a rock and a hard place cannot be considered a free choice or a choice based solely on the desires of the chooser, with no regard to the context in which the choice is made.

Mothers' choices often occur with the context of family responsibilities discrimination. This analysis sheds new light on the common complaint that mothers are asking for "special treatment." Sometimes, far from asking for special treatment, mothers are asking to be treated the same as other similarly situated co-workers.

Of course, the real story of women and work/life conflict is not a cheerful or reassuring tale of women getting what they want and families being better off for it. It is an unnerving and very often disturbing story of entrenched resistance to interrupting the gendered distribution of social and earning power, the failure of the market, the failure of legal protections to assure women's equal opportunity and treatment in the workplace, the failure of policymakers to address the pressing realities of the changing economy and workforce, and the looming economic and human crisis Americans face because of it. And, shit, who wants to hear about that?

The lead author of the report was Joan C. Williams, author of Unbending Gender and several important studies on maternal wall discrimination.

Center for WorkLife Law
www.worklifelaw.org

"Opt Out" or Pushed Out? How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict
The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Workforce
Joan C. Williams, Jessica Manvell and Stephanie Bornstein
Center for WorkLife Law, October 2006.
Full report, 69 pages in .pdf

“Opt Out” or Pushed Out? --
The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Workforce
Press Release, 13.oct.06. 3 pages in .pdf

Also from the Center for WorkLife Law:

Current Law Prohibits Discrimination Based on Family Responsibilities
& Gender Stereotyping
Issue Brief, Summer 2006. 7 pages in .pdf

Litigating the Maternal Wall:
U.S. Lawsuits Charging Discrimination against Workers with Family Responsibilities
Mary C. Still, July 2006. 20 pages in .pdf

One Sick Child Away From Being Fired:
When “Opting Out” Is Not an Option
Joan C. Williams, March 2006. 52 pages in .pdf

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More news and commentary on women & work/life issues

Maternal Profiling
Cooper Munroe, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 17.sept.06
How, in this day and age, can Pennsylvania allow employers to make hiring decisions based on whether a woman has children?

Work-life leader is firm on need for flexibility
Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe/Boston Works, 24.sept.06
"As a director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Kathleen Christensen has given away $90 million in the past dozen years to scholars, nonprofits, and nonpartisan advocacy groups in the burgeoning field of work-life… That means her questions about work and family -- what can we do to help parents juggling two jobs, plus the work of the home? How do our work-life needs change over time? -- have shaped the course of this field. And the fruits of her research agenda -- the headlines or company benefits inspired by Sloan studies -- directly influence our dinner-table talk and our lives."

Dueling Data on Women and Work
Inside Higher Education, 4.Oct.06
"A New York Times article last fall managed to offend just about everyone. Its thesis -- that women at elite colleges increasingly plan to leave the work force when they have children -- angered many feminists, and media critics accused the Times of publishing anecdotes masquerading as social science. A new study suggests that the article also overstated the number of women who hope to leave the workforce long-term."

Lawyers Who Take Time Off Face Tough Return
Alexia Garamfalvi, Law.com, 22.sept.06
With associate attrition rates still high, programs to bring lawyers back into the fold are attracting new interest. Interview with Joan Williams of the Center for WorkLife Law.

Getting Back on Track
Daniel McGinn, Newsweek/MSNBC, 25.sept.06
Women who take career 'off ramps' to raise children often have trouble finding 'on ramps' when they are ready to work again. Now companies in need of talent are finally addressing the problem.

Plateauing: Redefining Success at Work
Knowledge@Wharton, 4.oct.06
"A number of men and women in middle management are increasingly reluctant to take the next step in their careers because the corporate ladder is not as appealing as it used to be, and the price to climb it is too high." (Free registration required to read.)

More Like Life: Redefining work for a new age
Debra Wierenga, Jugglezine, 11.oct.06
"Why do we put work and life on opposite sides of the scale? Why don't we worry ourselves silly over 'leisure/life balance'? I'm starting to think that I don't really want to balance work and life; I want to mash them together. I want work to be spelled l-i-f-e."

