On the Struggle to Understand and then Communicate Gender Issues in Forests

Posted on 30 September 2012 by Carol

I sit at my desk, piles of books on gender and forests surrounding me, more articles and books stored more tidily in my EndNotes files, even more scattered here and there, less tidily, on my computer.  I have spent the last month pulling together a rough draft of a conceptual framework that strives to capture simply the central nuggets from what I’ve read over the past two years and from my own experience.  I’ve plopped the complexity of the gender world into three simple categories (macro, meso and micro).  Within each of these levels, I’ve identified issues (two, four and five, respectively) that we need to address if we want to understand (and then presumably influence) what prompts or yields women’s—and to a lesser extent, men’s—involvement in forest management (writ large).  It has been a challenge, most of which I’ve enjoyed.

But today I am plagued by old doubts and uncertainties.  I am convinced of the importance of the topics I have identified for local people’s involvement in forest management.  Yet I also recognize the incredible complexity inherent in each of these 11 topics.  I know that understanding any one of them fully can easily be the work of many scientific/artistic lives and, in fact, is never fully achievable, given the dynamism of social and cultural process. 

I am troubled because I recognize the seductiveness—the ‘comparative advantage’—that a straightforward, economic interpretation of people’s lives allows; I recognize its resulting popularity in development and conservation circles.  Assumptions that many economists accept and use in their models—that there is ‘equal access to market information’ or that ‘the invisible hand of the market’ ensures equity—strike me as absurd.  How can they not?  Market information is so patently not equally accessible  to all; the functioning of the market results in obviously inequitable situations.  And of course there are more such assumptions.  Another that particularly strikes me as I think of my economist friends, is the idea that we are all driven primarily by economic considerations.  This is the assumption I find most harmfully wrong, because it has been so successful in influencing global policies. I don’t doubt for a second that economic considerations are relevant and important.  But that they are so all-encompassing and powerful simply flies in the face of what I see in both forest villages and in my colleagues’ own demonstrated values.  I simply do not believe that economists themselves—human beings, like the objects of their study—are truly driven solely by economic considerations any more than villagers are.  I see my colleagues’ commitments to improving the world, their concerns for their colleagues’ good opinion, their love and caring for their families, even their appreciation of their own cultural systems (including gender); and I see similar notions among the men and women who live in the world’s forest villages.  Such motivations can be as powerful as economic ones—sometimes even more powerful.

Given my own life’s observations and study, I see no alternative to viewing gender holistically, if we are truly to understand its functioning in forests.   A difficult corollary of this conclusion is that we have somehow to deal with this incredible complexity.  The ideas that different parts of local systems interact, that there is feedback within subsystems, that emergence exists/happens—these complicate understanding in ways that a unilinear view of cause and effect do not.  Yet I find it impossible to deny the existence of systemic elements in human lives and in forests.

I imagine economists complaining about my draft framework:  ‘She’s including very peripheral issues that we can easily ignore’ (and I can equally imagine gender specialists complaining indignantly: ‘How can she reduce this complexity to three levels and eleven topics!?’).  Emphasis on finance and income—far more available in forests to men than to women—lead researchers and practitioners further away from many women’s lives, rather than strengthening our understanding of life in forests or how to manage forests better.  Accepting economic considerations as the be-all and end-all of life allows one to make much more confident projections (even if often wrong, always partial); but it does so at the risk of ignoring truly potent constraints to and impacts of one’s planned course of action.    

In my framework, I want to speak to foresters, more than to those from other disciplines, but I would also like it to be useful to anyone concerned about natural resources and gender.  I want it to be simple enough to implement in the field, to actually help researchers and practitioners do a better job of first understanding women’s and men’s roles, goals, fears, and capabilities in forests; and then, based on such knowledge, incorporate each gender appropriately, benignly. 

When we get to this stage, we encounter yet another enduring dilemma:  I am concerned about global gender inequities.  I believe we as human beings need to ‘progress’ in such a way that both men and women can achieve their potential, can live life to the fullest (however they define that).  This is a value not necessarily shared by many of those in forests; or the abstract idea may be shared, but based on gender-related assumptions that, like those of some researchers, fail to acknowledge the downsides of existing practice for one or the other gender. 

