Collisions with Reality

I’m always delighted to see studies showing that men do an ever-increasing share of housework and childcare. My husband and I do equal amounts of both in our household nowadays, and it’s nice to know that we’re not an anomaly in this way. (We perhaps are anomalies in our lack of multitasking — in particular, I am completely incapable of it — and so our time spent multitasking is far, far below the average.) However, two recent events at work have reminded me that we still have a long way to go when it comes to the work-family balance:

1. At work, there is a long-running speaker series called Women We Admire, “in which women [...] share their insights about career, workplace challenges and work-life balance.” These are all accomplished women who are at the tops of their fields. Yet at the recent talk I went to, the audience was at most 10% male.

2. I am also starting an affinity group at work for other parents — there aren’t a ton of people at work with young kids (let alone in the Bay Area), and I thought there could be a lot of interesting, focused meetings. What schedule flexibility do we have? How are the labor and delivery departments at the various hospitals in our different health care plans? What on earth do you do with school-aged kids in the summertime? The sign-ups are finally starting to roll in, and so far only two men have signed up. TWO.

To be fair, the majority of my co-workers are women. But men are underrepresented in both cases above. Apparently, when a woman works outside of the home, there’s a work-life balance she has to achieve. When a man works out of the home, it’s business as usual!

How can this be changed? Is the framing language the problem? Or is it another symptom of the bigger problem — that women’s issues are considered to be “special issues”, and not issues faced by, you know, HALF THE DAMN POPULATION?

The most successful resolution I ever made was to go to the beach more often, for 2009. It worked because it was a fun resolution, and it forced me to manage my time better. I never would have succeeded at just resolving to manage my time better. On the photography side, in 2010 I learned that I’m much better at project-based goals, not deadline-based goals. (In other words, no Project 365 for me.) With that in mind, here are my resolutions for 2011:

1. Learn one new thing every day. This could be anything — a Python trick, an interesting spot in the neighborhood, a weird factoid about the state of Delaware, you name it. This is a fun resolution that i think will help me combat some of the inertia I get stuck in.
2. Go to the dentist. I have good health insurance, and haven’t been to the dentist in about five years.
3. Do physical therapy or yoga at least once per week. I’m having some neck and shoulder issues that, if not preventable, should at least be more manageable.
4. Create photograph collections. I haven’t decided exactly what projects I’d like to do. But what I want to focus on in 2011 is on creating cohesive series of photographs. I’m stuck in a mode of wanting each picture I upload to Flickr to be able to stand alone. But sometimes, a picture is more interesting in a series, and that’s okay. Of course that’s okay. So I want to work on seeing the big picture more often in my photography. (No puns in this resolution intentional. Sigh.)

I think that’s a reasonable and fun list. Happy New Year, everyone!

Recently I complained about books that haven’t aged well for me, due to a mix of sensibilities and my sense of humor. Today I have a more specific complaint: the bad astronomy in children’s books, particularly in dealing with the phases of the moon. The culprits include, but by no means are limited to:

• Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown. Yes, I’ve seen the astrophysics of Goodnight Moon. And while the moon rises in the book, it still implies that a full moon is low in the sky and rising at bedtime, every night.
• Grandfather Twilight is another full moon rising around sunset every night.
• The Going to Bed Book, by Sandra Boynton. I adore Sandra Boynton, but in this book we have a crescent moon rising every night.

I am particularly harsh on the bedtime books, because those are books that get re-read over and over and over. The Going to Bed Book and Goodnight Moon are certainly part of our bedtime routine, and my son has started pointing to the moon in The Going to Bed Book. Yet I am on the hunt for something better. Read the rest of this entry →

For the first time that I can really remember, I’m thinking of the next 6-12 months as just the next 6-12 months, not “the next school year”. That’s just one of the many adjustments I have ahead of me as my family moves to the Bay Area and I leave academia. What exactly does figuring out what I’m doing with the rest of my life entail?
Read the rest of this entry →

I have mostly ignored the discussion surrounding the blog post on sexy female scientists. I don’t think it’s unimportant, but I didn’t have the energy to really dig into the many issues raised by the post. My opinion, if you’re curious, is probably most closely aligned to Sheril Kirshenbaum’s.

However, yesterday I also saw a blog post on a nurse-in at a Johnny Rocket’s in Kentucky. (Nurse-ins, for those of you who are not in any mommyblogger loops, are generally organized as a response to a business or organization asking a nursing mother to leave or nurse elsewhere. This is often in violation of state law, as forty-four states specifically allow women to nurse in any public or private location. Yes, including businesses. One day I will have a post about how nursing in public is a feminist cause, but today is not that day.) And, well, you can read the comments yourself. Some of them are supportive, some of them are willfully mis-interpreting the law, and then some are complaining about how they don’t want to see “dirty tits” or “gross-looking” women.

These two issues are really two sides of the same coin. They happen to be extremely relevant to my life — as I am a woman scientist, and a mother who has nursed her child in public — but they are merely two examples of the sexism that is still in society. Forget about whether I’ve contributed anything to our understanding of galaxy clusters, or whether I’m trying to provide the best nutrition for my son. Am I sexy? No? Well, then, clearly I have no value.

I don’t care what Lukeprog’s intentions were in posting that list. The sheer act of compiling and posting it is hardly different from the Consumerist commenters complaining about ugly women nursing in public. It’s treating women as objects of attraction first, and scientists, mothers, and members of society last.