To my amusement, the Fast Company profile must have originally been named "Cassandra's Revenge" judging from the URL. In the heavily gendered article (Hertz is described as "seduc[ing] Bono;" being "teacup-size"; having a "waifish figure" and is spotted with "pink fishnets" and a "hot pink blackberry") Danielle Sacks describes exactly why Hertz is causing an international sensation:

Few academics have leaped from the critical fringes to the role of prophet as adroitly as Hertz. Wielding her contrarian message — that markets need to serve the interests of people as much as they serve companies or shareholders — Hertz has been campaigning for the past decade against the mantras of mainstream economists, urging a more ethical form of capitalism. But her message isn't some yoga-infused spiritual quest. As she explained in her 2001 European best seller, The Silent Takeover, it is about the unsustainability — environmentally, socially, and economically — of laissez-faire capitalism and the idea that markets are stable. If the surge of corporate power was going to leave governments relatively impotent, Hertz argued, then those corporations themselves needed to fill the void. "She moved the conversation from what corporations can do to be socially responsible to a much more profound examination of the boundaries of corporate behavior and public behavior and where they have failed," says Debora Spar, who was a dean at Harvard Business School for nearly two decades and is now president of Barnard. "She's much more radical."

Hertz — part activist, part detective — argues that both economics and business need to be put back into the human social context. "Over the past 30 years, economics became a narrow field completely out of touch with reality," says Hertz, 41, who sees the discipline as a jigsaw puzzle. "I don't believe you can reduce the world to a mathematical formula. I start with the world, assume it's complicated, and ask where can I get help from a whole range of disciplines." Drawing on subjects as diverse as anthropology, physics, geopolitics, and neurology, Hertz's economic vision is at once eclectic and holistic, which may explain her apparent ability to foresee dangers and opportunities others do not. It is also relentlessly pointed, serving an explicit agenda — making corporations realize that they can no longer operate in their Adam Smith — designed bubble. "I really believe in a globalist agenda, but globalization isn't just allowing companies to trade freely all over the world. It's about what types of rights and responsibilities come with that," Hertz says. With inequality surging, resources diminishing rapidly, and the earth's very future in question, capitalism-at-all-costs is no longer an option, she insists: "I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences."

Can I get a hell yeah?

Hertz has since devoted her career to debunking economic myths. After a year, she quit her World Bank job and spent another four years in Russia while getting her PhD in economics and business at Cambridge. Hertz published a book indicting the World Bank and the IMF for imposing American-style capitalism on Russia without contemplating the social cost. "It was never about being anti-capitalist," she says. "I realized that how an economy functions is not just about a market anonymously distributing things but also the way people relate to each other, their beliefs, the way power is distributed. All of that was being ignored." She points out that life expectancy in Russia has fallen by 15 years since the early '90s. Says punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a fan of Hertz's work: "Noreena looks at economics from the other side. From the people it suppresses. This is what punk is all about."

The punk economist spent years honing her ideas, railing against "Gucci Capitalism" since the 1990s. The premise of her work is simple: our systems are broken, and social equality will pay a major role in forming this new economy.

Hertz says that even though many necessary shifts — like caps on banker pay — haven't happened yet, there are already indications that challenges to laissez-faire capitalism are taking shape. Anglo-American market dominance, she says, will be contested by emerging economies like those of Brazil, China, and India, whose votes are likely to be given greater weight by the World Bank and the IMF. At the same time, some countries are starting to question the notion that mere GDP defines success. France, based on recommendations from Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, recently announced it would de-emphasize GDP in favor of other factors such as quality of life and the environment. (Hertz points out that a country's "health" most often correlates with its levels of inequality, now at an all-time high in the United States.) To shake up the old boys' networks, countries such as Norway and Spain have passed legislation that will require company boards to have 40% women. Hertz, too, is helping to drive these developments: She's working with banks like ING to unite investors, environmental NGOs, and other groups in a dialogue about the thorniest global problems.

As Hertz points out repeatedly over the course of the piece, Smith style "consumption above all else; the market will fend for itself" philosophies are laughably out of date. Interestingly, Adam Smith is always the fall guy for consumption based capitalism, but that wasn't his original intent. As Muhammad Yunus writes in World Policy Journal:

The need for reviewing the basic structure of capitalism has seemed appropriate on many occasions, but never so clearly as it is today. Indeed, in light of the current global economic crisis, there is strong support for a major overhaul of the system. In my view, one major change in the theoretical framework of capitalism is necessary-a change that will allow individuals to express themselves in multi-dimensional ways and address the problems left unsolved or even intensified by the existing conceptual framework. And although my proposal may be viewed as a significant change in the structure of capitalism, it is actually very consistent with what Adam Smith elaborated so brilliantly in his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. [...]

Even if we can overcome the immediate crises we face, we will still be left with fundamental questions about the effectiveness of capitalism in tackling such unresolved problems as persistent poverty, lack of access to health care and education, and epidemic diseases. In my view, the theoretical framework of capitalism that is widely accepted today is a half-built structure-one that prevents Adam Smith's "invisible hand" from operating as he believed it should, transforming the pursuit of individual gain into general social benefit through the workings of the marketplace.

In a sense, we have chosen to disregard half of Smith's message. His landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, has drawn all the attention, while his equally important Theory of Moral Sentiments has been largely ignored. The present theory of capitalism holds that the marketplace is uniquely for those who are interested in profit only. This interpretation treats people as one-dimensional beings; but people are multi-dimensional, as Adam Smith saw so clearly two and a half centuries back. While we have a selfish dimension, we also have a selfless dimension.
The prevailing theory of capitalism, and the marketplace that has grown up around the theory, makes no room for the selfless dimension of people. If the altruistic motivation that exists in people could be brought into the business world, there would be few problems we could not solve.

Yunus then maps out everything that is wrong with the current system:

The financial system has broken down because of a fundamental distortion of its basic purpose.