On the other hand, I also recognize the importance and interconnectedness of culture.  Culture (or patterned behaviours and beliefs, for those who have decided ‘culture’ is no longer a useful term) is a central source of the meaning in people’s lives.  And gender notions are often particularly central.  We know that messing with culture carelessly can have adverse unintended effects.  Even messing with it carefully can have such effects.  Yet doing nothing also has adverse effects.  I have long struggled, and continue to struggle, to find the interstices between my own value system and the ones I study—-where are there openings to enhance gender equity without adversely affecting valued cultural elements?  How do gender equity and local livelihood considerations link up with or mutually support global and local environmental concerns?  The answers are never easy.

Like my decision that I must somehow address cultural and social complexity, I have also long ago decided that I must try to contribute to our efforts to ‘mess with cultures’—in the hopes of making such messing more constructive (environmentally and socially).  So today, as I contemplate how to beautify and fine-tune my draft framework, I know that in the coming weeks I also must struggle with how to convey the importance of

  • going the ‘extra mile’ to examine gender holistically (despite the complexity); and
  • being sensitive to cultural issues, willing to seek creative compromise, to go slowly.

Wish me luck—I know I’m working my way across a tilted field, in this world where a linear, economic perspective so dominates.

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The Coming of Fall (and the US Presidential Election) 2012

Posted on 22 September 2012 by Carol

Last week, I began noticing a few trees with leaves of red or gold, though the countryside still looked green.  But each day since, I have been paying special attention to the panorama as I drive here and there with life’s routine tasks.  And each day, there is more red, gold, and orange dotting the hills in the distance, lining the roadside.  There are fields full of goldenrod, another sure sign of fall.  Temperatures are falling; we’re to expect temperatures near freezing tonight.  We’ve turned on the heat in our house, and begun wearing sweaters over our clothes.  Two weeks ago, I regretted summer’s passing; now I anticipate the colors of fall.

More gripping this year than these environmental changes is the political climate.  We approach another presidential election;  this time Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will duke it out.  It seemed close earlier; I take solace in the encouraging signs that Obama is gaining ground.  I dread the thought that Romney might win (bringing on a real, allegorical winter [hmmm, is it possible to be real and allegorical at once?]).  He has an outdated (and to my mind, peculiar) view of the world, one where industry reigns beneficently somehow (without any regulation, no balance of power that I can imagine, based on  his words—setting aside the infinite malleability of his voiced opinions).  He was once a ‘moderate conservative’, one whose views I could at least understand, if not share.  Now, he has moved dramatically to the right…Women, he says (who knows what he really thinks?), should not have the right to control their own bodies; men (or women) of the same sex who love each other should not be allowed to marry; social security seems up for grabs; the old, the infirm, the handicapped, and the unemployed must fend totally for themselves—or so it seems.

One of America’s strengths, besides the egalitarian ideals we have long touted, has been the independence and security that our government’s Social Security program and—perhaps even more these days—Medicare, have granted to the elderly.  These programs have relieved the young of many (certainly not all) burdensome responsibilities and have allowed those of us beyond wage-earning capability to rest easy that our basic needs would be fulfilled without hamstringing our children.  Those, like myself, who have lived in other countries where such assurances are not provided, know what uncertainty about eldercare means for the young and the old.  Even the unborn are affected—as parents feel compelled to produce more children than they’d prefer, in order to ensure the availability of offspring who can and will care for them in old age.  The avoided worry and anxiety that these governmental programs provide for the elderly is impossible to quantify; it is immeasurable.

And what of the ‘pro-life’ emphasis Romney espouses?  What of the women whose rapes result in pregnancies [and there are many, contrary to Senator Akin’s peculiar notions about women’s inherent reproductive control]?  What of the young women who lack the maturity to moderate their sexuality?  [I recently read my own diaries from my teen years and was astounded at my own forgotten preoccupation with sex, the strength and self-control I had to bring to bear to avoid sexual intercourse—-and I had a privileged youth, with caring parents who supported me.  What of the many young innocents who lack these advantages?]  What of the bright young women, continuing their education or already embarked on a promising career, who have a momentary lapse of judgment and foolishly (or through contraceptive failure) become pregnant?  Does it really make societal sense to ruin their lives, to deny them life’s fullest opportunities by saddling them with an unwanted child?  Is the potential contribution of the unborn really greater than the well-advanced potential of an adult woman?   I don’t think so.  I remember the human investments made by that woman’s family in her own childhood and youth, her likely integration into a social network, with others who will be adversely affected by the tragic loss of her dreams for the future, of the overall societal investment in her that, if not lost, at least will bear far less fruit than it could have. The ‘pro-life’ rant is decidedly anti-life, from my point of view. 