One Less Eye On Inequality
Marcia D. Greenberger, TomPaine.com, 2.oct.06
"For the last five years, the Bush administration has repeatedly undermined laws and policies that support workplace equality for women. The latest blow in this continual assault came when the Department of Labor announced that it would eliminate a critical anti-discrimination tool, the Equal Opportunity Survey, which is needed to ensure that companies receiving federal dollars provide equal employment opportunities to their workers."

A business decision: Be female or be funny
Eileen Boylen, Boston Globe/BostonWorks, 1.oct.06
"My female colleagues and I often lamented the differing perspectives regarding male and female humor. Katie Couric was a popular topic. People said she was a ``lightweight" because she giggled on-air. Ronald Reagan costarred with a chimpanzee in ``Bedtime for Bonzo," yet we elected him president. JFK appeared in drag at the Hasty Pudding Club. People thought he was pretty smart, too. It was the same in our organization. Men who displayed a lighter side were still taken seriously, while women were not."

Study: Most women-owned U.S. firms based at home
Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters, 27.sept.06
"Nearly half of all U.S. businesses are run from home, and most companies owned by women are home-based, according to a government report."

White-Collar Workers Unite!
Rina Palta, AlterNet, 10.oct.06
Barbara Ehrenreich's new organization seeks better health care, insurance and debt relief for unemployed and underemployed professionals.

Fewer Parents Encourage Kids To Follow Their Career Footsteps
Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal/Career Journal, 22.sept.06
"More parents are leaving their children a new kind of legacy: No career footsteps to follow. 'Going into the same field as your parent is less common than it was' in the past, says Darrell Anthony Luzzo, president-elect of the National Career Development Association and a senior executive of Junior Achievement, a career-building organization for youth."

Jeers for Nestlé chief over lack of top women
Andrew Hill, Financial Times/MSNBC, 8.oct.06
"Peter Brabeck, chief executive of Nestlé, came under fire from women at a conference in France after he told them that the world's largest food group, most of whose customers are women, had no female managers on its executive board. …His speech, which was well-received, welcomed the increasing influence of 'female values' because 'their [women's] way of thinking and acting fits well with new societal and business requirements, such as flatter hierarchies.'"

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National study: non-maternal child care has little impact on
children's healthy development

Researchers find family characteristics are more influential

The National Institute of Child Health & Human Development recently published a summary of findings from a 15-year study of the effects of child care on children's social development and learning readiness. The 62 page report is targeted to parents and the general public and explains key findings for children from birth to age 4.5 from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Overall, researchers found only a mild connection between non-maternal child care and young children's developmental outcomes -- family characteristics and children experiences within their families appear to matter more.

And there it is, spelled out in bold type at the top of page one: "Children who were cared for exclusively by their mothers did not develop differently than those who were also cared for by others." Not that this is likely to put an end to the debate over whether or not daycare is harmful to children, particularly when press coverage of the very same study tends to highlight the modest negative effects of child care on specific groups of children (such as children from higher income families or those that spend longer than average hours in day care). There is strong evidence, however, that family characteristics -- including parent's income and level of education -- has a more significant impact on children's sociability and aptitude at age four:

Parent and family characteristics were more strongly linked to child development than were child care features. And, parent and family characteristics predicted some developmental outcomes that were not predicted by child care. For instance, children showed more cognitive, language, and social competence and more harmonious relationships with parents when parents were more educated, had higher incomes, and provided home environments that were emotionally supportive and cognitively enriched, and when mothers experienced little psychological distress.

Family and parenting experiences were as important to the well-being of children who had extensive child care experience as family and parenting experiences were for children with little or no child care experience.

The report did find a modest relationship between the quality, quantity, and type of non-maternal care and children’s development regardless of family factors. Children in higher quality care had better language and cognitive development and were slightly more cooperative in classroom settings than those who received lower quality care. Children who spent longer that average hours in non-maternal care exhibited slightly more behavior problems in day care and kindergarten, as did children who attended center-based programs (although children in center based care had better cognitive and language development than those who experienced other kinds of non-maternal care).