Credit markets were originally created to serve human needs-to provide business people with capital to start or expand companies. In return for these services, bankers and other lenders earned a reasonable profit. Everyone benefited. In recent years, however, the credit markets have been distorted by a relative handful of individuals and companies with a different goal in mind- to earn unrealistically high rates of return through clever feats of financial engineering. They repackaged mortgages and other loans into sophisticated instruments whose risk levels and other characteristics were hidden or disguised. Then they sold and resold these instruments, earning a slice of profit on every transaction. All the while, investors eagerly bid up the prices, scrambling for unsustainable growth and gambling that the underlying weakness of the system would never come to light.

Let's be clear here. What we are currently practicing isn't capitalism. It's a perversion of the original system, designed within a rigged system, set to benefit a few. And innovators like Yunus and Hertz are primed to lead us into a brave new market - or they would, if we were willing to listen.

(Image Credit: Josh van Gelder for Fast Company)

Goldman Sachs's Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All [Bloomberg News]
How an Economist's Cry for Ethical Capitalism was Heard [Fast Company]
Economic Security for a World in Crisis (PDF) [World Policy Journal]

Which is to say, Iceland's not perfect, but none of the other 133 countries studied (representing 93% of the world's population) did better. Let's have a look at how that happened:

Iceland's women are surpassing Iceland's men in college enrollment and in attaining professional and technical jobs, and have achieved near equal labor force participation. The country also ranked No. 1 in political empowerment. While women there hold 43% of parliament seats and 36% of ministerial positions, Iceland also named a new female prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, this year. The combination of powerful female role models and progressive government policies, like three months of paid maternity leave, are working to close the gap even further.

The U.S., on the other hand?

The U.S. fell to No. 31, down from last year's No. 27 ranking and even farther from 2006's placement at No. 23. The U.S. has always done well on measures of education and economic participation, but has been held back by mediocre scores in women's health and political achievement. The U.S. gap in political empowerment is below the world's average, having closed only 14% of its gap. This year, small changes in economic opportunity—female labor force participation and wage equality fell slightly—pushed the U.S. down the list.

And of course, we've still got it pretty good, in the big picture. Although 67% of countries were found to be improving in terms of gender equality, 33% are getting worse — and even a marked improvement is not always saying much in a world where women are still at risk, as Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have recently been reminding us all, of "sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape," not to mention dying in childbirth, contracting HIV, and simply disappearing. But of course, as Anna North pointed out, the increased attention to these human rights abuses tends to revolve around the idea that finally addressing them might lead to greater economic prosperity — with the fact that it might lead to fewer sick, abused, maimed, dead and missing women being presented as something of a bonus. And as she said, "What happens if women decide to spend their newly earned money on alcohol instead of their children's education? What if they spend it on weapons? And what if, even though they spend it on all the 'right' things, their countries still fail to develop economically? Treating women as agents of social change risks leaving them out in the cold if they don't effect the change we want."

Or what happens if empowered women do help a country develop economically, only to be continually marginalized in less attention-grabbing ways? In response to the news that the U.S.'s ranking has dropped, ambassador-at-large for global women's issues Merlanne Verveer said, "We have our work cut out for us... We've been the model but also have a ways to travel." Unfortunately, I wonder if the U.S. isn't still a model of what actually happens when women are afforded basic human rights: A certain level of economic stability is achieved, and then people start complaining that women already have equality, and if they aren't making as much money or holding as many offices, it's probably their own fault.

"It remains a simple fact that no country could prosper if half its people are left behind," says Verveer, "Yet, women are still largely under-represented also in parliament and legislatures of nearly every country, and I might add so too in the boardrooms of corporations." But that's still painfully true in the U.S. and recession aside, we are still an obscenely wealthy nation. Which means this country did, in fact, prosper while half its people were left behind in numerous ways. If future economic success is the best motivation we've got for supporting gender equality, it only goes so far.

U.S. Slips In Global Gender Gap Index; Iceland Leads the Pack [Forbes]
Nordic Countries Top Gender Gap Index Again [MSNBC]

Earlier: Are Women The New "Deserving Poor"?

The change started gradually. After all, the last decade has been all about prosperity-related excess. The remaining dreariness of the recession-tinged early 90s was drowned out by the sparkly pop saturated landscape where the women were doing it for themselves. At first, women were still adjusting to our increased financial power. We had little money, but it was still easier if we had someone else footing the bill - or at least paying back what they owed.

Then came the early 00s, with women expecting to be high earners. "The Opt-Out Revolution" was published in 2003, chronicling the lives of women who had so much money, they had started to turn away from the workforce. While most of us weren't in that position, times were still good enough to start declaring financial independence from that guy (or special lady, for the lezebels in the house) we asked to pay the bills in the first place.

Then came Recession 2.0, launching an all out assault on our jobs and lines of credit. Unemployment began to hit record highs, with many states hovering close to the 10% unemployment mark. In the midst of this chaos, some interesting statistics began to emerge, around wages and compensation:

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the wages of the median woman — at the statistical middle — rose 3.2 percent when adjusted for inflation, while the wages of the median man rose only 2 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The Journal noted that the typical full-time female worker earned $657 a week in the third quarter, while the typical man earned $812 a week. However, men are still more likely to be unemployed — the BLS data showed that male jobless rate is 11 percent while for women it was 8.4 percent.

"This is a situation where everyone's losing but men are losing more, and that's not really a victory for women," Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute told the newspaper.

However, the "everyone's losing" idea is a bit misleading. One, since women's salaries are historically lower than men's salaries, our small net gains aren't much to celebrate. Two, income disparities follow both racial and gender lines, and having those breakdowns paint a more dramatic picture of what is being lost and gained:

Asian men fared worse than other men, but the median weekly wage for Asian men and women was $877 in the third quarter — higher than any other ethnic group. Whites were next at $753, then blacks at $607 and Hispanics at $527. The median pay of Asian men declined 4.1% between the third quarter of 2007, just before the recession began, and the third quarter of 2009. The typical black man saw his wages fall 2.8%.

The recession began in December 2007 and most economists believe it ended this past summer. Women's wages have long lagged behind men's, but minority women did much better than their male counterparts during the recession.

Over the past two years, the wages of the typical black male full-time worker fell, but wages rose 7.3% for black women. Among Hispanics, the median male wage rose 0.4% over the past two years, but the median female wage rose 5.5%.

