Female Assets

While women have made economic and educational strides, many have found themselves outside of a solid economic mainstream. The loss of a job, the birth of an ill baby or a divorce, all extremely common events in the fabric of American life, can drop a woman from the middle rung of the middle class to a free fall off of a stable economic ladder altogether. Women, like men, have common needs, and these needs cost money. The culmination of assets is the means by which we meet those needs. Both men and women, independent from one another, require the growth of the following assets over a lifetime.

Assets for Female Economic Well-Being
• Earnings to sustain growth during a working lifetime
• Knowledge and skills to enhance those earnings
• Physical and mental health to fully use knowledge, skills, and other capacities, pensions for support in retirement;
• Insurance or other protection against risks—unemployment, illness, disability
• Financial resources to complement and enhance all of the former
• Networks of personal, community, and professional connection, and
• Community-based infrastructure of resources and services
Asset Development Institute, Brandeis University

Female asset development is directly tied to living out the values of an American dream-female style. It is hard for anyone of us to vision a life for our daughters, granddaughters or ourselves that does not include women having the same rights to build strong futures for themselves, on their own. Secure women require, not “may like to if they want”, the following traits during the various stages of their lifetime. First they need opportunity. Every young woman has her own right to choose what the good life is for her and to construct a plan that when steadily worked over a lifetime, provides her opportunities to grow and develop. A flexible plan accompanied with genuine life skills will help her to cope with inevitable changes, to make choices, such as having a family or to sustain her during serious challenges such as recovering from illness.
Female "assets are what women need to make choices about their lives; what they need to succeed in the choices that they make. When we possess assets, the future holds promise; there is reason to hope and strive for a better life”(The Asset Index).
Secondly, a female American dream requires fairness. Girls and women should be pushed to take part in creating financial skills of their own and having their voices heard regarding the very issues that are critical to their well-being. Girls and woman require increased information and encouragement to enter those careers and professions where their hard work, training and dedication will reap substantial higher earnings than those jobs and careers where women have super-glued themselves. It is time to coach our girls and young women the same way we coach our boys and young men.
As a result of reading the literature on female work and writing this chapter, I had a conversation with a young woman that I would have previously let go for the sake of not offending her. I was at my local bank when I struck up a conversation with a young female teller (the only gender of teller found in the bank). She was telling me she was taking classes beginning in one week at our local technical college. I assumed it was in the area of banking but she corrected me and said it was in cosmetology and barbering. I responded by encouraging her to explore the financial difference in moving up the ranks in the financial industry as opposed to starting at step one in the grooming industry. She replied by stating the stereotypical female thing—that she was really interested in cosmetology. I encouraged her to consider owning her own saloon eventually because after ten years at work, work is still work and you really want to be earning some substantial financial rewards as well. It is surprising how a good pay check can alter how much you like a particular career choice!

