| This diatribe was the very first thing I did this morning. Strange the stuff that accumulates when you sleep. Strange the clarity of thought, sometimes, at the waking moment. Stranger still how quickly that clarity and the ability to articulate it deteriorates. |
After Dave pried himself out, I rolled over into the center of bed re-fluffing the covers along the way. Again I thought how lying there in the dark surrounded by softness is the ideal place for my human body. I prepared for more sleep. There was some shuffling as Dave moved around dressing, showering, etc., and I found it a little more difficult than I would've liked. I began feeling guilty for not having the burden of getting up early and going to a job I hate. I have felt that dread of having to sell my soul to a horrible vocation. I'm angry that any job can make you get up before sunrise just to be there by 8, or 9 as the case may be. The job can also make you stay well into the night. Why do we allow ourselves to be enslaved like this? Oh, yeah. That's right: Money. We're a greedy, stupid bunch.
There are some serious institutional defects whose symptoms conceal it by making it appear that those who cannot adequately manage in the workplace are some how defective or not cut out for it naturally. The ideal worker is unarguably male, preferably with no strings attached. If there are strings they are managed flawlessly in that mythical tradition we all associate with the 50's. The fact that women can never meet the ideal seems never to be questioned; rather it is said that women are not naturally conducive to the workplace, that their sphere is the home where they nurture future generations, the current "breadwinner" one, and increasingly generations of old. The extent to which a worker does not fit the ideal is reflected in the career choices, or the lack thereof, available to them. Twenty-five years after women began to enter the labor force en masse, only 3 -5% of them have gained access to senior level positions in the corporate structure. This fact is contrary to the passive belief that women can gain equality by infiltrating the work place in a critical mass that will somehow, instantaneously, guarantee their rights. So, why is it then that the women of that first wave, who are the same age as men who run companies, not running those same companies alongside some of those men? Surely the experience is the same? Ahh, the ideal worker. The fact that the more a person fits the mold, the more successful he, or she, can be. So, it is more likely that women in that generation took some time to be full-time mothers. If they did not, then surely their productivity in the workplace had to share energy with homemaking, because society still expects only women to manage that arena. That women can never be the ideal worker means that they will never be corporate leaders in equal numbers with individuals who illustrate the ideal. What does this say? It says that the working ideal is flawed and that by trying to emulate an ideal that one can never achieve, women are fighting a losing battle. Of course, who has energy to think about such things when time has to stretch to accommodate the job, the house, and the family? Thus, there is a misdiagnosed structural disease in our society whose symptoms are being mistreated in the name of a return to tradition, in the name of individual accomplishment, and in the name of a moral breakdown. I expect that like all ailments, it will continue to worsen until the heart of the problem is acknowledged and a radical treatment protocol is implemented.
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