Wages of white and Asian women didn't rise as much as those of other women; the median increased 2.4% and 1.8%, respectively, over the past two years. White males were slightly better off: Their wages rose 2.8%. It was the only ethnic group in which men's wages rose more during the recession than women's; white women's wages rose 2.4%.

And, once again, an increase is beneficial, but starts to feel futile when one looks at the starting points.

Still, the revelation that many women have assumed the role of breadwinner, or are out-earning their male counterparts, has resulted in a lot of speculation about the impacts of economic realities on gender roles. Much of the focus has resulted in looking at how women and men are coping to major lifestyle changes:

Beth Klingensmith, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo., said it was hard enough to have to alter their financial plans after her husband lost her job. Now she worries about losing her own job because of the nation's economic woes. Already, she's been asked to take some furlough days as the state copes with budget constraints.

"We're doing OK, but there's absolutely no safety net,'" she said. "If something happens to my job, I cannot imagine."

Her husband, Jim, 49, is hopeful that his custom-made golf club business will take off soon, allowing him to contribute more toward the couple's bills. He said that in many ways he likes his new career more than the physically taxing work of running a printing press, but he admits he's struggled somewhat with the changed circumstances.

"We're Christians, so for me to not be the breadwinner … it's not the easiest thing," he said.

With all the upheaval with the recession and with housing, is it any wonder that people are spending their days applying for jobs, managing budgets, and nursing wounded egos?

The Opt-Out Revolution [NY Times]
State Unemployment Keeps Rising; Three Hit Record Highs [CNBC]
Women's wages rising faster than men's [UPI]
Women's Wages Outpaced Men's During Recession [WSJ]
The Wage Gap, by Gender and Race [Infoplease]
Rising number of women earn more than mates [MSNBC]

[Shakira] Begum is a proud housekeeper, and a generous hostess. It is only if you have lived with her for a few days and catch her anxiously counting slices of bread, or carefully diluting washing-up liquid in a small plastic pot by the sink, or boiling saucepans of hot water to heat deliberately shallow baths, that you slowly begin to understand the full extent of her daily struggle. Poverty manifests itself in small things.

For Begum, and 31,500 other asylum seekers, deprivation is a legal obligation. Forbidden to work, she is forced to live on state handouts. New legislation that came into force last week has frozen benefits for asylum-seeker lone parents at £42.16 per week, instead of increasing it in line with inflation to £44.35. Begum receives an extra £50 a week for her daughter Farzana. Under the same legislation, single asylum seekers aged over 25 have had their benefits cut to just £5 a day. No asylum seeker is allowed to supplement their income, no matter how long it takes the Home Office to process their claim. Begum and Farzana, have been waiting for three years for a decision to be made about their asylum claim. She lives in fear that any day she could receive a rejection letter and will be deported.

Sadder still is the heartbreaking requests of thirteen year old daughter Farzana, who is desperately trying to be seen as normal. After a school friend photographed pictures of her dilapidated home and spread them around school, Farzana only has other friends in similar positions come over to visit. She yearns for birthday gifts like an Ipod, in spite of her mother scraping to pay for groceries each week. Her youthful hopes seem almost cruel when contrasted with their stateless circumstances.

Farzana has been getting straight As in art, and wants to go on a school trip to Paris to see the galleries, but they can't afford it, and her ID card probably wouldn't get her past the border. "Mum says I can't go," says Farzana, "But maybe it will be OK if I just go in with everyone, you know? Maybe they won't notice."

Though their existence is bleak, Begum fled an abusive relationship and an increasingly oppressive religious culture in her native country of Bangladesh. In light of the past trauma experienced by her and her daughter, they are willing to wait for the British government to hopefully grant them citizenship. In the meantime, Begum attends community college and looks forward to a brighter future:

Begum's favourite day of the week is Friday. It is when she volunteers for the Women Asylum Seekers Together (Wast) charity. Unlike most organisations that campaign on asylum issues, it is led by female asylum seekers themselves. Begum helps run the meetings. In Wast's small, overcrowded room, this small, welfare-dependent mother is a leader, welcoming new mothers from Eritrea and the Ivory Coast, fetching them chairs and asking them questions. She has a reputation among the regulars as a mine of valuable information. She knows how much benefit you're entitled to, when markets offer the best deals, legal aid numbers and cheap bus routes. Despite this, she does sometimes go over budget. When she is ill and cannot cook, she gives her daughter money for more expensive ready-cooked food.

Watching Begum at Wast, it is clear that she is not just fighting for herself, or even just for herself and her daughter. "All of us women are a team," she says. "If I get my papers, I will keep coming back here. This is not just about me. This is about all asylum seekers. All of us together."

'We're All In This Together' [The Guardian]

Actually two investigations: Jonathan Birchall of the LA Times reviews Why She Buys and Women Want More, two books on the 50% of the American population that apparently controls 72% of the spending. This statistic alone (from the second book) explains why Wal-Mart directs its ads at moms and not dads. But while Women Want More also posits that women's spending will help end the recession, neither book seems — at least from the review — to offer much concrete information about women's buying habits.

Why She Buys, by Bridget Brennan, is apparently "fun and anecdotal," and the author tells a little story about rejecting a sports car because the cup holders are too small. Brennan isn't swayed by the dealer's "dismissive response that Europeans don't drink coffee in the car" — but really, who would be? This tidbit doesn't really show that women like cupholders or creature comforts, as much as it shows that they don't like bad salesmanship.

Women Want More, by Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, seems to offer slightly more hard data. Using a study of a study of 12,000 women in 21 countries, the authors find, according to Birchall, that, "'Demands on time' are the top challenge for 47% of respondents; 72% say their mother is the dominant person in their lives; 42% are made extremely happy by pets but only 27% by sex." This is potentially interesting data, but except for the first statistic, it's not clear how these numbers affect shopping. The authors also break women down into six consumer "archetypes," including "fast tracker" and "making ends meet." Unfortunately, Birchall doesn't really explain these archetypes, or what and how they buy.