10 Truths

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt,an expert on science in American culture,insists that women must support and direct younger women if they are to sustain the gains made by the women of previous generations. The first responsibility all women and men have is to tell girls and women the truth about what the economic nature of a woman’s life is today and the path to building a secure and happy life.
So let’s do that: get at the truth. Truth number one: “She” has to help herself. No rescues allowed. As women and men who have stable and secure lives, we can and must help our girls and women by helping them to set goals and supporting them as they go. We can’t do it for them and we can’t take away meaningful life lessons by providing for her in the same way that was done when she was a child—paying her full bill while she spends her earnings on fluff.
Truth number two: Women who work full time earn more security. They are paid more and receive full benefits. They are taken more seriously and receive more opportunities for advancement. Full time women workers have more support services to assist them in their work and have access to free training in their fields. They are more successful in moving up the occupational ladder as they establish relationships and credibility with their supervisors. They have made the necessary sacrifices and adjustments in their personal and family lives (less social time with peers) and may be recognized for this in the workplace.
Truth number three: Women should limit their work in all women service occupations such as waitressing, retail work and low ladder health care. If you must work these jobs, set a temporary goal such as “I will waitress only while completing my associate degree in business”. Avoid the traps of staying too long in these low paying with no benefits jobs, where everyone is your boss but you.
Truth number four: Education counts. The U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau’s 1994 report advises that more education translates into lower unemployment. Women with less than a high school diploma have a ten percent chance of unemployment; with a high school diploma that rate drops to five percent, some college the rate drops further. The lowest unemployment rate is among those with a college education— 2.7 percent.
Truth number five: Women can balance work and family life and working will not make you a bad mother and ruin your children. Finding balance is a challenge all women face whether they work outside of the home or not. Women carry the bulk of parenting for young and the not-so-young and perform most of the routine and constant tasks required to maintain the care of a family and a home (preparation of meals, laundry, bill payment, supervising children, playing with children to name a few of the hundreds on this list). The problem is not whether a woman can find a balance in her already complex life as much as it is getting the other partner in the mix—namely the man— to assume a balanced role of his own.
Truth number six: Girls and women are assets over a lifetime and should view their lives as their own business. By learning fundamental principles such as— pay yourself first, invest in your training and education, the best sale to shop is one where you do not buy— shapes a girl’s and woman’s sense of vision and control over her own destiny. Financial management skills should be as important to teach and integrate into a girl’s life as watching a baby brother or learning how to prepare breakfast. Seeing a woman’s life as growing equity over time is the first step. Young woman need hands on experiences to start and grow a business of their own. If mothers and fathers have reasonable comfort with seeing their young daughter go into another adult’s home to provide care for their children (babysitting), it should be as easy to encourage her to deliver a service or prepare a product of her own. By practicing start-up small business skills of her own when young, she will be increasingly comfortable in shaping future ideas for business as a young adult.
Women who are either employed part-time or are full-time mothers are also prime candidates for building a small home-centered business. I have caught myself saying and have heard countless other working women remark that what they really need is a wife. For internet savvy women, there are numerous support services such as Home Based Working Moms (http://www.hbwm.com/) ready to assist creative women. Full time at home mothers can add substantially to their family’s income as well as acquire skill, knowledge and experience that will translate to employment in the workplace if and when they choose to enter the workplace in the traditional sense. While women recognize that staying at home with children is as much of a choice as working outside of the home with children is, so is working from a home business an increasingly wise and profitable option for women.
Truth number seven: Sell the hard stuff. Women are great talkers and even better at analyzing the details of a topic. Combined with sound interpersonal skills, it is no wonder why they are comfortable and successful in retail sales. Retail sales yields poor pay and few if any benefits, while selling automobiles, machines, health care products and home housing materials is lucrative. While the number of women selling automobiles has increased over the years, few women when compared to the total number of women who work as sales persons sell the hard stuff. The number of women selling automobiles has increased over the years. Women I know who do sell cars do incredibly well especially when you consider how the demand for new cars by women consumers has increased. The most challenging part for women selling the hard stuff is getting the notion firmly entrenched into their heads that they should and can sell them as easily as they can sell women’s underwear and dresses.
Truth number eight: Negotiate and get it in writing. If a man stays at home and takes care of the children while the woman works full time for pay, how will the man’s contribution be taken into account? If a couple under thirty is marrying for the first time, how will each know what the debt load is of their partner and what expectations they each have in assuming responsibility as a married couple in paying down both individually acquired debt and couple debt? How will the costs be distributed when a husband pays for the family health premium as part of his payroll deduction while the wife does not have any such costs?
Today, if two individuals are forming a legal partnership, e.g. marriage, the details of how the marriage will play out financially should be discussed, negotiated and spelled out in writing. While women’s language skills are generally superior to most men’s, I know of no woman who has accomplished reading the mind of others, especially her partner. If it is important to you, talk, negotiate and write it down.
Truth number nine: Girls and women are of equal value as human capital. Traditionally, economic policies were crafted with the eye on investing and protecting working men and their families whether the policy was Social Security, the GI Bill, the Homestead Act, or employment based health insurance and unemployment. Today’s society is light years away from the world of our parents and grandparents. Yet much of the mindset and most of the policies have not changed to address the changing nature of the workplace and families. Girls and women have both the right and the responsibility to develop their human capital—the cash income and benefits gained from their individual skills, knowledge, and experience. Human capital is acquired over a lifetime. Every girl and woman needs to be told a positive story about the life that waits for her by making choices that are commiserate with her potential.
Truth number ten: Activism matters. Many women have moved away from the activist roles of their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generation believing that most of their work has been successfully completed. In truth, at the end of the twentieth century, women’s value, economic, social and emotional net worth is at best eighty percent and at worst, twenty percent of men’s. Experienced professional women, be it in traditional careers such as teaching or nontraditional domains such as engineering, still are not represented proportionately at the upper ranks of their professions and are paid two-thirds of what men make. For women who work within the home and outside in occupations and jobs that are at the lower tier of the economic ladder, their fate has become much worse than women in similar lifestyles just ten years ago. For those women, the changing policies with respect to benefits, divorce, unemployment compensation, and lack of health benefits have all combined to put them at serious risk.