I’ve seen the lives of young women, pregnant early, in the US and elsewhere.  Burdened by an unplanned, sometimes unwanted child, both the woman and the child can suffer—-the woman (perhaps as young as 12 or 13) cannot complete her education or fulfill her potential; and the child may suffer from resentments (overt or unrecognized), from the foolishness of an uneducated mother (and perhaps that of a young,  unwilling, uneducated father as well), even from abandonment.  Isn’t it better for society to look after these mothers and their children, ensure better opportunities for them both, to create better family situations and to contribute more fully to society—whether the mothers opt for childbirth or (usually most reluctantly) for abortion? 

Taking care of those in need strengthens society, and liberates people to engage economically (as Romney so values—perhaps even to ‘compete’, to strive for the wealth and independence he wants us all to seek).  I believe Obama also wants people to be free to seek whatever wealth they desire and to be independent, but he also understands the concerns of the less advantaged, and he cares about those in need.  His mother, my friend, was a caring person, concerned about the inequities we all see even more starkly now than while she lived; I have no doubt she passed those concerns along to both her children.  I hope this fall brings, besides the beauty of New England’s fall colors,  a sound electoral victory, both for Obama as president, and for a supportive Congress—both the Senate and the House—so he can move forward with a program that recognizes people’s needs, distributes the American (dare I say global?) pie more equitably, and provides the safety net so many need right now.   A second term, particularly with a less obstructionist Congress, will move us ‘forward’ (as the Democratic slogan promises).  But, even more vitally perhaps, it will also protect some of the crucial ‘entitlements’ and rights that have meant so much to Americans over the past decades.  If we want women to continue to be able to contribute to global (and national) productivity and creativity, we need to protect women’s rights to control our own bodies.  If we want the young to be free to make similar contributions, we need to protect them from the sole and draining responsibility to care for their (now much longer-lived) parents and grandparents.  If we want old people to continue to contribute informally as many now do, we need to provide them with the financial security to do so.  Let Obama carry out his vision.  It’s a worthy one.

And bring on the fall colors—-hopefully as vibrant and beautiful as my hopes for a benign US future under Obama’s leadership. 

[He’ll be a helluva a lot better internationally as well (though that’s another discussion).] 

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Doing Ethnography in One’s Own Culture

Posted on 2 September 2012 by Carol

A short article with the peculiar title of “Visibilization of the Anthropologies of the South” (Krotz 2012) reminded me of a minor controversy from my days in grad school at the University of Washington in the late 1960s.  We had  a number of fellow graduate students from other countries, and they all planned to return to their homelands to do their doctoral research.  They were anxious to contribute their anthropological understandings to the ‘development’ concerns at home.  My ex-husband, another would-be anthropologist (A. Michael Colfer), felt strongly that they should do their research in the US.  He felt that the experience of immersing one’s self in an alien cultural environment was valuable and instructive, maybe even necessary for good anthropology.  He also was interested in the insights they might bring to bear about American life.  We both were.  But all our exhortations were in vain (at least as far as I know).

Meanwhile, not long after we finished our own coursework [and aborted our research in Iran, both stricken by hepatitis], we found ourselves job-sharing (each half time) with the consulting firm, Abt Associates, finalizing our dissertations based on earlier research, and doing new research on our own culture!  The Abt project was part of a comprehensive evaluation effort, assessing the value and results of a National Institute of Education (NIE) program to improve education in ten rural sites across the US.  There was a quantitative element, coordinated from Cambridge, MA—to which we contributed primarily as data collectors; and qualitative components on each field site, led by anthropologists and sociologists.  Michael and I worked in Quilcene and Brinnon, WA, on the Olympic Peninsula throughout the mid-1970s.