Part of the review's vagueness may stem from space concerns, but its unintentional message is that despite their research, none of the authors actually have that much to say about why women buy things. It's tempting to respond that women just buy for the same reasons men do, and that it's pointless to break down consumer research by gender. However, given that most companies still use the "make it pink" philosophy of appealing to women, it would be nice if they had a little more data on what women actually want. Corporations may feel that women's buying preferences, like their sexuality, are unknowable and shrouded in mystery. But while some women may buy for different reasons than some men, our reasons are no more difficult to understand.

Of course, for all shoppers, motivations differ according to the purchase at hand. Very different thoughts go through my head when I'm picking up toilet paper than when I'm, say, shopping for a new book. But all the same, I'd like to offer those hapless consumer researchers a little help in understanding the complex female brain. So taking a page from Latoya, I'll list a few general things that convince me to buy an item:

— I need it (toothpaste, soap, MetroCards, beans)
— I want it (books, dessert, an LP record with owls painted on it)
— it sucks less than what I currently have (electronics)
— it's pretty (dresses, art exhibition postcards I will promptly lose, NOT electronics)
— it's cheap (headbands with cherries printed on them and long weird tails that are maybe supposed to tie under my chin)

And here are some reasons I don't buy stuff:

— I have no money
— it has a big fat logo on it
— part of it breaks off in my hand
— it has Bible verses printed on it (especially true if product has nothing to do with religion)
— a salesperson is pushing me to buy it

Feel free to add your reasons.

Getting A Handle On What Drives Women To Buy [LA Times]

I'm starting to fly into a rage whenever I read some lifestyle piece based on the recession. (This is different from the rage I feel when I read an investigative or financial piece.) My latest bout of hatred was brought on by an Elle article written by Laura Hollinger called "My Year of Living Frugally."

Yes, I should have known better. But I read it anyway, wanting to holler in frustration. Some assorted sentences:

"Over the years, I've cultivated a look that says rich, even though I'm not – my six-figure salary allows me to live well in New York but hardly extravagantly [...]"

"Gaining entree to the social elite pays for itself with invitations to places and experiences way out of financial reach. Why not have as much four-star fun as possible?"

"A bad day at work would send me to Bergdorf's shoe department, or to Henri Bendel to drop $300 on makeup I'd never wear. Now I found new pleasure in resourcefulness. I took my favorite boots to the shoe repair guy, and had dresses and jackets tailored to this years' shapes. Financial responsibility was empowering, and, in its way, more addictive than shopping had ever been."

I read through the whole piece giggling at first - I thought it was a cute tongue-in-cheek piece about those are faring just fine in the recession suddenly doing silly things like hiding their purchases in brown paper bags. The part about scamming a Vail trip was pretty amusing:

"Through a vast network of friends-of-friends, we arranged dinners and party invitations for each night, meaning we'd only need to spring for one meal a day (and a couple of nights we made do on WheatThins).

"When the famous heiress next to me rolled her eyes and groaned about missing "wheels up," I nodded in a way that said, "I hear you, sister."

But the idea that this was a comedic piece didn't last. Hollinger returns to NYC, but loses her will to save when catching sight of store markdowns. She explains:

I vowed to hunt for value, investing in pieces that would last for years and seeking out those few wardrobe additions (the perfect date dress, the best fitting long sleeve T-shirts to layer with anything) that would carry me from season to season. I did fall off the wagon just once last spring at the sight of $800 Lanvin silk sandals at Jeffrey, but paid for my sin when it rained for the next three months and they stayed in the box. [...]

Today, I maintain my expensive highlights and haircuts but spend less on blow outs and hair products (drugstore brands really do measure up. ) I take the bus to work instead of a taxi, and then I don't blink at dinner out with friends. Then I put every single expense, from groceries to doctor appointment on my AmEx card to earn points, which so far I've used toward a vacation and a new stereo system. In one year, I've saved roughly $6,000 - almost enough to buy that new Cartier watch I have my eye on...or to feed my savings account.

Huh? Now, this is not a simple case of sour grapes on my part. After all, if Hollinger has the money to play, it's her life. But I am really confused at why so many women fueling these trend pieces are creaming themselves over pretend frugality?

Especially when they don't have to?

Being financially savvy as a woman is an important and powerful thing. Understanding money, making it work to your advantage, and not being afraid of its possibilities are common themes that most people struggle with through the course of their lives.

But, if you are one of the lucky ones who managed to get through this recession with only minor tweaks to your lifestyle, then why are you doing a part-time game of make believe about coming hard times?

Over at my home blog, Racialicious, we were really feeling the recession. Four of us out of nine got a pink slip (or had the axe hanging over our heads) and most of us couldn't find work for months there after. Some of us have not found a steady paying gig yet.

Looking at my increasingly dire (as in, have to go round to the rental office to explain why rent will be ten days late this month dire) situation, I toyed with the idea of penning my own Recessionista-like tale to sell to the glossies:

"Upon realizing that my cheap ass fast fashion clothes wouldn't survive the withering gaze (let alone the needle) of a tailor, I tried to cobble together an interview outfit knowing damn well I was about to choose between repairing my one suit jacket and buying a day or so worth of groceries..."

"Making my way to the check cashing spot since my accounts were frozen from identity theft..."

"As I listened in disbelief, my editor explained she was pushing back my article for a third time, delaying yet again the $300 payment that I sorely needed before they cut off my cable again..."

"I smiled at the client, using $35 of the last $50 on my credit card to settle the tab, smiling harder as he apologized for forgetting his wallet back at the office..."

"I crossed my fingers and promised T-mobile another $100 on Friday, knowing damn well my next payment wouldn't drop for a couple of weeks..."

On second thought, I realize now why they publish these flights of financial fancy. Our lives are fucking grim. Hollinger is writing about her broke ass trip to Vail, I write about my broke ass trip to Safeway.

No matter what anyone is saying, broke is not the new sexy. Or the new rich. RICH is the new rich.

Can I sign up for Laura Hollinger's recession?