Banish the Princess

Pretty Woman catapulted Julia Roberts from actress to superstar. The film debuted in 1990, yet is still featured on television networks all over the country. When it premiered, it was the latest in the Cinderella story line. But this time Cinderella is a prostitute working the streets of Los Angles when Richard Gere’s character, a rich, successful corporate raider, “rescues” her to be his paid escort for the time he is in L.A. The film grossed over one hundred seventy eight million dollars in the US alone and that does not include revenues from the video rental and television sales market. Roberts’ body is stunning but sleazily dressed until somehow Gere’s character decides to transform her into his princess. But he never lets you know his thinking about how he will integrate a high school dropout hooker into his upper crust life.
There is one scene that is embedded in my memory. Roberts’ character, Vivian, is attempting to earn her keep by making sexual moves on the Gere character. She asks him which color and flavor condom he would like her to put on him. While the viewer does not see Vivian perform oral sex, you get the picture that the act has been consummated—that she performs and he receives. After all, she is a prostitute. Could this be another stepping stone in the path that would lead middle level girls in years ahead to engage in oral sex in their school buildings, on their school buses and at preteen and teen parties? After all it worked for Julia as Vivian and didn’t she look great!
On their website The National Coalition of Girls’ Schools writes, “It’s a standard fairy tale scenario: The damsel in distress is rescued by a knight in shining armor." That’s fine for childhood storytelling, but the primary lesson of recent US multinational bank predatory lending taught us all that financial literacy is a much better means of achieving a happily-ever-after ending. "If she'd had her own money, Cinderella wouldn't have been sweeping floors, and she would have bought her own shoes!” And no doubt, Julia’s character would not be selling her body on the streets of Los Angeles.
To dream about being a princess is easy. To build a secure future requires personal and social responsibility. It is simply untruthful to tell girls and women that they do not have to take initiative in assuring that their basic needs will be met. Every social fabric of American life has changed. Each girl and woman must hold herself accountable in doing as much as she can to create the life that she imagines for herself on the one hand, and,at least,to maintain a life that includes safety, security and a social fabric on the other. Women, who develop their capabilities to a higher level by taking more risks and making more sacrifices, should reap the financial benefits we have come to expect from men who do the same. To continue paying woman,at best,eighty cents on the dollar is unacceptable. What can women do about current wage and institutional practices held in place by gender bias and discrimination? What would happen if every woman now earning her living as a waitress in the food industry stopped working for thirty days? Answer: First, a lot of name calling followed by higher wages!

Mother Attachment

Ways of Knowing


There are many ways of knowing about mother attachment. One way is by firsthand experience. Shortly before my seventh birthday, I lost my mother to suicide. She was misdiagnosed after the birth of her last child and subjected to multiple rounds of electroconvulsive shock therapy. It devastated her on the most profound level. I have written her story in an essay titled “A Better Ending” which can be found on my website at http://people.uwec.edu/mackmd/.

Before the loss of my mother, I was a confident, feisty, outdoor girl running the woods of northern Wisconsin by daylight when not in school, and trying to decipher the words in my grandfather’s books in the evening. Two women, my mother and a paternal aunt, Margie, kept the large white house on a towering hill functioning as I ran in and out free as the wind. Years later I would recognize that it was Margie who kept the household together as my mother was already damaged from the “treatments” for what medical professionals believed to be depression. The image of my mother lying on a stretcher covered in her own blood hardwired on my brain where it remained for years. Like many families faced with the choice to survive or collapse under the pressure of a tragedy, my family slowly moved on in silence. I was left on my own to decipher the meaning of how and why mother died as she did as well as how to stop the image of her death from popping up continually during the day.