The study included children from socio-economically diverse families: 40 percent of the children who entered the study in 1991 were poor or near poor, although by the time children reached aged 4.5 that number had dropped to 23 percent (both because some families' incomes increased, and some poor families dropped out of the study). Notably, 85 percent of children studied lived in families with married mothers, although the effects of paternal characteristics and interactions with children were not specifically studied (in fact, the SECCYD study defines "child care" as "any care provided on a regular basis by someone other than the child’s mother."). Mothers in the study were also somewhat more likely to be highly educated than mothers in the general population. 23 percent of the children included in the study were children of color.

Parents and mothers advocates will find this booklet extremely helpful for understanding the intent, methodology and robust findings of this major (and widely reported on) national study. The report very clearly explains the difference between results that suggest association, correlation and causation in social science research, and should be required reading for journalists who cover child care and family issues. The booklet also provides a bulleted list of the study's findings on the characteristics of quality caregiving, which researchers define as "positive care," and shows that only 39 percent of the children in the study received "a fair amount" or "a lot" of positive care while in child care settings. A checklist for parents in search of quality child care is also provided.

According to a related press release, "Children did better if mothers were more sensitive, responsive, and attentive. And mothers were more likely to be like this if they were more educated, lived in more economically advantaged households, and had more positive personalities." Of course, the fact that NICHD researchers did not give equal weight to the effects of fathers' sensitivity, responsiveness and attentiveness on children's outcomes is unforgivable (especially for a study funded by taxpayer dollars), and reveals a major flaw in an otherwise important long-term study. For more on what child development researchers actually study when they evaluate maternal sensitivity and responsiveness, see MMO's September 2006 interview with Jane Waldfogel, author of What Children Need.

National Institute of Child Health & Human Development
www.nichd.nih.gov

The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD):
Findings for Children up to Age 4 1/2 Years
62 pages in .pdf

Family Characteristics Have More Influence on Child Development
Than Does Experience in Child Care
Press release, NICHD, 3.oct.06

Also from NICHD:

Adventures in Parenting
"Based on decades of NICHD research on parenting, this 62-page booklet gives parents the tools they need to make their own decisions about successful parenting. The booklet provides real-world examples and stories about how some families include responding, preventing, monitoring, modeling, and mentoring in their own daily parenting activities." An interesting alternative to off-the-shelf parenting advice, this guide offers further information on the characteristics of parental sensitivity, responsiveness and attentiveness. Available in print, .pdf and html formats (free).

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Related articles:

The Welfare Nanny Diaries
Rinku Sen, AlterNet, 28.sept.06
Low-income women and child-care workers are the missing component in the whole debate about working vs. stay-at-home mothers.

NY lawyer invents latest way to spy on nannies
Reuters, 19.oct.06
Just as trucking companies put signs on their vehicles asking the public to report unsafe drivers, parents can now put license plates on their baby strollers to get feedback on the behavior of their nannies.

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Selected news and commentary

The breast of times
Judith Woodburn, Salon, 18.sept.06
I've nursed my son through four birthdays now. I know what the critics say, but it's what he wants.

Mommie fearest
Heather Havrilesky, Salon, 2.oct.06
I'm due in four weeks and if the predictions of my mother friends are accurate, I should feel like a total impostor, a crappy mom, a complete failure.

'Gifted Child Industry' Preys on Parents' Insecurities
Helaine Olen, AlterNet, 18.oct.06
Even as a lucrative industry is making millions off of parents' desire to ensure that their kids are exceptional, public schools are cutting programs for children that are truly gifted.

The Outsourced Parent: The hands-free, do-nothing, price-is-no-object guide
to rearing a child from conception to college.
New York Magazine, 25.sept.06
"Perhaps you’ve been told that having a child is a 24-hour-a-day job. But it doesn’t have to be your job—not for a moment. Nannies have been around for centuries, but in New York—the leading edge of parental avoidance—it is now possible to outsource more-advanced child-rearing functions as well, such as shopping for clothing, going on college visits, and even initiating those awkward talks about, well, you know. How much would it cost to replace yourself entirely for eighteen years—until your child’s driver drops him off at the dorm? Here’s a rough (indeed) analysis."