Already interested in the issues involved in studying one’s own culture, we paid close attention to what was happening to us, as we strove for the objectivity that anthropologists still believed possible in such research.  One of the most troubling issues we had to consider was our own assumptions.  In a foreign culture, many things happen that are surprising and that make little or no sense on first inspection.  These prompt us to examine our own assumptions and develop hypotheses about what alternate assumptions might lead to the curious behaviour or beliefs.  When studying our own culture, there were fewer (or more subtle) peculiarities that could alert us to divergent assumptions.  We had to keep questioning what we believed to be reasonable understandings, seeking out alternative interpretations of what we saw.  We felt we had to be continually alert and suspicious of our own understandings.

Another issue was our clear placement within the social structure we were studying.  We came to Quilcene as in-migrants, we were highly educated, and were somehow related to both the school and a government program (which tended to put us into a social category we later labeled ‘public employees’, a social category clearly opposed to ‘locals’, Colfer with Colfer 1978).  The public employees worked for the school, the US Forest and Park Services, a Washington State Fisheries Lab and a Fish Hatchery; they tended to have a universalistic world view, valuing education, formal qualifications; they fit within a bureaucratic social world.  As we learned how the local system worked, we had to develop mechanisms for retaining, or gaining, access to the important views of those in the population who considered themselves locals (about half the people).  These local folk were

  • most closely associated with private industry (especially logging and fishing),
  • they often had a low opinion of formal education (though many were highly educated also—something one only discovered by ‘digging’), and
  • they tended to value independence, competition and self-reliance. 

We were eventually able to develop relationships with a significant number of the locals:  I found that women’s social lives were partly organized by their children’s ages (Colfer 1977).  I could easily meet and visit with those women who had children my daughter’s age, and these women served as portals to the broader local community.  My husband was able to emphasize his own resource-poor childhood in rural Maine, his father’s profession as a frequently unemployed carpenter devoted to union activity.  We both willingly drank and partied with the best of the locals (not something approved by most of the public employees).  And we drove a pickup truck, a decidedly local preference.  Still, we found that maintaining such access, ethnographically—which implies a high level of trust—was a constant balancing act.  

We were regularly reminded of the tenuousness of this trust by frequent ‘jokes’ about the Peyton Place-style novel we ostensibly planned to write or the tape recorders people imagined we had hidden in our pockets (see Colfer 1976).  We were conducting our research shortly after the discovery of ex-President Richard Nixon’s tape recording dirty tricks.  Although gaining trust with the locals was more difficult than with the public employees, there were also elements of concern among this latter group.  At one point, our carefully tended trustworthiness was cast in doubt by the actions of an NIE program officer coming to check up on the program’s progress.  He failed to understand

  • the documentary nature of our role,
  • the delicacy of the boundary between ethnographer (studying, understanding) and spy (reporting on and, more importantly, to); and
  • the importance of the population’s perceptions of our neutrality and approval in our continued work. 

In front of the principal and superintendent of the school, he asked to speak privately with us about the school’s progress—something we had to refuse point-blank (an action, which in turn resulted in a complex cascade of implications for us, for the consulting firm, and for the community). 

Beyond such complexities of studying one’s own culture, there are some obvious advantages:  one immediately understands some things, because one shares the views—many nuances that would pass over one’s head in an alien culture come through quite clearly in one’s own.  One speaks the language (although not necessarily the subcultural subtleties), which moves the research along more swiftly.  There is no long or difficult personal period of adjustment to a truly alien setting. 

Now that we (anthropologists) have recognized the impossibility of being truly objective in social research,* one constraint I struggled with at the time has been moderated if not removed.  In the mid-1970s, I felt some intellectual discomfort with my decision to continue to exercise my [very American cultural] right to freedom of speech about my own feminism.  In Quilcene, notions of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ clearly held sway.  But I felt that the trust I sought required truth-telling.  In the end, I could see that my simple honesty about my egalitarian views, and Michael’s and my example of sharing our job, domestic tasks and childcare, were having an effect on the women of Quilcene with whom I interacted—an effect that part of me enthusiastically applauded.  I was able, inadvertently and despite my self-doubts, to do what my ex-co-graduate students from other countries were hoping to do back home:  contribute to [what I considered] positive social change. 

