not Martha Stewart fantasies. Check out our gal Courtney Martin's piece on the reality of the so-called "opt-out revolution." Did folks really think women were opting out?

It turns out that Belkin's "opt out revolution" was more like an opt out overreaction. Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. found that the drop in women's work participation rates between 2001 and 2005 was largely due to a weak labor market, and further, men's labor rates also dropped at this time. Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings, recently reported that 86 percent of those women who did leave their jobs did so because of inflexible office policy, not Martha Stewart fantasies.

Women aren't throwing away their careers, they can't find childcare! Only 1 in 7 parents get paid childcare leave. And the stats get uglier. . .

This is not just a touchy-feely topic, but an economic watershed. The average female college graduate who becomes a mother will sacrifice about a million dollars over her lifetime. And it's not just personal financial loss that is caused by rigid work/family policy. A new study by Catalyst, a research and advisory organization on women at work, and The Community, Families & Work Program (CFWP) at Brandeis University, found that of the 1,755 working parents studied in three Fortune 100 organizations, 1 in 20 parents, experience high stress as a result of inflexible work/family policy. A staggering number when you consider that, according to American Psychologist, workplace stress costs companies an estimated $50-$300 billion in lost job productivity each year.

Check it at Alternet.

(I am so sick, I think Jessica did it, over the interweb. BITCH!)

1 Comments

December 21, 2006 11:26 PM

[0+|0-]  Pickleberry said:

There's another good article about the lack of women in upper-level science faculty positions in this week's New York Times science section. Women in Science: The Battle Moves to the Trenches

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