Within a few years, I moved from the freedom of a hilly rural Wisconsin countryside to the cement streets of suburban Milwaukee to live with one of my mothers’ many sisters. Within a few years, I also was deprived of all contact with my father. Reeling from the loss herself, my aunt thought it best for me and for her to silently leave the tragedy in the past and move on. She obtained a court order barring my father from contact as to see him triggered her own unresolved feelings about the loss of her sister. She transferred all responsibility of my mother’s death squarely on my father’s shoulders. She believed any contact I would have with my father would work against my acclimation to my new life. What she did not know is that the path to recovery from such profound losses requires survivors to release both the energy and the toxic chemicals produced from the survival moments or carry it inside where it will wreak havoc and increase in pressure to be released. As a child, you look for others to lead the way in making order of a chaotic loss and to assist you in retaining the memory of your loved one. When that did not happen, I held on to the only memory that remained of my mother: her moment of death.

That process of hanging on resulted in early episodes of depression and anxiety. I went from a rather securely attached child to an anxious, traumatized one without the assistance of a healer. As I continued to grow and regain my footing, I chose to forget my mother, to dismiss any memory or reference of her. In a way, I acted as if my mother never existed. Other girls had mothers; I did not.

What mothers and mother substitutes must accept and act upon is that the most important relationship for a young girl or woman is that between her and her mother.. There is simply no substitute for mother and mother’s enduring life force upon her daughter. The road to gaining or regaining security and confidence is the feeling and belief that you can take care of yourself.  That development or healing leads back to mother.

Judgment

Popular mantra is the chant that we should not judge one another. However, judgment is a necessary part of leadership, of standing for those who need protection and support: children, the sick, and the most fragile among us.

Women particularly have trouble drawing a conclusion without back sliding given the smallest of challenge. Is it because as women we have been conditioned to rely on others judgment? Women before us have given their lives, their blood, and sacrificed much so that women would have legal voice as well as many of the rights to collect assets for their own lives and to make judgments for themselves.

Yet, when pushed, women often vacillate, apologize, back down. Where does such backsliding get a woman when she does that? Most likely, where it got women before the Iron Clad ladies of change--allowing others to judge for us and to be the deciders of who we are and how we want to live our lives.

Finally, some things will never change for women. If we choose to bring children into this world, we must stand beside them and mother them until they grow into maturity and are strong enough to face the world on their own. Harsh judgments will continue to be made against mothers who walk away from their obligation to be the centerpiece of their children's lives.

Dating and Mating

A mother of a twelve-year old, six foot, athletic son lamented that girls are calling him day and night and chasing him down like a dog on the scent of a rabbit. At the same time, she is acutely aware that the mothers not only think it is okay, but talk about which girls would make the perfect match and cutest couple with her son. The mother asked me, “What is going on with these mothers?”

This is the open to my chapter Dating May Be Dangerous to a Girl's or Woman's Health which I have condensed and provided for you below. The full chapter is included in Finding Center: Building Identity and Confidence in Girls and Women's Lives to be published by New Horizon Press in February, 2007. Google it at Amazon books!

What has your experience been with dating and do any of these issues I discuss below ring true for you? I would love to hear from you!

Warning: Dating May Be Hazardous to a Girl’s -Woman's Health

From Finding Center: Building Identity and Confidence in Girls' and Women's Lives

New Horizon Press, February, 2007

Maureen D. Mack

A mother of a twelve-year old, six foot, athletic son lamented that girls are calling him day and night and chasing him down like a dog on the scent of a rabbit. At the same time, she is acutely aware that the mothers not only think it is okay, but talk about which girls would make the perfect match and cutest couple with her son. The mother asked me, “What is going on with these mothers?”
What is going on is what has been going on for centuries. The mothers are match making. They are acting out a ritual that is associated with the “old world” and is not generally considered to be part of western culture. They also know what research substantiates. Well over ninety percent of all adults will marry. Men with the best social and economic capital will get the most choices and the women who are the most attractive will be picked by the most desirable men.
Enter into this mix the issue of girls’ developmental differences from boys during early adolescence. On the average, girls’ bodies are transformed from little girl’s bodies into woman-like bodies seemingly overnight. Boys will also go through this biological maturation, but for most of them, this stage begins closer to the mid-high school years. It is no wonder why girls look at boys their own age and lament to their parents that boys their age are babies. They become much more interested in boys older than they are and for some older boys and young men, they are equally interested in the twelve to sixteen year old girl, but for different reasons.