Fighting Over the Kids:
Battered spouses take aim at a controversial custody strategy
Sarah Childress, Newsweek/MSNBC, 25.sept.06
"Many parents nationwide …have lost custody due to a controversial concept known as parental alienation. Under the theory, children fear or reject one parent because they have been corrupted or coached to lie by the other. Parental alienation is now the leading defense for parents accused of abuse in custody cases, according to domestic-violence advocates. And it's working."

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American Girls:
New survey finds U.S. girls face mounting pressures from gender stereotypes

A new report from Girls Incorporated -- a national non-profit group which "inspires all girls to be strong, smart, and bold" -- finds that girls in grades 3 through 12 "experience intense pressures to be everything to everyone all the time:"

While stereotypes about girl's leadership capabilities and math and science abilities appear to have diminished in the past six years, expectations about physical perfection -- dressing "right" and being thin -- seem to have increased simultaneously. Stereotypes about girls needing to speak softly, not brag, and to play caretaker roles seem to persist. Society seems to be making some room for girls to transcend traditional expectations about abilities and aspirations, just as long as they also conform to conventional notions of femininity.

The study, The Supergirl Dilemma: Girls Grapple with the Mounting Pressure of Expectations (October 2006), also found that boys and girls have different perceptions of pressures to conform to gender norms. "Girls and boys believe that girls are supposed to be kind and caring, while boys are supposed to protect themselves and others." While girls' top concerns about gender stereotyping ("People think girls care a lot about shopping"; "Girls are supposed to be kind and caring"; "Girls are under a lot of pressure to dress the right way"; "Girls are under a lot of pressure to please everyone"; "Parents want girls to play with dolls, not trucks and action figures") were fairly consistent across race and ethnicity, high school girls were more aware and more likely to feel pressure to conform to gender expectations than younger girls (although girls in elementary school reported that they experienced many of the same worries and pressures.). The survey also found that with the exception of the belief that "girls are supposed to be kind are caring," an overwhelming majority of girls disliked being stereotyped.

Other key findings of the study:

• Nearly 2 out of 5 girls agreed that "people think girls don't know how to take care of their own money"

• More than one-third of girls agreed that "people think that the most important thing for girls is to get married and have children" and "people don't think girls are good leaders."

• Half of all girls agreed that "people think girls are only interested in love and romance" and that girls are expected to spend a lot of time on housework or caring for younger siblings.

• Based on results of a similar survey conducted in 2000, the report finds that pressures on girls to be pretty and dress the right way, to please everyone and to be thin have increased in the last six years.

• Pressures to be thin, dress the right way and please everyone were most acute for girls in grades 6 through 12, but half of all girls in grades 3 to 5 felt pressure to be thin and between two-thirds and three-quarters of elementary age girls said they felt pressure to dress the right way and please everyone.

• Nearly three-quarters of high school girls reported that they attended schools where "boys think they have a right to discuss girls' bodies in public."

• 71 percent of girls aspired to go to college full time, but only 66 percent expected to be able to do so. Only 15 percent expected to get married after high school, and only 7 percent aspired to have a child (although 11 percent expected to).

• Both girls and boys were far more worried about being in a car accident (40 and 29 percent, respectively) than being in a terrorist attack (18 and 14 percent).

Perhaps the brightest spot in the otherwise dismal "Supergirl" report is that only 1 out of every 5 boys who took the survey agreed that "boys are not supposed to be kind and caring." On the other hand, two-thirds of boys agreed that "people think boys are weird if they want to be nurses and kindergarten teachers." Girls were also more likely to be worried that going to college "will be too expensive for me" (56 percent) than about not being able to find a boyfriend (30 percent).

PDF versions of the full report and executive summary of The Supergirl Dilemma may be purchased for download from the Girls Inc. web site. (Girls Incorporated was formerly the Girls Club of America.)