I did no preaching; I simply sincerely expressed my own views in open communication and I acted out my life according to my values and beliefs.  I then saw the remarkable effects of example.  In retrospect, I believe I behaved honorably and in a better scientific tradition than that which prevailed at the time.  And I learned a lot more about the pro’s, con’s, and techniques for studying my own culture.  I, like Krotz, would like to read more about what researchers from the South have learned in [surely some] parallel experiences…

 

*I don’t suggest we need not strive for objectivity, in many endeavours; I just believe we cannot truly achieve it, enmeshed as all human beings are in our own cultural systems (I also believe there are endeavours in which subjectivity legitimately reigns). When we strive for objectivity—as when we seek to use scientific methods—we need to think about our biases and share them as openly as possible, to aid others in evaluating what we conclude.

References

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce 1976. Rights, Responsibilities, and Reports:  An Ethical Dilemma in Contract Research. In Ethics and Anthropology:  Dilemmas in Fieldwork, eds. Michael A. Rynkiewich and James Spradley, 32-46. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce 1977. Women’s Communication and Family Planning in Rural America:  The Case of Bushler Bay. Honolulu, HI, USA: EWCI (Case Study #4; reprinted 1978).

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce, with A. Michael Colfer 1978. Inside Bushler Bay:  Lifeways in counterpoint. Rural Sociology 42: 204-220.

Krotz, Esteban 2012. Visibilization of the Anthropologies of the South.  Anthropology News 53(7):30 (September)

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Our Tar Paper Shack

Posted on 15 August 2012 by Carol

When I was a little girl, we lived in Bloomington, Indiana, where my parents were both enrolled in Graduate School at Indiana University.  We lived in a trailer, in a trailer park peopled primarily by poor and relatively uneducated workers at RCA’s television factory.   My mother was (is) from an upper middle class family who’d lived in the suburbs of Chicago; and my father was from a lower middle class, rural family—his grandfather had been, among other things, the mayor of the tiny town (1,000 inhabitants) of Cyril, Oklahoma.  My father was upwardly mobile, but to say that we didn’t have much money at that point is the understatement of the year.  Still, my father was a proud man, valuing his own rural roots, his opportunities to ‘better himself’, and his pioneer background.  His grandparents, with whom he grew up, had been part of the land rush when the Oklahoma Territory ‘opened up’ to white settlers—a process that had many an adverse impact on the original inhabitants, but which was also linked to a central set of mainstream American values on adventure, courage, independence, and a rural lifestyle.

Around 1953, when I was 8, my father decided that we needed more space (or maybe my mother did?).  Anyway, he decided to build a small shack out to one side of our 24’ trailer.  I remember him sawing and hammering into the night, proud of his accomplishments, enjoying the work—even though he was already busy with his graduate studies (in anthropological linguistics) and a full time job at RCA.  I can still see the light color of the wood and the sawdust, the light glistening off the wood as it lay across a sawhorse; I can even smell the freshly cut beams.  I watched the gradual growth of this structure, and noted my mother’s pleasure as she contemplated the reduction in crowding within our trailer.  I saw her pride in her husband’s creation and her enjoyment of its added space.  I listened to my parents joking about their tar paper shack.

After it was finished, I was given the right to play on a shelf right in the front of the ‘shack’.  My most vivid memories there are of playing with two dolls: Tinker Bell and Peter Pan.  Tinker Bell had a mini skirt and lovely gauzy wings; Peter Pan was all dressed in green leaves.  They were the size of today’s Barbie Dolls—though of much more human proportions!  I spent hours recreating the Peter Pan story, putting myself in Tinker Bell’s shoes (or wings).

When I started writing this, I didn’t even know if tar paper continued to exist or not, but it does: I saw some the other day.  It is a sort of tan color, with speckles of black or dark brown.  I think it is black on the underside, definitely scratchy to the touch, rather like sandpaper.  When I was little, it was the cheapest external covering one could buy for a house.  It was also symbolic of poverty in the US.  Saying someone ‘lived in a tar paper shack’ at that time—I haven’t heard the phrase in years—set them aside as particularly poor and disadvantaged.  I remember the irony and amusement with which my parents referred to their own ‘tar paper shack.’  They thought, I suspect, that it was amusingly inappropriate for their situation, since they assumed their poverty (which was real enough) was temporary.  Now, living in a trailer has much the same meaning.  But the tar paper shack was even lower on the economic totem pole.

