The Feminist Valuing the Devalued Process
created by:
Alexis Frank, Shaheli Guha, Hitomi Yoneya
The Opt-Out Revolution
Opting Out Defined:Opting out, or staying at home with children rather than working in the paid labor sector, has received a lot of attention in the media since the 1970s [1]. After the sucess of equal opportunity feminism, paid labor is assumed to be the normal path for educated woman, and deciding to opt out of the paid workforce in order to reclaim tradtionally feminine work has been one way that women are valuing the devalued. Some people, including Lisa Belkin of the New York Times [2], have even called opting out a "revolution"; however, educated women leaving the workforce to raise children is nothing new. What is revolutionary is the degree to which women who have achieved success in traditionally masculine terms are valuing the historically devalued work of child-rearing and caring. |
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Personal Decisions and Social Structures:
Although an individual may decide to opt out, this does not mean the decision is purely personal. The way the labor market is structured, cultural norms and expectations, and wage differentials make the decision highly public. Since society imposes different costs and benefits on persons, restraints external to the character of the individual greatly influence the decision to opt out. For example, a wealthy woman might be praised for staying at home, while a poor woman may be denounced as lazy and neglectful of her child's welfare. It is clear that opting out is not an equal choice for all. The term choice is misleading because there are systematic disparities in the pressures to work or stay at home according to gender, class, and other characteristics. A rich father who quits work to be with a child might be heralded as going above the parental call of duty, while it may be considered the bare minimum of effort for a rich mother to do so. The high-powered careers that are still considered the hallmark of traditional success in the U.S. were structured for men who had the help and support of full-time homemakers. This can make it especially difficult for anyone to combine paid work with active homemaking. In order to make valuing devalued feminine work possible for everyone, we need changes in governmental and workplace policy
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| Education and Opting Out:Opting out is highly controversial because the work done by those who opt out has traditionally been devalued. Since home work is not historically considered as beneficial to society as market work, the education of individuals who plan to stay home has been questioned. Those who think it is a waste of resources to educate those who plan to opt out do not realize the immense benefit to society unpaid work provides and do not consider the institutional forces at work.
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Unfairly Targeting Women:
Most media treats work and family balance issues as the problem of women. Men are often wrongly left entirely out of the conversation because it is incorrectly assumed that men don't have a choice. Since men have traditionally been brought up to expect to work full-time and not "sacrifice" professional opportunities for family, the underlying inequality behind opting out is commonly overlooked and ignored. Simply put, it is unfair and sexist to expect only one gender to make decisions about combining work and family. Books and articles try to tie down women with the burden of solving the dilemma, but true progress is impossible unless everyone faces the issues underlying opting out.End Notes:
[1] "The Mrs. Degree"; available from
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_echidneofthesnakes_archive.html#112723048696280267;
Internet; accessed 17 May 2007.
[2]
Lisa Belkin. "The Opt-Out Revolution," The New York Times
(26 October 2003) [journal on-line]; available from
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/26WOMEN.html?ei=5007&en=02f8d75eb63908e0&ex=1382500800
&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all;
Internet; accessed 17 May 2007.
