In a Washington Post article thick with both historical references and wonky policy recommendations, Dorothy Sue Cobble writes that women played a key role in the labor reform of the New Deal, and that they are placed to do so again. "New Deal feminists," she says, and those who took up their work-focused advocacy, spearheaded the Equal Pay Act and pushed through a child-care expenses tax reduction. They also successfully campaigned to expand health insurance. Now, says Cobble, feminists could take a cue from their forebears and focus their efforts on greater labor justice across class and gender. She writes,

We need a movement to raise income, to close the gender leisure gap as well as the gender pay gap — still stuck at 23 percent — to redesign careers for modern families and to expand health coverage. [...] But for the movement to grow, it will need to take another page from New Deal feminism: join with others concerned with economic justice and workplace transformation and pay attention to updating and strengthening labor laws. With the rise of managerial, supervisory and contingent work, the FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act, which set up a minimum wage] and the National Labor Relations Act barely cover half of the private-sector labor force. At the same time, programs such as the child tax credit and support for early education should be extended to the middle class. As New Deal feminists knew, any women's movement that wants to remain relevant needs to advocate for the majority of women — waitress moms as well as soccer moms, corporate executives as well as the immigrant women who clean their homes and care for their children.

Cobble's argument has some troubling elements — she seems to think feminists should stop paying so much attention to abortion because "it is painfully clear that consensus in this country on the issue of abortion rights is impossible at this moment." But she's made one of the most specific and convincing cases yet for the ever-more-urgent need to reform the American workplace. And she points out that such reform should be a broad-based, including not only equal pay and improved health insurance but also flexible hours and protections for all types of jobs.

In fact, the new face of labor reform needs to be about more than labor. The recession has shown that the old model in which employees relied on companies for their health insurance and retirement benefits, and in return often signed away their family lives, doesn't really work anymore. Maybe it never did. What we need now are social programs that decouple a person's basic security from the vagaries of the job market, and a job market that takes into account the need for a balanced life. Women, who both pay more in health care expenses and spend more time caring for family members, are well-placed to advocate for both these goals. And Cobble isn't the only one chronicling their role in labor reform throughout history — David Woolner has a piece on The Huffington Post about women and workplace issues from Eleanor Roosevelt to now — and NOW.

Unfortunately, not everyone got the memo. Shaun Rein has a Forbes article titled "Why Men Don't Promote Women More," and bearing the linkbaity subhead, "Because women aren't pushy enough." He writes,

In my career, I have tended to promote more men than women. I have even generally given men higher salaries. Why? Am I sexist? Do men do a better job? The answer is a resounding no to both.

Actually, it is mostly women's fault. They simply don't ask for raises or promotions as often as men do.

Women, he says, are afraid "they could be fired if they appeared too pushy," but they just need to follow his simple tips to get ahead. One of these, of course, is not dressing too sexy. The other is to ask for a raise or promotion. His pointers for doing the latter aren't bad ones, but the reality is that women are often perceived as pushy where men would be seen as assertive. And they can face negative consequences for this perception. Is part of the answer for all women to be more assertive so that no one stands out? Maybe — but another is for people like Rein, business writers with lots of powerful readers, to examine why women might not ask for promotions rather than just telling them to do so.

Rein writes that many men "said they'd prefer a female boss, because of the greater likelihood she'd understand the need for work-life balance." And having more women in positions of power would be a great step towards the kind of "New Deal feminism" Cobble's talking about. But that's not going to happen as long as male bosses sit back and wait for women to come to them — something that's really just as passive as the behavior Rein accuses female employees of. Part of being a great boss is spotting talent throughout your organization, not just when it's yelling in your face. One day maybe women will yell as loud as men. But until that happens, male and female supervisors can advance the cause of New Deal feminism by actively looking for outstanding women, and by creating the kind of work environment where these women can shine.

It's Time For New Deal Feminism [Washington Post]
Why Men Don't Promote Women More [Forbes]

[Chicago, July 29. Image via Getty]

CHICAGO - JULY 29: Demonstrators protest in favor of jobs they hope will be created by the construction of a Walmart store on Chicago's Southside July 29, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. Walmart has been fighting to build another store in the city since 2004 but has failed to win approval from the City Council. There is currently only one Walmart within the Chicago city limits. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Though the job of flattering men in bars for a fee used to be stigmatized, a salary that can easily reach $100,000 a year is looking pretty good to Japan's young women — especially because they currently have few other options. "Even before the economic downturn," says Hiroko Tabuchi in today's Times, "almost 70 percent of women ages 20 to 24 worked jobs with few benefits and little job security," and things are even worse now. High school girls rated hostessing the 12th most popular profession, and a former hostess is now a member of the Japanese Parliament. Another hostess, 27-year-old Eri Momoka, is now a celebrity with her own fashion line and TV show. She says,

I often get fan mail from young girls in elementary school who say they want to be like me. To a little girl, a hostess is like a modern-day princess.