My father’s fondness for our tar paper shack reflected several of his core values.  Building such a structure served as a reaffirmation of his manhood (something that his intellectual pursuits, in his eyes, threatened).  He demonstrated his independence from public opinion—he could laugh at the stereotype of a tar paper shack, even while owning one.  And he confirmed his conviction that one’s worth was in no way defined by where or in what one lived.  He was proud to have our tar paper shack.  For me, it symbolizes some of my happy childhood memories—and, although I don’t share my father’s view that to be a ‘real man’ one has to actively and routinely display one’s physical strength, I do share the other values he displayed in his attitudes toward our tar paper shack.  He was a good role model in many ways.

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On Familial Obligation in America

Posted on 12 August 2012 by Carol

Parker Shipton wrote a book entitled The Nature of Entrustment, which deals with the action implications of trust (“entrustment”) and of intergenerational and intra-familial obligation, among other things.  Although his book, which I’m only halfway through, focuses on western Kenya, his words first brought to mind my own discussions with my mother about what we should do, what she wanted us to do, with her (abundant) belongings after her death.  As I read Shipton’s book, I began to see this obligation issue popping up all over the place:  in a novel set in Thailand by Colin Cotteril; at my cousin’s backyard barbecue last week; when my mother in law died last year.  Shipton stresses the intergenerational concerns and obligations of the Luo in Kenya, but I realized that many of these are not so alien in my own family.

As my mother talked (finally, at the age of 87!) about what she wanted to happen with her belongings and finances, intergenerational issues emerged very clearly.  She has items that belonged to her parents (to her mother, and to her mother’s people more than to her father’s).  She feels (and I feel) an obligation to honor these items as links to our shared past, and as forward links to my children and their children’s future lives.  The monetary value of these goods is irrelevant:  the yellow china dishes that my mother’s mother got for a wedding gift and that have been displayed in my mother’s buffet ever since she had a place to display them (used only at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and washed carefully by hand); a small wooden statue of the Chinese god of longevity, which her father had enjoyed; the beautiful, abstract carving of a mother and child that my brother made in junior high school in honor of my own pregnancy; my maternal grandmother’s bell collection.  Who gets them doesn’t matter so much as the fact that someone within the family maintains and cherishes them.  There are also other things, thankfully rare within my own family, that come to symbolize some wrong not righted, never forgiven.  We survivors are obligated to ensure that such a thing not go to the wrongdoer.

I also have things in my own home, the use of which I feel as part obligation, part delight.  My paternal grandmother and her mother made me a quilt on which are embroidered the birds and flowers of each American state.  They are set in a geometric pattern, with white and pink squares interspersed.  Now, part of my ardent feminism has rendered me somewhat suspicious of things pink; and I wouldn’t, on my own, think to highlight these symbols of the American states in my home.  Yet, I fondly use this quilt (which by chance matches the color of the walls in my bedroom), remembering my grandmothers and the love we shared each time I make the bed.  I also have dish towels, hand-embroidered with childish patterns and the days of the week, which these same ancestors made for my ‘hope chest’ (a probably obsolete tradition for young girls, designed to accumulate the items a bride would need in her new home).   My mild disapproval of ‘hope chests’ (with the pre-defined marital emphasis that was current during my youth) does not significantly reduce my enjoyment of using something that reminds me of my well-loved grandmothers.  My daughter has altered the tradition, giving each of her children (including her son) a ‘memory box,’ full of of similar items with ancestral meaning.

My own status as the eldest daughter struck me as well.  I realized that I had assumed, as did my mother, that I would bear the burden (and the right) of making most decisions that remained to be made after her death about her possessions.  It is I who have badgered her to decide what she wants done; it is I who insisted she get legal advice on her will or trust and took her to consult with a lawyer.  I see the same structural pattern in the family of my mother’s partner.  His eldest daughter has—somewhat automatically also—taken the lead in deciding about his finances and possessions, as his mind has deteriorated.  Interestingly, my sister in law, who is the youngest of four siblings in my husband’s family, but the only daughter, has also taken the lead in making these decisions about their mother’s finances.  Other factors enter in:  she is also a banker and thus more knowledgeable than the rest of us about things financial.  Geographic proximity can also be a factor, as we learned from our neighbour who has borne the brunt of the duties related to disposing of his parents’ house, the house we bought.

