Despite radical changes in family formations, domestic labor still remains raced, gendered, and otherwise devalued.
This panel brings together experts from various fields to examine not only who cares about the family, but who does not, who should, and why.
Bio
Alyson Cole
The recipient of the 2008 President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Alyson M. Cole has been at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, since 2002. Her research and teaching interests bridge political theory and American politics/culture. Cole's work links central questions of political thought especially formulations of justice, the nature of subjugation, and the possibility of resistance or change with an examination of concrete political ideologies, rhetoric, and law/policy-making, emphasizing aspects of subject-formation, gender and race/ethnicity.
Cole is the author of The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2007). Her articles have appeared in American Studies, Feminist Studies, the Michigan Law Review, and the National Women's Studies Association Journal. She is on the editorial boards of Women's Studies Quarterly and International Journal of Criminology and Sociological Theory.
Patricia Hill Collins
Professor Collins is a social theorist whose research and scholarship have examined issues of race, gender, social class, sexuality and/or nation. Her first book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, published in 1990, with a revised tenth year anniversary edition published in 2000, won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) for significant scholarship in gender, and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Her second book, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 6th ed. (2007), edited with Margaret Andersen, is widely used in undergraduate classrooms in over 200 colleges and universities. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Routledge, 2004) received ASA's 2007 Distinguished Publication Award.
Rhacel Salazar Parrenas
Professor Rhacel Salazar Parrenas is a sociologist who received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She previously taught at the University of California, Davis and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Professor Parrenas is known for her work on women's labor and migration, speaking on this topic to audiences throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Her research fields include gender and feminist studies, the family, migration, international development, and labor.
Joan Williams
Distinguished Professor Joan C. Williams, 1066 Foundation Chair at UC Hastings College of the Law and prize-winning author, is the director of WorkLife Law and co-director of the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR). The author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It, she was awarded the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.
She has been widely quoted in the press, in publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Parenting Magazine, Working Mother and O.
I only watched the first 1/3 of the program because I quickly became disgusted with this presentation. As I watched, I ralized how much taxpayer waste is generated by paying these kinds of "educators." The first presentation mentions for example the fact that the poor are primarily single mothers, and that they work mostly dead end low paying jobs. Of course nothing is mentioned about the fact that these women are consciously making these choices. The first presentor comes up with all kinds of ways that "government" can help resolve these problems--everything from a national childcare program to equal part time pay with full time pay. Of course, this has to be subsidized by someone--now who could that be?--Oh yes of course the "government has to subsidize," and who is the government? Well it is the same employer that pays the salaries of these "unbiased" presentors--Me--I, the taxpayer is the "government." But of course even though I am the "employer," I have no rights in this issue. I cannot for example say: "You know, you got yourself into this mess, maybe you should figure out how to get out of it without my money." And so it goes, we have these feminists that can always blame everyone else but the person that actually makes the decision--in this case the woman herself. Society of course owes her a favor because she just happens to be endowed with a Vagina. She has her "constitutional rights." The problem with society in the United States is we have far too many women delineating the failures of our society and not enough people trying to actively do something about it. Given the obvious--a single mother has twice as much difficulty surviving as a husband and wife team does, So does that mean these presentors are promoting viable solutions such as a reemphasis on keeping people married? Absolutely not, as a matter of fact these geniuses go the opposite direction and present policies that actually undermine marriage and committed relationships in which two people try to raise a family. Almost all of their "solutions," insure that there will be even less two income families. In watching this presentation, it becomes obvious these presentors are incredibly clueless and not at all interested in suggesting low cost viable remedies to these problems--which quite simply is: 1) keep your legs closed, 2) stay married, 3) promote government programs to keep families together, and 4) stop creating incentives for women to get divorced by subsidizing them when they get into trouble. As everyone knows, it was the Feminist push for No Fault Divorce that caused this mess in the first place. Then it was "demands," that the children of these welfare queens be subsidized with food, housing and healthcare--but of course in doing so we had to get rid of the Fathers otherwise they would not be eligible. Too bad that American Taxpayers are required to subsidize this kind of biased and myopic "research". We deserve better.
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