The Mommy Wars–Again

The Mommy Wars are back, and since they were last fought, the gender gap (now called by some the confidence gap) has widened.  For decades, women (at least, some of them) have argued that they should be able to have a family and a top job.   Enter Sarah Palin, and you’d think all the arguing had never occurred.

The purpose of this post is to look at this subject from an employment law perspective–not a political, moral or family values perspective.  Under the law preventing sex discrimination, you can’t take into account how many children a woman has, their ages, their teenage pregnancies, or their disabilities.  Yet that’s exactly what many of Governor Palin’s would-be employers (American voters) are doing.

This development not only demonstrates that many of our citizens have failed to accept the law on sex discrimination but continue to hold to a gender role sort that says the father is the breadwinner, and the mother is the child caregiver.  The judgment of a man with five children seeking political office would never be questioned.  The judgment of Sarah Palin is being undermined–because she’s a woman.

What she’s trying to do is “impossible.”  She’s being “insensitive” to her family by seeking the second highest office in the land.  Her “values” are upside down.  Or as one opinionated observer said:  “You can juggle a BlackBerry and a breast pump in a lot of jobs, but not in the vice presidency.”

Well, let’s see.  How many male officeholders go to work with an oxygen tank strapped to them?  How many take chemo?  FDR suffered from the severe effects of polio throughout his lengthy service as President.  Eisenhower had a heart attack.  JFK had such a bad back that the pain was almost debilitating.  Reagan took a bullet and continued to work.

Palin has even been criticized for going back to work only three days after her last child was born.  Well, let me tell you something.  If a man–a new father–isn’t back to work in three days, he’ll be ridiculed, and his work ethic will be questioned–FMLA or no FMLA.  It’s the mother’s responsibility to take care of the baby.  It’s the father’s responsibility to work.

What’s particularly shocking about the criticism being leveled at Palin is that it’s coming from women who ordinarily criticize the workplace for the glass ceiling it has and for how few women executives there are.  Some of this criticism toward Palin is purely political.  I get that.  From an employment law perspective, let me make sure you get this.  There are a lot of male executives feeling a lot more secure about the continuation of a male-dominated C-Suite.  Just like they always thought, regardless of what the law says, a woman’s place is in the home–or, at least, in a low paying job.

It’s as though American women have been reading Dante Moore’s new book, The Re-Education of the Female, and deciding that they agree with it.