Official Site [Elle Magazine]

Earlier:

"Frugalistas" Must Cease And Desist
"Investing" In Your Closet Not Recommended By Actual Investment Experts

The Good Wife, which premiers tonight, follows political wife Alicia Florrick (Margulies) as she rebounds from her husband's sex scandal. He's a state's attorney turned jailbird, and she goes from stay-at-home mom to lawyer with the help of an old friend from law school. Soon she takes on a murder case and, "baggage" aside, begins to "hunt for hair samples and missing security-camera tapes" with the best of them.

Back in real life, political wife Jenny Sanford will publish her book in May 2010. Her publisher says the memoir "will grapple with the universal issue of maintaining integrity and a sense of self during life's difficult times." Maintaining integrity may be a universal issue — but unlike Jenny Sanford (who is currently separated from her husband),many divorced women need to find a way of maintaining food on the table as well. And not all of them bounce back into the workforce as easily as Alicia Florrick.

Dana Goldstein tackles this issue in the American Prospect. She writes,

But what happens to the real-life Alicia Florricks — the women who attempt to claw back to the top after years or even decades at home with the kids? For one thing, their income suffers: A woman can expect her salary to drop by 2 percent for each year she stays home from work. That means a woman who earned $80,000 10 years ago, then quit her job, can expect her new salary to be $64,000.

Goldstein also cites Leslie Bennetts, of Feminine Mistake fame, who tells this cautionary tale about the perils of looking for work after a long time at home:

One high-powered woman had opted out of her career for a short time but started trying to get back in when her husband left her for a younger woman. Despite years of effort, she has never succeeded. She finally found a teaching job that pays one-eighth of what she was earning 20 years ago. Her ex-husband has long failed to pay the child support he owes her, a six-figure sum she is now trying to chase down with expensive legal help. She has a lot of company; nearly 70 percent of child-support cases in this country have arrears owed to the custodial parents, who are overwhelmingly female-one of several reasons why men's standard of living rises after divorce while that of women and children typically plummets.

Of course, divorce isn't the only factor now facing stay-at-home moms. As Steven Greenhouse of the Times wrote on Saturday, the recession is imperiling men's jobs and forcing more women to look for work — not always with great results. Bennetts calls the Times story a "feeble attempt at catch-up," given the newspaper's much-criticized coverage of the so-called "opt-out revolution" six years ago. She writes,

For the major media that romanticized opting out as the soothing solution to the stress of juggling work and family, the devastation that choice has left in its wake represents merely another story. But for the women who got sold a bill of goods and gambled their futures without understanding the risks they were taking, losing that bet turned out to be the biggest mistake of their lives. Those who encouraged them to do so have a lot to answer for.

There's no doubt that some women in America have lost out by opting out. And while the original Times piece could have included a little more criticism and a little less trend-spotting, the real enemy of moms both divorced and married is an economic system that forces people to choose between work and child care, and then penalizes those who have ever chosen the latter. But if the recession is indeed forcing women back to work, maybe this will change.

Like the fictional Alicia Florrick, the real Trudi Foutts Loh found a job through a law school friend after years as a stay-at-home mom. She's one of the lucky ones — but she has friends too, and maybe the recession will create a network of moms to rival the old boys. And maybe these moms will have a better understanding of how to allow their employees to have family lives, and how to use the skills of people who have been out of the office for a while. Of course, this is a long way off — but everyone from CBS to the Times is talking about women "opting back in." And if the media can influence us for ill, as Bennetts says, maybe it can also influence us for good.

The Wrong Side Of The Mommy Track [American Prospect]
Recession Drives Women Back To The Work Force [NYT]
Wife Of Scandal-Plagued S.C. Governor Plans Memoir [Reuters]
'Wife' To 'Cougar,' These Are Women To Watch [Washington Post]
Good Wife [NYT]
The Downside Of Opting Out [Daily Beast]

O'Grady asserts that social science research from the London School of Economics (already proven a bastion of post-feminist sentiment by Satoshi Kanazawa), shows that companies with more women on the boards are less profitable.

However the researchers also found that, on average, firms with proportionally more women on their boards are less profitable and have a lower market value. This suggests that in well-governed companies increased monitoring could have a negative effect.

Um, no. Correlation doesn't equal causation. There are at least half a dozen other way I can think of to explain that correlation other than women make companies less profitable — including one O'Grady mentions and then ignores.

They found boards with more women are more effective when looking at measures such as the monitoring of chief executive, for example, being more likely to be replaced for poor share price performance.

In other words, women are more keen to root out corruption and poor-performance. How awful want to monitor chief executives!

So, an alternate explanation is that the companies without women on their boards aren't simply more profitable, full stop. It might well be that they are profitable in the short term at the expense of long term sustainable growth (see also: Enron, nearly every bank, AIG, etc), which isn't good for the businesses in question. It could be that companies that have achieved even sustained and sustainable success with all-white, all-male boards see no reason to upset the status quo and thus replace themselves with like people. It could be that, given the structural obstacles for women and people of color to the kind of business success that lands one on a corporate board, there is simply a limited supply (and thus too small a sample size, say) to be able to draw accurate conclusions of how the business world would function if its upper echelons were not dominated by white men.

Or, it could be that those women, with their silly and archaic insistence on performing the functions of a member of a corporate board — oversight — rather than just kowtowing to the demands of smart man who's the CEO are making all the companies they serve less profitable. If, of course, you're Sean O'Grady.

Gender Balance Ban Be Bad For Profits [Independent Minds]

Earlier: Psychologist: Modern Feminism "Illogical, Unnecessary And Evil"
Could Women Have Saved The World?

This isn't the first time some bullshit right-winger pulled this Communist theory out of their ass. So, a few thoughts.

• Tucker Carlson and all the rest of these assholes are avowed free-marketeers and capitalists. Many of them have opposed health care reform for more than a decade, in part because they don't want to see doctors be able to successfully monetize their educations. That is, of course, unless those doctors are performing abortions, in which case they should be poor.
• Most people who've studied economics understand the theory of supply and demand: when supply goes down and demand remains the same, prices go up. Anti-abortion activists have spent more than 35 years trying to drive abortion practices out of business through extra-legal harassment, intimidation, murder, assault, over-regulation (again, exposing the limits of their love of a free market) and attempted bans on abortion providers and abortion clinics. If abortion providers are getting rich off of their practices — and they've got no evidence other than Tiller's profits, which he had to plow back into providing security for himself, his employees and his patients — they've got no one to blame but themselves.
• The whole stupid concept rests on the idea that since Carlson and his ilk think abortion is immoral, the people who think they're providing a legitimate, necessary and legal medical service for women have no right to make money. I don't think Tucker Carlson would like to be on the receiving end of a national debate over how much money he should be compensated for spewing conservative bullshit and amoral hot air from his piehole.

