Thursday, August 21, 2014

This week at The Nation's The Curve: the criminalization of motherhood, and how we can stop it

In recent months, nightmarish stories about the criminalization of poor mothers have made headlines. There was, for example, the case of Debra Harrell, charged with child abuse for letting her 9-year old play in a nearby park while she worked her shift at McDonald's, and Eileen Dinino, who was thrown behind bars for being too poor to afford the legal fees from her kids' truancy cases -- and ended up dying in jail.

What is driving the assault on poor mothers, and how can we end it? Writer and activist Mariame Kaba, journalist Sarah Jaffe, economist Randy Albelda, and I explore these issues in the latest edition of The Curve.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Mark your calendars: exciting Sept. 13th Baffler conference on women and work!

All, I am thrilled to announce an exciting project I've been working on for The Baffler magazine. On Saturday, September 13th, The Baffler will be hosting an all-day conference on women's work issues. The conference is entitled Feminism for What? Equality in the Workplace after Lean In and it will take place at John Jay College in New York City. The conference was organized by me and my Baffler colleague, Noah McCormack.

Susan Faludi will deliver the keynote, and the conference will include four panels on the following topics:

- the advantages and pitfalls of self-help as as strategy for women's workplace advancement;
- intersectional issues (race, immigration status, and LGBT identity) at work;
- class and economic inequality;
- and finally, feminist visions of economic justice for women.

Other speakers include such brilliant women as E.J. Graff, Zerlina Maxwell, Imani Gandy, Sarah Leonard, Heather Boushey, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Liza Featherstone, Irin Carmon, Nancy Folbre, and Kathi Weeks.

You can find out more about the conference at its main webpage, here. The Facebook page is here and the Eventbrite page, where you can buy tickets, is here.

Admission to the conference is $20 for the general public, but it's free if you're a Baffler subscriber or a member of the press. Email me if you want to get on the press list.

The issues we'll be exploring at this conference are close to my heart and it's been an honor and a privilege to help put this together. Please spread the word about this exciting event and help us move the conversation about women's workplace issues into the twenty-first century!

This week at The Nation's The Curve: feminists discuss gender and Thomas Piketty

And now for something completely different: for this week's edition of The Nation's The Curve, feminists discuss gender and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

If you've read everything there is to read about this watershed book and think there's not much more to say, think again! I can promise you that you will find ideas and insights here that you haven't seen anywhere else. Joining me in this exciting roundtable are the following outstanding participants: economist Heather Boushey, political scientist Zillah Eisenstein, and two younger women you may not be familiar with but from whom you will, I'm sure, be hearing much more: Kate Bahn, economics Ph.D. student and blogger for the wonderful site, Lady Economist, and Joelle Gamble of The Roosevelt Institute (who is, to my knowledge, the first women of color to have written about the book).

The discussion of this book has, thus far, been shockingly male-dominated. Only a handful of women and people of color have written about this book, and only two women reviewed it in major American print publications. You already know what 27,000 white dudes have had to say about Capital. It's long past time you listen to what feminists have to say.