Episode #23: Mothers, part I - Mums at Work
Image credits (CW): women lumberjacks during WWII; Elizabeth Warren with her daughter; Stuart Hall with his daughter (photo by Sally Fraser); Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford with their daughter; logo by @3Dperson; Waiting by Emma
Emma and Charlotte discuss working motherhood, mums at work, and why we really should be able to have it all.
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Our next episode – #24 – will be on British foreign policy; episode 25 will be about cultural representations of motherhood;
Amy Westerveld, ‘Is motherhood the unfinished work of feminism?’: “What some theorists forget, of course, is that ideas and expectations around mothering impact all women, whether they have children or not. Those who are not mothers are not only asked about this decision regularly, but also often bear a largely unseen burden as part of the country’s general lack of support for working mothers. While working mothers are being stretched thin and asked to be all things to all people, women without children are quietly covering their maternity leaves or working unpaid overtime, expected to work evenings and weekends because they don’t have kids to go home to after all.” Published by The Guardian, 26 May 2018. Read the whole article here, and follow Amy on Twitter @amywestervelt;
Anne-Marie Slaughter exposed the ‘Mommy Track’ in this 2012 article for The Atlantic: ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’. Follow her on Twitter @SlaughterAM;
Olga Khazan wrote ‘The Mommy-Track Myth’, also for The Atlantic, in 2014. Read the article here and follow Olga on Twitter @olgakhazan;
Things Emma has published during her parental leave: ‘Now Is the Time!’ The Importance of International Spaces for Women’s Activism within the ANC, 1960–1976 in the Journal of Southern African Studies (free downloads for non-university affiliated readers here); and ‘There is no longer any excuse for not repatriating museums’ colonial art’ in Prospect;
“How to be an academic without working 60 hours a week” by Lucy Foulkes was prompted by a Twitter argument about how many hours academics should work. Follow Lucy on Twitter @lfoulkesy;
The book Emma worked on with Rachel Reeves MP is Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics (I.B. Tauris, 2019);
Annie Auerbach’s book Flex: The Modern Woman’s Handbook was published earlier this year; Follow Annie on Twitter @annieauerbach;
We discussed emotional labour and women’s second shift in episode 4 - listen to that here. In that episode, we linked to You Should Have Asked, a cartoon by Emma, a French cartoonist, which you can see here. Emma has also created Waiting, which explains how women’s time is undervalued, and which features in the image above. See the whole story here;
Find out more about the Women’s Liberation Movement conference at Ruskin College in Oxford here. The photo of Stuart Hall above was taken as he manned the conference crèche;
Sarah Childs is a professor of politics and gender at Birkbeck, University of London. Read more about her research here and follow her on Twitter @profsarahchilds;
Rebecca Traister’s article is ‘Mom vs. Dad on the Road to 2020’, published by The Cut on 14 April 2019. Read it here and follow Rebecca on Twitter @rtraister;
Elizabeth Warren’s first child was born in 1971, the year Warren turned 22. Beto O’Rourke’s wife is called Amy Hoover Sanders;
“New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire having a newborn baby works "beautifully" with her role in politics.” See the clip here;
Jodi Kantor, Kate Zernike and Catrin Einhorn wrote about how Sarah Palin fused motherhood and politics back in 2008 – read their article here;
In 2016, Cambridge biologist David Kent asked “Could parental leave actually be good for my academic career?”
Krista Cowman is a professor of history and director of research at the University of Lincoln – read more about her research here;
Pamela Scully is a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and professor of African studies, and Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Innovation at Emory University. Read more about her research here and follow her on Twitter @PamelaScully;
Marilyn B. Young was a feminist historian of war and of US foreign relations – read more about her in this obituary published in 2018;
Frene Ginwala was the first woman to become the Speaker of the South African National Assembly. Read more about her here (or in Emma’s PhD thesis here);
‘Six things working women should pretend they can’t do: Hide these talents at all costs — unless you want to derail your career’ was written by Sarah Cooper for The Financial Times, read it here and follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahcpr. Emma Jacobs, who Charlotte thought had written the article, writes about work and office life for the FT - read her articles here and follow her on Twitter @emmavj;
Here’s a scoop for you: Emma is moving to Malmö this summer to take up a lectureship in history at the University of Malmö – but don’t worry, TNK will continue;
Charlotte has written about Labour’s international development policy for Renewal – read the article here;
Our discussion about radical, militant motherhood was part of episode 13 – listen to that here;
Rebecca Traister’s book is Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger (Simon & Schuster, 2018). Read more about it here;
Ev Petgrave discussed Beyoncé’s motherhood in this article on Mater Mea;
Charlotte reads lines from Matrilineal Descent by Robin Morgan:
“Not having spoken for years now,
I know you claim exile from my consciousness.
Yet I wear mourning whole nights through
for that embrace that warmed my ignorant lust
even past intimacies you had dreamed.
(…)
You’re older than I thought. But so am I,
and grateful that we’ve come to this:
a ragged truce, an affirmation in me
that your strength, your pushiness, your sharp love,
your embroidery of lies—all, all were survival tools,
as when, during our personal diaspora, you stood
in some far country blocks away,
burning poems I no longer sent you
like Yahrzeit candles in my name, unsure of me at last
who sought a birthright elsewhere,
beyond the oasis of your curse,
even beyond that last mirage, your blessing.
Mother, in ways neither of us can ever understand,
I have come home.”
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
Charlotte recommends Fleabag, which is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK;
Emma recommends Mum, which is also on the BBC iPlayer.
THE NEXT EPISODE…
…will be the first in a two-part series on British foreign policy. The second part of our motherhood series will be available as episode #25 in a few weeks’ time.
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