And popular hostesses do get parties thrown in their honor, free drinks, and lots of attention. Still, their job is to give attention, which can be exhausting. Though they aren't expected to have sex with clients, they do often go on after hours dates with them, and their jobs can require staying out drinking until dawn. Hostess Serina Hoshino says of her well-paid but exhausting job, "It's nice to be independent, but it's very stressful."

Although hostesses aren't prostitutes, the questions raised by their job are similar to those that surround sex work in the US. If a job entails currying favor with men, is it inherently antifeminist? What if it offers women economic independence that they wouldn't have otherwise? These questions represent something of a false choice. In any economy, there will probably be a demand for sex work, and hostessing in Japan isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But no woman should have to see either prostitution or hostessing as her only route to financial solvency. As hostess expert Atsushi Miura says, "Some people still say hostesses are wasting their life away. But rather than criticizing them, Japan should create more jobs for young women."

Young Japanese Women Vie For A Once-Scorned Job [NYT]

Sometimes I feel like Alice slipping through the looking glass, toggling between worlds. In one world, I interview C.E.O.'s, write articles for national publications and promote my nonfiction book. In the other, I clock in, sweep floors, endlessly fold sweaters and sort rows of jackets into size order. Toggling between the working class and the chattering class has taught me a lot about both: what we expect of ourselves, how others perceive us, ideas about our next professional step and how we'll make it...The contrasts between my former full-time job and my current part-time one have been striking. I slip from a life of shared intellectual references and friends with Ivy graduate degrees into a land of workers who are often invisible and deemed low-status.

The woman, it should be noted, works "six to eight hours a week" - i.e., one shift.

I'm extra-prickly about this sort of anthropological experiment approach in this case because I've done the freelance-writer -retail thing, if that's a "thing." I just thought of it as having a job, like many of the people I know. It's true, she's older than I - a woman who, presumably, has a career behind her which makes taking on something "demeaning" more noteworthy. But this is not novel: even before the current economic troubles, people worked these jobs. And now, I know numerous people, financially devastated, who are going back to work at whatever can be found without complaint or comment, and working far more than eight hours a week. To a degree, she acknowledges this - that she is lucky to have this job (although at minimum wage, one shift can't make a huge difference, surely?) , but her wish to distance herself from it is palpable and distasteful.

I love sharing my expertise and experiences. When customers tell me they're going to Fiji, Kenya, the Grand Canyon or Cuzco, Peru, I can offer first-hand advice from my own trips there. I know what they need to stay warm, dry and comfortable on the ski slope, boat deck, hiking or bike trail.

We get it: you're better than this. And then, of course, she Learns Lessons. She naturally gets to know salt of the Earth types, appreciates that ego isn't allowed and that people are judged on how hard they work. She learns that some customers are shockingly entitled, not realizing that "We, too, are intelligent and proud of our skills; many of us are college educated. Some of us travel often and widely, speaking foreign languages fluently."

No shit. It's called a job, and most of us have been working them since high school. It's not a degradation or a novelty, but a simple reality of pursuing a creative career. Look, whatever, more power to her. But if she wants a medal, she's not getting it. She doesn't need to sell me on retail: I worked it for years, really enjoyed it, and was grateful for the human contact, steady income and chance to flex totally different muscles, literal and otherwise; I still pick up a shift when I can. I somehow managed to survive the devastations of "scraping gum and food off the floor or standing for five straight hours...refolding clothing so many times the skin on my hands cracks from dehydration." I know, hard to believe.

My Retail Job, Crazy As It Is, Keeps Me Sane [NYT]

As people spend more and more time at the office, workplace relationships have grown closer and more fraught - in short, more family-like. An increasing number of companies are actively analyzing family dynamics to help manage office interactions. says one shrink,

Work is nothing more than an entirely complex set of relationships. You have partners that are your equals, subordinates, superiors...It’s parents and siblings. All of these dynamics that are exactly the same in the workplace, just the titles are different.”

As is so often the case, things come down to birth order:

Firstborns...tend to be fearful of losing their position and rank, so they may be extremely anxious at a time of layoffs and downsizing. Second-born children tend to be most adventurous and open to change, he said. In fact, [psychologist] Dr. Dattner said that companies he had worked with found that when sending employees overseas, second-born children tended to fare better than older ones. As the older of two daughters, Ms. Frankel said she sometimes feels competitive with Ms. Delio, which reminds her of competing with her sister for their parents’ attention.

Of course, as a composition teacher might say, where's the "so what?" To a degree, all interaction can probably be reduced to familial dynamics - which in turn can likely be explained by some biological imperative. At its worst, can overanalysis of this kind of pre-determining absolve us of adult responsibility? And to a certain degree, isn't what they're describing, at the end of the day, just your "personality?" For the most part, it seems moot: I'm scared of losing my job not because I'm the elder of two, but because we're in a recession; probably any responsible employee craves a boss's approval. What's more interesting is the degree to which an office life can allow someone to break out of his or her assigned roles, building new relationships and dynamics that in a sense give you a chance to do it better. To be crassly pop cultural, Don Draper may be a philanderer in the suburbs, but his commitment to his job is unstinting; where the character of Peggy may be one of a large crowd at home, her experience with dealing with a lot of people allows her to navigate the work "family" and promote herself. To the extent awareness of your proclivities makes you better able to harness them, I suppose this kind of knowledge is useful. But to the extent the formality of an office setting imposes structure and a certain professional courtesy, it seems like that, conversely, can inform home life. Those of us who work from home can just morph into spoiled only children and throw tantrums...with no one to hear.