When my husband’s mother died, and her adult children and grandchildren came together to empty her apartment, more cultural expectations emerged:  I realized that I saw her children (my siblings in law) as having first rights, their children as having secondary rights, and I (and any other in laws and stepchildren) as having only tertiary rights to (or perhaps only interest in) any of her possessions.  It was clear that we all agreed about that; they generously invited me to select items after the closer relatives had chosen, and in a few cases, relinquished their rights to something they did want, so I could have something they could see I admired.  It was clear to us all, however (with nary a word spoken), that this was an act of generosity, and not my right.  I find myself cherishing these items I received (a little painting, a pearl ring, a gold-colored cat on whose tail I can display jewelry, an antique monocle).  They are reminders of my mother in law and valued symbolic links to my husband’s family and to some sort of shared destiny.  I noted the same assumption about primary, secondary and tertiary rights, as my mother spoke of her belongings.  She lumped her brother’s daughters (she had no sisters; her brothers had no sons), their children and my stepchildren together as having tertiary rights, as my in laws had done.

The issue of equity also arises.  Those dying seem to want equity among their children.  Yet in the families I know well—which fortunately are not marred by much strife—the members of each succeeding generation have shown a strong willingness to share, to acknowledge different needs and make various not necessarily equitable divisions—in some cases, for the financial benefit of their less well off siblings, and in all perhaps, to reinforce the connections among them, to emphasize their shared love at a time of expected loss.  Would these kinds of decisions be more acrimonious if the need were greater?  Perhaps. 

I found myself considering these things as I weighed my own minimal needs against those of my considerably younger brother and my children (my mother’s grandchildren).  I pondered how much I should be discouraging or encouraging my mother’s emphasis on sibling equity, when these issues would affect what would be ultimately available to my children.  Where did my obligations lie?  I found no easy answer, but my mother and I fashioned a compromise in which the funds she wanted to bestow on my children would reduce my own part of the 50-50 share between my brother and me.  This solution seemed to address both equity and need, and my mother and I were both satisfied.  We do not know the responses of others to this decision, as she and my brother ‘didn’t get around to discussing these things’ on his last visit.  I will not be surprised if the first time this subject is discussed  with him is by me at our mother’s death.

One of my cousins, the eldest of four daughters, is now coping with a shipment of her recently deceased mother’s (my aunt’s) belongings.  Among them, are many expensive and beautiful antiques, obtained during her parents’ long travels and residences abroad.  My cousin must cope with conflicting obligations:  to maintain and cherish these things her mother so loved, which involves finding a place for them in her not-so-very-huge and already somewhat full house; to distribute them equitably among her children and other relatives [another case where we both saw me—her cousin/her mother’s niece—as having some sort of loose, tertiary rights/interests]; to donate them to a museum.  She’s not sure what to do!  I look forward to this daunting task, when my own mother dies, with fear and trepidation, despite the kindness, generosity, and understanding I know I can expect from my relatives.  My mother is a collector with a house completely full of items she keeps primarily for their nostalgic value—something I feel considerable obligation to respect.  She would surely prefer that my brother and I keep everything or distribute it all within the family.  But she also knows that’s logistically impossible. 

My daughter’s family is coming to visit at the end of this month.  One of the things we plan to do is look at family handiwork I have accumulated.  Some came from my mother’s family; others were made by my father’s mother and grandmother; there are even a couple of items that my father embroidered himself as a young child.  All have been in storage for decades, and are now available for viewing and using.  My (oldest) daughter and I agreed that we don’t really care in most cases, whether they are at my house or hers, but that we want them to remain in the family. 

I think we middle class, white Americans—enmeshed in our bilateral, matrifocal kinship system—may be as invested in links between the past and the future as the Luo are, in our own somewhat different way.  But … I’ll have to see if the rest of Shipman’s book proves me wrong. 

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Women’s Reproductive Desires (and Rights)

Posted on 29 July 2012 by Carol

I remain perplexed—by global (but particularly American) resistance to addressing population and family planning issues. 