Now, mind you, Tucker Carlson's compensation for being a conservative talking head isn't a matter of public record, but let's guess he easily makes over $150,000 a year (and likely much, much more) for his work. Technically speaking, then, Tucker Carlson, while appearing on Fox News yesterday as a compensated contributor, just made money off of abortion. And he's not the only one.

While Operation Rescue's non-profit status was revoked by the IRS in 2006 for illegal political activities, it meant that its donors couldn't legally take a tax deduction for their donations — though its website helpfully promises confidential "advice" about nonetheless making suchdonations. What this means is that, unlike much of its competition, it don't have to disclose how much money they pay their directors or staff. But if it's anything like its competition on the right, it's pretty substantial.

Take Focus on the Family, headquartered in Colorado Springs (median household income: $51,227). its employees do pretty well for themselves — hell, you might say that they're "enriching" themselves by advocating abortion. For instance, the organization's president, James Daly, is paid $240,000 per year by its political action arm (which allows it to lobby). Its CFO, Wade Crow, makes $136,000 and Senior Vice President Thomas Minnery makes $150,000. From the strict non-profit side, Senior VP Bufford Tackett pulls in $180,000 every year; COO Glenn Williams $172,000, and 10 other senior VPs make between $120,000 and $147,000. Its 5 highest paid employees that aren't considered officers make between $116,000 and $137,000. That means Focus on the Family has at least 20 employees who make more than $100,000 every year.

Over at the Family Research Council in DC, its President, Anthony Perkins, makes more than $200,000 each year, while its Executive Vice President Chuck Donovan makes $175,000 and its VP of Administration, Paul Tripodi, makes $125,000. Its top 5 employees who aren't officers pull down between $117,000 and $138,000, given them at least 8 employees that make more than double the median household income in the United States today — and that's not including the former board member their political arm continues to shell out more than $100,000 a year to.

In a shining example of the wage gap, the American Life League only pays its President, Judith Brown, $127,000 each year. Her husband, like Todd Palin, is the uncompensated EVP, and no other director makes over $100,000 — but 3 of its top 5 employees do. David O'Steen, Executive Direction of the National Right to Life Committee, and his second-in-command Darla St. Martin both make over $100,000, though they don't pay O'Steen's mother, who serves on the Board.

More amusing is the compensation structure over at the Concerned Women of America, where Board Chairwoman Barbara LeHaye's son, Lee, serves as CFO and makes $115,000, and President Wendy Wright makes $121,000. Barbara LeHaye is the only compensated Board member, pulling in $26,000 herself. But the male Executive Director George Tryfiates, makes $129,000 and the male Director of Development pulls in a cool $135,000 each year ( i.e., more than the female President). In fact, of the top 5 employees outside of the directors, only one is a woman — and she makes under $100,000. No wonder the wage gap isn't on its agenda.

This, by the way, is just a sampling of the people (and the ways) that anti-abortion advocates enrich themselves while serving God's supposed will. Conversely, the mean annual wage for all obstetricians and gynecologists is about $200,000 — and most of those people don't have to hire armed body guards and buy bulletproof vests and armor their cars to go to work. So, maybe people like Tucker Carlson ought to stop getting paid for flapping their lips about how doctors have the audacity, in a capitalist society, to make money for providing a legal and demanded medical service, or stop bitching about how other people make their money doing things they disagrees with.

Tucker Carlson Decries Doctors Who "Get Rich Performing Abortions" [Huffington Post]
Focus on the Family 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Focus on the Family Action 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Family Research Council 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Family Research Council Action 990 2008 [GuideStar]
American Life League 990 2008 [GuideStar]
National Right to Life Committee 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Concerned Women for America 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2008: 29-1064 Obstetricians and Gynecologists [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Related: Video of Jon Stewart's Epic Takedown of Crossfire [About.com]
Operation Rescue [RH Reality Check]
Donate [Operation Rescue]
Colorado Springs, Colorado [US Census]
Undermining Women's Choices [Concerned Women For America]

Earlier: How The Anti-Abortion Movement Demonized George Tiller

But, first to the naysayers, courtesy of the Associated Press:

At Bench Warmers Bar and Grill in the southeast Kansas farming town of Chanute, owner Cathy Matney has decided to let some of her dishwashers go rather than pay all 22 of her employees more.

"It's bad timing," said Matney, whose waitresses and cooks will have to pitch in with scrubbing pots and pans. "With the economy like this, there's a lot of people who are out of work and this is only going to add to it."

What the AP fails to fact-check here is that Matney's waitstaff likely only makes the federal minimum $2.13 cents an hour for tip-driven jobs, a rate which is actually not going up. So Matney can tell her staff (and the word) that it's the government's fault, but the fact of the matter is that she's not going to be paying "all" her employees more and won't be required to. Whoops.

The AP's next example isn't exactly any better.

Ryan Arfmann, who owns a Jamba Juice shop in Idaho Falls, Idaho, will be cutting hours to his staff, which is made up largely of college students, high schoolers and homemakers who want to make a few bucks.

"Am I going to fire anybody, no," Arfmann said. "But kids understand there's going to be hours cut."

Arfmann said he wishes the increase was spread out over a few more years, to make it easier for him to absorb the costs.

So, basically, Arfmann's employees — many of whom aren't solely reliant on the income, might lose a few hours here and there, but no one's getting fired? Well, that's a good reason to delay a wage increase for the Americans who are dependent on the income. And what does the AP forget to fact check here? It turns out that, in fact, the minimum wage increase was spread out over the course of the last 2 years.