Girls Incorporated
www.girlsinc.org

The Supergirl Dilemma:
Girls Feel the Pressure To Be Perfect, Accomplished, Thin, and Accommodating
Press Release, 12.oct.06

Also from Girls Inc.:

Taking the Lead: Girls Rights in the 21st Century
Booklet, 19 pages in .pdf

Girls Bill of Rights
available in seven languages

Girls Bill of Rights Fact Sheet
6 Pages in .pdf

Tips for Parents to Help Girls Achieve Their Rights

History of Girls Incorporated

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Other news and commentary on women & girls

Do men really want wives like June Cleaver?
MSNBC, Today Show, 28.sept.06
In the ‘50s, the ideal wife stayed home, cleaned, cooked, and cared for the kids. Dr. Gail Saltz, a ‘Today’ contributor, says that may be a male fantasy. Video and transcript.

The Byline Gender Gap
Ann Friedman, AlterNet, 10.oct.06
It's time for progressive editors to stop paying lip service to the idea of gender parity and start making some real changes. "When it comes time to make story assignments, when are editors (myself included) most likely to think about assigning to a woman? When the subject matter is "hearth and home," of course. Mother Jones crunched the numbers and found that about a third of stories with women’s bylines were articles on gender and family, or were fiction or memoirs."

Single-gender schools on the rise
Pauline Vu, Stateline.org, 19.sept.06
The number of public schools experimenting with single-sex education is still small but has shot up in recent years – from five to at least 241 in the last decade – as districts in more than half the states take the chance that separating boys and girls will help students learn better. "These moves coincided with the release of “brain-based” research, sometimes based on animal behavior, that showed boys and girls have inherent differences that also make their learning styles different. For example, said physician and NASSPE director Leonard Sax, girls learn best while sitting and boys while moving. Girls’ brains also respond better to detail and color, while boys are better at processing motion and direction."

Media Women at Standstill? More Waiting Won't Work
Sheila Gibbons, Women's eNews, 18.oct.06
A clutch of new studies and data add to the steady drip-drip-drip of discouraging findings about women in the news business. Sheila Gibbons says study groups and clock watching are out; pressure tactics should begin.

Latina Anti-Violence Groups Open Arms to Men
Juhie Bhatia, Women's eNews, 15.oct.06
Latino groups fighting domestic violence have grown from memorializing a murdered bride to actively recruiting men to their cause. Third in a three-part series on domestic violence prevention.

Coverage of 'School Shootings' Avoids the Central Issue
Jackson Katz, Common Dreams, 11.oct.06
"In the many hours devoted to analyzing the recent school shootings, once again we see that as a society we seem constitutionally unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge a simple but disturbing fact: these shootings are an extreme manifestation of one of contemporary American society’s biggest problems -- the ongoing crisis of men’s violence against women."

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Social policy:

The Next New Deal, plus other news and commentary

Families Valued
Karen Kornbluh, Democracy Journal, Fall 2006
"Over the past generation the American family has changed dramatically, but the policies designed to mitigate the risks it faces have remained frozen in time, many of them operating on rules developed in the midst of the Great Depression. As a result, the most vulnerable families in the new economy all too often wind up with limited protection in times of need." Free registration required.

The Child Care Crisis
Ruth Rosen, TomPaine.com, 3.oct.06
"The 'Child Care Crisis'—the absence of anyone to care for America’s children, elderly and disabled—has turned into the new millennium’s version of the 'Problem That Has No Name.' It is the 800-pound elephant that sits in Congress, our homes and offices—gigantic, but ignored."

If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?
Sarah Ruth van Gelder and Doug Pibel, AlterNet, 22.sept.06
The rest of the industrialized world gets universal health care. The U.S. gets limited access at a far higher cost. It's time for Americans to get the health care system they want, and the savings that go with it.

Minimum-wage hikes sweep states
Christine Vestal, Stateline.org, 22.sept.06
"Voters in a record number of states will decide Nov. 7 whether to hike the minimum wage, continuing an unprecedented two-year trend of state action on an issue that remains bottled up in Congress. …With 30 minimum-wage bills considered and 11 enacted this year, legislative activity also hit a 10-year high."