What Girls Want—What Boys Want
Preteen girls and their mothers may have one thing in common. It is entirely likely that they possess a naïve distortion of what dating is all about in today’s preteen and teen world. As a mother marches her daughter towards the inevitable first date night, she may have a vision of the experience that sounds something like this if she were to share it with her female friends:
James came to pick up my Katie at seven o’clock. I had spent the day shopping with Katie for just the right first date outfit. She bought; I mean I bought for her, a short skirt, with a soft sweater with a scooped neckline, and shoes with two inch platform heels. She spent hours on her makeup and her hair. They left the house and they looked so adorable. You know he comes from such a good family. His father is a lawyer and his mother is in advertising. I know that Katie is just thirteen but she is really mature for her age and James is such a nice boy. He’s a bit older, sixteen and in high school. Katie said they were going to a movie and then out for a pizza. I told James that Katie needed to be home by midnight. I heard her come in right around midnight—I called to her from my bedroom and asked if she had a good time and she said yes—she’d talk to me tomorrow.
Then, there is the description of how the date really went. The sexual scenario described below is factually based upon “Teen Sex That’s “No Big Deal’” published in Lilith magazine.
Katie and James walk from her house to the car. Once inside, James tells Katie that there has been a change in plans. A friend of his has invited them to a party at his parents’ house. Katie is somewhat put off guard, but wants to give the impression of being mature and sophisticated about the change in plans, so says sure when he asks her if she wants to go.
Once at the house, Katie soon discovers the other girls are somewhat older than she is. Some are coupled off, drinking beer and smoking. Katie declines the beer and cigarettes but hangs with the other girls who are not coupled with boys. As the evening progresses, one of the boys asks if they want to play lipstick. Katie has no idea what lipstick is but since the others do and the boys are very interested in the game, she takes the lead from the other girls. The girls dig in their purses for tubes of lipstick, looking for different colors as well as flavored lipsticks. They apply the lipstick in heavy layers to their lips. Each girl then took turns putting her mouth around the penis of each of the boys, leaving lipstick marks in a different place in order to create a rainbow effect as each girl takes her turn. Katie was humiliated, embarrassed and ashamed. She feels pressured to play along. She came with James in his car. Was she going to walk out when she does not even know where she is?
What girls think they want at this age is a boyfriend who will talk with them on the phone and be seen with them in front of their friends. They are looking for someone whom they can attach their feelings of love, warmth and caring to and someone who will mirror those same feelings of attachment back to them.
Boys want something very different. They experience strong, intense sexual urges which most boys will relieve through regular masturbation and/or physical exercise and sex talk with friends. If girls are available to them, it is friendship and/or sexual release that they seeking. They take their lead from other boys when in a group with boys. However, when alone with a girl, they will rely on a girl to lay down a boundary. If he is sexually active with her, he will more often than not see it as a single event in time, void of meaning beyond the moment and not in the context of relationship language that girls and women come in expect as a result of close intimate contact. For the overwhelming number of boys and young men, it is just sex.

From Dating to Female Relationship Abuse &Victimization
The description of the lipstick party is, unfortunately, not far from the reality that many girls and young women face in their dating encounters. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, one in five high school girls have been physically or sexually abused on a date, or both. Teen dating violence is common and at an epidemic level. A Harvard study reports that twenty percent of females reported that they had been hurt physically or sexually by their date or steady.
Dating abuse occurs at the same rates with ninth grade girls as it does with senior girls. This is particularly troubling as most of us would expect that eighteen year old young women would possess better developed decision making capabilities than fourteen year old girls. What is both sad and troubling is that girls who experience either physical or sexual abuse are not likely to turn to their parents for help.
One conclusion emerges. Many teens go to school with deep fear and anxiety about their safety, both in and outside of school. For sexually abused girls, school can be a field full of land minds. It is common place for abused girls to face their abusers in hallways or in the cafeteria, or worse yet, to be required to sit near them in their classrooms. They may believe they deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of the very one they have chosen as a dating partner. Serious depression, dangerous injury to their self-worth, distress and untreated trauma are constant companions to girls who suffer, and suffer and suffer alone.