The other examples aren't any better: they quote two people who worry that they might get fired, what with all the right-wing propaganda out there that they will be fired. It isn't until the end that the piece bothers to mention that if people have more money to spend because their wages go up, they'll be able to buy things they can't yet, and even that assertion is met with skepticism by the right-leaning economics approvingly cited in the article.

Tsedeye Gebreselassie and Paul Sonn, writing for The American Prospect, pick up that argument where the AP leaves off.

Minimum-wage increases go directly to those workers who will spend it immediately on basic necessities like food, gas, rent, and clothing. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago have shown that minimum-wage increases boost consumer spending substantially more than tax cuts do, and the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the July minimum-wage increase will generate $5.5 billion in spending over the next year. A strong minimum wage is therefore key to boosting consumer demand and shifting our economy back to one that is built on good jobs rather than on consumer debt.

You know, it's kind of the trickle-up theory: if you give consumers money to spend, they tend to spend it, leading to more demand for goods and services, allowing businesses to hire more people, which gives those people money to spend, increasing demands for goods and services. It's just instead of giving it to the rich through tax cuts (or the banks through bail-out money, since we all know how well that's gone) and hoping it trickles down, you make sure it's given to the people you want to have it in the first place.

Gebreselassie and Sonn also note the positive effects that the minimum wage increase will have on female workers, who make up a significant component of those earning minimum wage (and, since they comprise less of the recessionary layoffs, a less significant component of those who will be affected by stimulus spending).

But while unemployment is lower for women, so are their wages. That's why this month's boost in the federal minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour couldn't come at a better time, especially because the overwhelming majority of minimum-wage earners are adult women, many of whom support children.

The minimum wage effectively sets pay scales for jobs like home health aides, child-care workers, waitresses, retail clerks, and janitors — in which millions of women today spend their career. The decline in the real value of the minimum wage over the past 40 years has dragged down pay in these sectors, which are some of the fastest-growing sources of jobs in the 21st-century economy. The upcoming increase, while modest, will help slow falling living standards for this deserving work force.

In other words, it's a more positive way to further narrow the ongoing gender gap in wages than simply seeing men driven out of work by the economy in disproportionate numbers.

The authors also note, unlike the AP, that the absence of an increase in the tipped-earner minimum will disproportionately affect women, too:

For tipped workers like waitresses and nail salon workers — a group that is overwhelmingly female — the situation is even worse. For them, the federal minimum wage is a shockingly low $2.13 an hour. And under another outdated exemption, workers in the fast-growing home-health-care industry, in which millions of women tend to the most vulnerable in our society — seniors, persons with disabilities, and the ill — are not guaranteed any minimum wage at all.

Recession or not, for some women, wage reforms still have a way to go.

Minimum Wage Hike Raises Recession Fears [Associated Press]
Women And The Minimum Wage [The American Prospect]

Related: Federal Minimum Wage Will Increase To $7.25 On July 24 [US Department of Labor]

Clark-Flory writes:

Mike of A&M Studios, a producer of X-rated video chats, says: "A couple years ago, we'd have a lot of strippers or people who might be on meth — a lot of shiftier people." He continues, "Now we're seeing performers who are more educated and used to working on a regular schedule. There's been a shift to a very different class of people." Much as his phrasing gives me chills, it isn't just a cliché that women with limited job opportunities often turn to sex work.

The difference in these dark days is that middle-class advantages, like a solid college education and professional work experience, don't offer the same level of protection that they once did from being pushed to make such a choice. Not to mention, it's easier now to make the decision because the Internet has bulldozed the barrier of entry into the sex industry.

Clark-Flory talks to three women who turned to sex work: Marie, a former manager at a car rental place; Jennifer, a bookkeeper; and Alicia, a former nutritionist. All of them turned to sex work after being unable to find work in their (white collar) fields; none of them initially considered filling out job applications for blue collar or menial jobs.

Alicia, who stopped her sex work after getting a job as a waitress, realizes it seems a bit off.

Looking back, Alicia found that calculation didn't exactly compute: "Sometimes I'm like, Dude, why didn't you just get a job at McDonald's? It's a paycheck," she says, slipping into the second person. "But you were at a point in your life where you had zero money to put food on the table. You had to do what you had to do. It's a survival thing."

She describes her sex work, as Jennifer does, as a source of shame — but, Clark-Flory points out, she considered it less shameful than so-called menial labor.

And, according to Clark-Flory, it supposedly pays better. Given Maria's situation, that seems questionable.

"Boob play," "pics of kitty," "topless housecleaning" and "hypno role play." The list, scribbled in a lined yellow notebook, is followed by a double-underlined figure: $725.

In a state that complies with only federal minimum wage laws, a minimum wage job worked 40 hours a week for 20 days at a rate of $6.55/hour pays $1,048; in California, where the rate is $8.00/hour, the pay is $1,280. Marie could, actually, be earning more money at McDonalds.

Clark-Flory sees the allure: people she interviewed for the story encouraged her to get involved; an advertisement she placed on Craigslist netted response after response. But the reality of sex work — the shame, the risk, the limited rewards — trumped all the sales pitches from potential pimps and johns alike.

But the recession reminds us that there are few quick fixes, and there is no get-out-of-jail-free card. For the women I spoke with, sex work was like bailing water out of a leaking boat: You stay afloat, so long as you don't stop.

If you work for minimum age, you might live hand-to-mouth, but at least it's only your hand, and you don't have to risk your relationships, your health or your (clean) record to feed the mouth.

Going down in the downturn [Salon]

Related: Minimum Wage Laws in the States - January 1, 2009 [Department of Labor]

Heidi Brown writes in Forbes:

To qualify, they must have been employed for at least 12 months at the same firm before the time off and have worked a minimum of 1,250 hours during the same period.

What makes this law so unhelpful for many working women is that companies with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from abiding by it—meaning that these smaller firms are not obligated to grant any time off to care for a newborn (or sick family member).

And, in most cases, they do so less and less.

A 2008 report from the Families and Work Institute indicated that 16% of companies with at least 100 employees provide full pay during maternity leave. This is down from 27% in 1998.

Gotta love a recession!

Not that most women take their government-sponsored leave, anyway.