The Problems with the Marriage Solution
Myra Batchelder, Demos Around the Kitchen Table, Sept 2006
"Despite the Bush administration's rhetoric and the Congressional majority in lock-step, a marriage certificate can't solve every problem faced by America's families. It certainly doesn't keep households across America from the economic strains of job layoffs, little-or-no health insurance, skyrocketing debt, low wages, and the inability to afford higher education for their kids. No, marriage is not the cure-all the Bush administration claims it is, nor is it an option for many Americans."

Lesbian Couples Shut Out of Immigration Reforms
Ayesha Akram, Women's eNews, 26.sept.06
Congress is considering immigration reforms, but not to laws that prohibit same-sex couples from sponsoring their partners for citizenship. Among families, activists say the heaviest toll falls on households headed by lesbians.

Kids' snack food modeled after state law
Joseph Popiolkowski, Stateline.org, 16.oct.06
When Clif Bar & Co. was devising its new organic energy bar for kids in early 2004, product developers at the Berkley, Calif.-based health food manufacturer turned to California Senate Bill 19 for direction.

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The summer of "staycation," income inequality, more.

The Summer of the Staycation
Tamara Draut and Jose Garcia, Demos Around the Kitchen Table, 13.sept.06
The United States has the unfortunate distinction of not requiring companies to provide paid vacation or sick days to their workers. We're not alone: the Chinese government doesn't require paid vacation time either.

Economy Booming for Billionaires
Holly Sklar, Common Dreams, 28.sept.06
"America has 400 billionaires -- and 37 million people below the official poverty line… Wealth isn't trickling down. It's flooding up -- from workers to bosses, small investors to big, poorer to richer."

Health Insurance Premiums Continue to Soar
Tony Pugh, Common Dreams, 27.sept.06
"The average 7.7 percent premium increase for 2006 was the smallest since 2000 and marked the third straight year that the rate of growth has slowed, according to the survey, released Wednesday by Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust… But most Americans probably have felt little or no relief because their paychecks haven't kept pace with the rate hikes."

Is the American Dream a Delusion?
Courtney E. Martin, AlterNet, 3.oct.06
I want to tell my working-class students that the American Dream isn't all it's cracked up to be. But maybe I shouldn't question their belief that hard work will bring success.

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Selected articles on pregnant women's rights, genetic selection,
anti-abortion activism, more.

Jailing Pregnant Women Raises Health Risks
Ehrlich and Paltrow, Women's eNews, 20.sept.06
Pregnant women with untreated drug or alcohol problems are getting arrested and jailed for child abuse. Our commentators say this goes against the best medical advice and subverts the intentions of child-endangerment laws.

Better Than Sex: The growing practice of embryo eugenics
William Saletan, Slate, 16.sept.06
Commentary on the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis for IVF embryos. "What flaws are we screening for? That's the most uncomfortable question of all. Sometimes the flaw is a horrible disease. But increasingly, it's a milder disease, the absence of useful tissue, or just the wrong sex. If you think it's hard to explain where babies come from, try explaining where baby-making is going."

Pro-Lifers' Frightening New Tactic
Sarah Blustain and Reva Siegel, The American Prospect/AlterNet, 12.oct.06
As South Dakotans prepare to vote on the abortion ban, they're hearing a twisted new argument: that the state must "protect" women by forcing them to bear children.

South Dakota's Abortion Ban Showdown
Rebecca Clarren, AlterNet, 20.oct.06
South Dakotans have come out in force against a draconian abortion ban. Can they stop it before it upends abortion rights throughout the nation?

Abortion Hotlines Feel the Crunch
Carole Joffe, AlterNet, 4.oct.06
Restrictive laws are turning abortion hotline counselors into financial and legal advisors. And new legislation that would relieve some of the pressure has no chance of passing.

Reflections from a Former Anti-Abortion Activist
Elizabeth Wardle, PhD, AlterNet, 14.oct.06
As a good Christian teenager, I was active in the anti-abortion movement. So it stunned everyone, including me, when college women's studies classes turned my worldview upside down. "Here is a pro-choice position I can get behind: Abortion is generally not the problem in need of our attention. In most cases, abortion is one result of a number of related problems; abortion is wrapped up in intimate ways with attitudes about sex, living wages, access to good jobs, healthcare, childcare, education, and so on."

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