New Language of Love
There is cause to be alarmed as the “dating scene” is controlled in a large part by ill-informed boys and young men who believe that today’s culture will allow them to act out every sexual fantasy that he or his boy pack can fathom.
Boys are not to blame for the current state of teen sexual affairs. Absent a strong presence and role of fathers in the world of boy teens and the steady pounding of sexually drenched advertising and sports media, boys and young men are trying to grow from boys to men while attaining some degree of status from their male contemporaries. Boys and young men are left to wander alone to figure out both their posture and obligation as they pursue their interests in meeting and interacting with girls and young women.
Based on the mass of quality research on the teen dating world, girls are in critical need of explicit discussions concerning the current trends and dangers of sexual practices and the harm that can be done by engaging in endless fast cooked microwave relationships. A young girl or woman who is on an endless quest to find her prince on a galloping white horse needs to stop dead in her tracks. The quest she should be on is not to ask if he is Mr. Right but rather she should be thoughtfully asking the question— what is right for me.

Four Rules
If the dating scene is to improve, girls and women alike need to stop making boys and men the author of their play book and write one of their own. The playbook I would suggest would consist of four basic rules that when practiced so well would be hardwired into their cerebral network.
Rule Number One: You come into this world alone with the gift of your life; that is the way you are going to leave. Each girl and woman is responsible for making the most of her life gifts and for determining how she will negotiate life’s path in order for her to develop those gifts. As the scholar, Carolyn Heilbrun advised women, “Let any woman imagine for a moment a biography of herself based upon those records she has left, those memories fresh in the minds of surviving friends, those letters that chanced to be kept, those impressions made, perhaps, on the biographer who was casually met in the subject’s later years. What secrets, what virtues, what passions, what discipline, what quarrels would, on the subject’s death, be lost forever?” To vision a biography at the end of every woman’s path requires each girl and woman to have herself at the center of her life story.
Rule Number Two: There is no prince. There is you. Each girl and woman is responsible for her own life and life choices. There is no one person who will come along and rescue her from the choices she has made or the problems she has created without extracting a severe penalty which almost always cost her independence, freedom and self-worth. No one is coming to hand over to her an easy life with permanent comfort. Many girls and women have paid the ultimate price for pursuing a fantasy without accepting responsibility for their own life.
Rule Number Three: Your spirit, your mind, and your body belong to you. You are the driver, the decision-maker, the chief-executive officer. In life, there are generally two ways to approach choices and challenges. Either a girl or woman can be in charge and direct her own choices, or she can give that power to someone else to make decisions and solve problems for her. To take charge is to reap confidence and strength but to give away is to become an instrument of someone else’s needs and desires and is the path of a perennial girl and eventually, a victim.
Coercion is a common occurrence in the dating and “romance” lives of both high school and college teen girls and women. Most of the offenders are boyfriends or lovers. Sex by its very nature is unsafe. Aside from the very real life long health hazards, hooking up, scamming for sex and other quick sex dates are especially hurtful to girls and women who want close, respectful and nurturing relationships. Sex is worth waiting for. If we care about our girls and young women, we will change the focus of their evolving lives from living for the attention of a boy or young man to creating a life of their own by helping them to construct their own life philosophy, ground rules and boundaries.
Rule Number Four: Find and live your quest plot. If we want girls to find and develop their interests and abilities, we must encourage them to find and live a quest plot, as we have done for boys and men for generations. We need to encourage girls and young women to find some event to transform their lives from waiting to be found to trying something unconventional, something new to them whether that is building homeless shelters or body building. The nature of the event does not matter, but the focus on performing, doing, challenging, dreaming or concocting the eccentric story is. Wise girls and women mold relationships with exemplary women—mothers, teachers, relatives and role models. Friends matter but not when it comes to influencing their sexual attitudes and gender roles. Adult women are important influences in the lives of girls, whether the girls have been abused or not. As adult women in the lives of our girls, we need to build female circles of influence and support in our own lives and then, systematically teach girls and young women that we know to do the same.