Stone: “The Rhetoric and Reality of ‘Opting Out.’” Flashcards
In the example, why did Regina quit?
Inflexibility of her workplace
Women are not opting out because of biological urges, but because work is giving them no other choice
Why did the women she interviewed leave their work?
- Loved their kid too much to leave
- Felt they were better then other caregivers
- See values of work as opposite to family life
- Husbands career took off / husband says “it’s your choice”
- Long hours / travel
What happens when women take advantage of workplaces “family flexibility”? (part time)
Lose all significant responsibilities and their good career derails
What is intensive mothering?
Advices mothers to spend insane time, energy, and money on kids
Do women resent the part of their jobs that prevent them from integrating work and family?
No, they seem to think “I have to be able to do all OR nothing”
Internalized “the ideal worker”
Explain how high achieving women face a “double bind”?
“there are a number of women, I
think, who are home because they’re caught between
a rock and a hard place. … “
they faced a “choice gap”
What is the “choice gap”?
Choices childfree women can make about careers vs choices wives and mothers can make while having high earning husbands in unyielding professions.
How does the idea of a future pregnancy impact these women?
make women feel that they were perceived as flight risks
for example, Patricia Lambert’s boss asked her on her first day: “So, are you going to have kids?”
How do these women see their idea of chocie?
Privilege, feminism, and personal agency
saw themselves as realizing the dreams
of third-wave feminism.
The goals of earlier, second-wave feminism, economic independence and gender equality, took a back seat, at least temporarily.
What does the author say is the way to keep women working?
Forget opting out;
the key to keeping professional women on the job is to create better, more flexible ways to work.
