April Just Posts

Welcome to the April Just Posts, the parenting blogosphere's round up of posts on a whole host of issues that can best be described under the heading "Social Justice". This list is put together by me, Mad, and my goddess partner, Jen of One Plus Two. The Just Posts are also published on The Whole Mom Webzine.

Again this month we are surrounded by bounty. Before I unveil the April Just Posts, though, I want to talk very briefly about an issue that, thankfully, doesn't affect me. I live in Canada. I work in a university library with a strong union. When I got pregnant, I hit the jackpot when it came to compassion and caring in the work place. At 3o weeks pregnant, I was placed on sick leave to ride out my pregnancy because my daughter wasn't coping so well inutero. I still received a pay cheque. When Miss M was born I took the full year maternity leave that Canadians are entitled to. My workplace topped up the Federal Government's Employment Insurance that I had payed into such that for 50 of those 52 weeks, I received 95% of my mid-career, professional librarian's salary. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

I often read articles in newspapers or magazines or even on blogs that will talk about the struggle women face in trying to be a mother and an employee as well. Usually these articles talk about people who, while they might not've been as lucky as me, are still not so badly off. You see, the media is really only interested in middle class motherhood--the women who call their jobs careers, who can work right up until their due date because their work is not physically strenuous, and who work in offices where they can find discrete places to haul out a breast pump. For me--for a lot of us--this is our situation. Benefits may not have been ideal. The respect of our colleagues may change with motherhood. Our career paths may alter drastically and sometimes devastatingly when we have kids, but, ya know, we make do because that is what it means to be a career woman AND a mother.

In the non-air-conditioned library where I work one of the cleaning women looks to be about seven or eight months pregnant right now--right as we are heading into the heat and humidity of summer. Her face, at every single moment of the day, grimaces as though she wished the trial of her job were over, as if these next two months will be her undoing. I don't know what her benefits are. The University contracts out most of its cleaning staff. I doubt she is unionized. I don't know what her salary is and so I don't know how much EI she will earn when she is on maternity leave. I don't know if EI's 45% of her salary will be enough to allow her more than a few short weeks off. She may well be the single income earner in her family as a lot of women are. And ya know I feel uncomfortable projecting any possible scenarios onto her. All I can say is that she is definitely into the uncomfortable stage of pregnancy and yet she is still hauling mop across the floors in this sticky, summer heat.

So many Canadian women work in low paying jobs, jobs without decent benefits, jobs that offer only part-time hours so that real benefits and EI insurable earnings never really accrue. Much of the work that women do is hard physical labour in demanding situations (my mother was a nurse's aide in a chronic care nursing home). And yet the debates about maternity benefits always seem to circulate around middle class issues. Why? Because we, the middle class, have incomes, and public voices, and a lot more social agency. I know that not all of you who read this will define yourself as middle-class. That's fine. I'm not trying to use a blanket, royal "we" here. I just know that a goodly number of my readers are middle class with careers outside the home.

I guess that what I'm trying to say in this post is that in so many ways we do have a voice for change. When we raise that voice, can we speak for others as well as ourselves? Can we call the media and politicians on it when they over-simplify these issues?

Here are the April nods. Oh and make sure you hop on over to Jen's to see what she's been mulling about this month.

Ann with an uneven playing field
Andrea with crime and punishment
Slouching Mom with we-could-try-not-going-gentle-into-that
Chani with forced-therapy-and-cho-seung-hui and you'll have to pry my multivitamins out of my cold dead fingers and gun control
Cecilieaux with information free society
Bon with mercy in the world
Crazymum with woman-on-streetcar-i-saw-her
Vanessa with i-have-been-thinking-about-this
Redneck Mommy with looking-for-a-hand-out
Neen with it's not too late
Bad with darkness-calls-me-every-night
Jen with hard on the outside, unexpected gospel and my friend bob
Gwen with this-little-light-of-mine
John with rockwell and ruby
Little Monkies with a new day is dawning, America
Alejna with last minute earth day gifts
Lucia with oventic
Julie with Justice and Forgiveness Pt 1, Pt. 2 and just reporting a tragic story
KC with getting to 2nd base and closed doors
Alice with spring flings and baby warriors and stranger in a strange land
Susanne with my son wanted pink shoes
Jenn Satterwhite with The Twilight Zone and teaching understanding of disabilities
Mouse with putting plastic on notice and natural vs. synthetic
Karen with At nearly 33 years old
Girl con Queso with I won't do this story justice
S. with blogging against disablism
Mad with question #2 in Because smart women turn me on, pt1

Some of the many readers who took notice
Chani
Anne
KC
Susanne
Lawyer Mama
Jess
Flutter
Alejna
Hel
Kim
Catherine
Mad
Jen