And since the majority of women can't afford not to work for a full three months, they also tend to return to work sooner than the law dictates. Perhaps that's why in May 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 55% of first-time mothers were working six months after giving birth. In the early 1970s, only 25% were working 6 months after childbirth.

You can guess where the supposed part of the American Family is on this one.

In the U.S., which is second only to Japan among the highest corporate-tax rates in the world, employers balk at the extra expense of paying an employee who's not working. On Feministe, a popular blog for women's issues, "Dan," who described himself and his wife as entrepreneurs, remarked that too often, employers have to ante up for more employee benefits. "It seems like everything in our society is something that the employer is expected to magically provide," he says. "And then we wonder why unemployment is through the roof and the economy is crashing!"

Right. The economy is in free-fall because employers have to give too much unpaid leave to their female employees. Good to know.

U.S. Maternity Leave Benefits Are Still Dismal [Forbes]

A new study by the Commonwealth Fund finds that 70 percent of American women — 64 million, to be exact — are either un- or underinsured. And even those that have insurance are worried about the cost.

The study, "Women at Risk: Why Many Women Are Forgoing Needed Health Care," also says 52 percent of working-age women say they have problems accessing needed healthcare because of cost, compared to 39 percent of men who said so.

Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis says that the recession and unemployment have likely made the situation for women worse since the report was initially completed, and makes it clear that health care reform is increasingly necessary. She adds.

"This study underscores the need for affordable universal health coverage and protection against catastrophic financial losses not only for women — who are more likely to be at risk for high premiums and medical bills — but for all Americans."

Health insurance companies, meeting with Barack Obama today, have in response offered to raise premiums by 1.5 percent less than they normally have each year. For me, this means I can expect my premium to rise by 13.5% rather than 15% next year, which should save me $33 next year. That doesn't really sound like change I can believe in.

Many U.S. Women Short On Health Insurance [UPI]

Earlier: Health Insurers Offer To Make Our Uteruses Less Expensive
Wanda Sykes Kills, Republicans Rage & Osama Hides

You'll recall, no doubt, that even when you take out the cost of pregnancy care, women pay more for health insurance in states that don't prohibit insurers from charging more. Insurers say that this is because women are more likely to engage in preventative care.

In interviews last fall, insurance executives said they had a sound reason for the different premiums: Women ages 19 to 55 tend to cost more than men of the same age because they typically use more health care, especially in the childbearing years. Moreover, insurers said women were more likely to visit doctors, to get regular checkups, to take prescription medications and to have certain chronic illnesses.

Of course, if health insurance companies were operating on a long-term framework with regards to their customers the same way that their customers are operating in regards to their own health, it wouldn't be an issue, since preventative care is less expensive than emergent or traumatic care. However, given that insurance companies are most often motivated by short-term profits and shareholder value rather that the health and safety of their customers and because — particularly in this economy and given insurers' right to terminate our coverage for having the audacity to utilize it — they don't expect to be your health insurance company by the time preventative care pays dividends, they charge women more than men.

Anyway, the reason they're now willing to even contemplate equitable coverage costs for women is that part of Barack Obama's health care reform package calls for the establishment of a government-run health insurance program for middle- and lower-income Americans priced out of the private health insurance market to — in Obama's words — "keep private industry honest." Insurers have already agreed to stop terminating coverage when people use it and to insure even Americans with pre-existing conditions if Obama makes everyone either buy health insurance or get into Medicaid and Medicare — but they really, really don't want you to have the option to buy into government health insurance intended to compete with private plans because they don't want the competition. They'll even "accept" more regulation. Just try to trust that they won't fuck you over!

"We are not asking people to trust us, we are asking people to trust government," Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, told a Senate panel that is crafting sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation's $2.5 trillion health care system.

Yeah, that's big business which, by and large funds Republican candidates and causes, telling Americans to trust the government. Go ahead. You can laugh now. That government health insurance idea is starting to sound more and more like a good idea.

Health Insurers Agree to End Higher Premiums for Women [NY Times]
Health Insurers Ask Gov't To Police Their Industry [Associated Press]

Earlier: Ma'am, That Uterus Will Cost You Extra

Greenspan was known for using odd measures to determine how the economy was doing, and one of his most famous indicators was the sale of men's underwear, reports The Huffington Post. Robert Krulwich, who published Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence said:

"If you look at sales of male underpants it's just pretty much a flat line, it hardly ever changes ... But on those few occasions where it dips that means that men are so pinched that they are deciding not to replace underpants. And [Greenspan] said 'that is almost always a prescient, forward impression that here comes trouble.'"

According to global research company Mintel, the sale of men's underwear in the United States is currently experiencing a fairly large drop. A new study projects a 2.3 percent drop in sales of all men's underwear products in 2009. Just six months ago, Mintel predicted sales would increase by 2.6 percent in 2009.

Matt Hall, A spokesmen for Hanesbands Inc. explained the drop, saying:

"Recessions impact all categories and men's underwear sales are no different... Men's underwear is a replenishment item. If you see a dip in the market it is because of the economy. But over a longer-term period it will even out. They tend to be later going into the recession and earlier coming back... Men certainly aren't wearing underwear less frequently than before."

While men just getting by with the worn out underwear they already have isn't a particularly appealing thought, there is some good news on the men's underwear front. Earlier, we learned that the sale of pink briefs for men is way up this year, and it seems that when men do decide to splurge on a new pair of undies, they want them to make a statement. The new trend is for the waistband on men's underwear to have bold colors, patterns, larger widths, and oversized logos, according to New York Magazine. Some have compared it to how research shows women will spend even more on lipstick, hosiery, and other cheap but mood-enhancing products during an economic slump. Apparently men feel a little boost when there's a fashionable design poking out over their pants. Michael Kleinmann, president of underwear company Freshpair.com explains, "They used to be pretty basic, but now they are like sneakers: their fun colors and patterns say something about the guy that is wearing them."

[Image via FreshPair.com.]

Men's Underwear Sales, Greenspan's Economic Metric Reveal Crisis [The Huffington Post]
Statement Manties Are The New Sneakers [New York Magazine]

Earlier: During A Recession, Some Dudes Try To Add A Little Color To Their, Um, Lives