Family and Office Roles Mix [New York Times]

• A study of the gynecological screening tests for cervical cancer in Sweden has found that immigrants from Norway, Denmark, and Central America are more likely to develop cervical cancer than Swedish nationals. • Germany has the largest wage gap between men and women in Western Europe, which is due in part to maternity leave and shortened hours for working moms and outright gender discrimination.• In related news: New laws in England that would extend maternity leave benefits to a full year and allow parents to demand flexible working hours have some "employment lawyers" worrying that employers will stop hiring women altogether. • Louise Glueck, former U.S. poet laureate, has been awarded the Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery of the art of poetry." • Women's activists in Iran enjoyed a victory on Monday when Iran's parliament decided to shelve a proposed law that would allow husbands to take multiple wives without permission from their first spouse. • The victory was brief, however, as four Iranian women's activists were imprisoned on Tuesday for contributing to banned women's websites. • Darlene Harris, a police officer in Atlanta, tells the story of how she discovered at the age of 35 that she is an "intersexed" person, or someone whose internal or external sexual anatomy don't fit the typical definitions of female or male. •

3. Project Intern Fulfill writing and reporting requests from editors. Experienced reporter (3 years min.) with encyclopedic knowledge of the internet, proficiency with blogging software and basic HTML coding skills. Send email with resume, three writing samples and subject line 'Project Intern' to interns (at) gawker dot com.

Earlier: You Can Take The Girl Out Of Jezebel But You Can't Take The Jezebel Out Of The Girl

It's not as hilarious as the one I appended to my Starbucks application of 1996 or the Valley girl voice I adopted to apply for a job at TheStreet in 2001, but it's in my inbox and it did the job, so to speak. [I would like to say that when Moe's letter was forwarded to me on February 6, 2007 I about creamed my panties in excitement. Best pre-Valentine's Day present ever. -Ed.] Send yours! Bad, good, insane, inane, presumptuous, whatev! It's the least we can do in this era of endless downsizing.

————— Forwarded message —————
From: Maureen Tkacik
Date: Feb 5, 2007 5:08 PM
Subject: your job
To: [redacted]@gawker.com

Dear Lockhart Steele,

I fucking love women's magazines, almost as much as I love trend stories in the NYTSSS. Here is an anecdote: while at work one of the latter loves, hoping it would tide me over while I toil over a book on what I call the Nothing Based Economy, I paid a call to Teen Vogue's publicist, asking if maybe she could get an editor to weigh in for my story on the hot new trendlet of photogenic teenage interns who double as arm candy. (AKA the "I MADE Cory Kennedy and all I got was $900" piece.) In true Styles style, the eds had chained me to my desk from 9 a.m. till 12 a.m. the week before the piece ran, demanding I call more demographers, headhunters, stand-up comedians, cultural theorists and esp. quotable friends of Styles editors making sure the story was, you know, "bulletproof"; Skype and cell were both ringing off the proverbial heezy.

And soooooo, when one "Amy Astley" caught me unawares with her call and I asked for her title, one Amy Astley, "editor-in-CHIEF," paused for a few seconds, and then uttered, "I'm sorry, I think you'll have to get someone else to talk to you. I just think this interview has gotten off to a really bad start." I couldn't have agreed more, and hung up accordingly, but just because I am so nice, I emailed [redacted], a friend at Conde Nast, to extend my "most heartfelt and sincerest apologies" for the gaffe, explaining that I was swamped/brain-farting/whatever. [Redacted] promptly called Amy, who said, and he quotes,

"I'm glad she realized something needed to be fixed,"

and,

"She'll learn from this."

And that was the moment that I realized that I have more to learn from women's magazines, Mr. Steele, than I could ever learn from composing trend stories for the Times, but alas, I'm afraid I've been shut out of the industry now. This is my chance, and I would be honored if you would give it to me. I think there are things I could teach them, too, such as: I lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks on the Poverty Diet (dollar menu chicken nuggets, Marlboros and no subway card) while I waited for that NYT check; Pond's cold cream works better than all 47 of the anti-aging eye creams I have purchased variously at Sephora, Saks and duty free carts; every single hipster girl I have informally polled agrees that "Can This Marriage Be Saved", adapted for friendships, live-in relationships and difficult jobs could alone, if resurrected, make us buy women's magazines again.

Seriously, I love women's magazines because they take themselves seriously in that way only the manufacturers of truly insipid drivel with no conceivable social value other than the perpetuation of frivolous longings that keep same-store sales and the economy of the superficial motoring along. I also have dozens of good friends who have found employment with them. Because that option is no longer open to me, I am perfect for this blog.

Yours,

Moe

It's No Act, I Need A Job

[NY Times]

Image via: Flickr