It is my impression that every woman I’ve ever met—certainly every woman I’ve ever discussed population and family planning issues with (which is quite a number)—would like to be able to determine her own fertility behaviour.  That is, women generally seem to want to decide how many children to have and when to have them.  “Modern” birth control technology—where available—more or less allows women to do that; and most American women, for instance, take advantage of that possibility—even those who profess religions whose patriarchs forbid it.   Without such access, western women would have far less educational, political and economic success than they do have.  They would also have worse health and fewer options for self-actualization.

Many of the women I’ve met in developing countries, and some village women I’ve known very well, have no (or at least insufficient) access to these technologies. An early (and intensely interested) question I’ve often been asked is “How is it that you have [borne]only two children?”—the answer is suspected; the women want to know more about birth control possibilities.  Specific recurrent examples from Bali and Iran come easily to mind.  A researcher friend told a similar story from her work in Latin America—in the village she studied, the women came to her repeatedly, wanting abortions (not something she was able to supply)—no birth control was available.

In the Sultanate of Oman (where I lived from 1986-1990), one of the first words I learned in Arabic, heard over and over from the women I was interviewing, was ta’aban (tired)—many had 10 or 12 children and few modern conveniences.  The death rate had fallen drastically with the Sultan’s health care improvements, but the women were still carrying water home from community canals in jugs on their heads.  Discussion of family planning was governmentally taboo.  The closest I was allowed to come to research on this topic was to look at childbirth and traditional birth attendants.  An additional consideration was the small birth canals of many of the women who’d grown to adulthood during a time of less adequate nutrition; many were in greater danger of problems during childbirth because their babies, now better nourished in utero, were too big for these small birth canals.  Caesarian sections were commonly needed.

In Long Segar, a remote village in Borneo where I lived for a year (1979-80), the women were clear:  They wanted birth control technology.  I managed to arrange for it, via the national family planning program (by learning to take blood pressure and fill out the appropriate forms).  When I left, I trained two local women to take over these tasks.  It is the only ‘development effort’ I’ve tried that really worked and sustained itself.  Still available last time I visited, some three decades later—the interest was definitely there. 

In both these cases, there were different views from the men.  Omani women predicted that if they were able to reduce their childbearing, their husbands would get another wife—not something the women desired.   In Borneo, the headman—though putting no serious constraints in place—feared that reduced childbearing would have two adverse consequences:  fewer Uma’ Jalan people for him to lead and fewer naming parties, which would in turn mean fewer of the special cakes (anye’) prepared for such festivities that he so enjoyed.

Some men object to women having access to birth control.  They may fear possible increases in married women’s infidelity, greater uncertainty about paternity, more illicit sexual acts among young girls, even the educational, political and income generating opportunities that the ability to control one’s fertility makes available to women.  But there is ample evidence that women who have access to birth control do indeed have better life chances [This means a life improvement for at least half the human population, remember].  And many of a woman’s new potentialities mean positive changes for the whole family.  A woman with fewer children may spend more time on productive activity on the farm, she may be able to earn more money—which she is more likely than men to spend on the family—and/or even just spend more time cooking more nutritious meals.  She may be able to afford better educational opportunities for all  her children (and particularly her girl children who would otherwise have been taking care of a younger sibling), better health care for the whole family.  She may even have more energy for a more passionate love life with her husband!

I am fully convinced that women want access to birth control technology, to use as they deem fit.

I also understand that there is a history to global efforts at top down population control.  I was interviewed one time (late 1970s) for a job with a US-based family planning project.  The leaders made it very clear to me that their goals were to increase ‘the number of acceptors’ and that almost ‘anything goes’ to bring those numbers up.  I declined to participate, of course—but someone else surely took that job.  We all know what happened in India, with sterilization of poor women; and we’ve heard of abuses in this country as well.

At one time, Americans blamed developing country women for over-population, seeing them as the prime contributor to global environmental decline—-completely ignoring our own dramatically more (or at least as) impactful consumption patterns.   This has been a central complaint from women in developing countries at a number of international conferences on women, population and development (e.g., Cairo, Beijing, Mexico City).  My own sense is that blaming developing country women for degrading the Earth has more or less faded away.  There is widespread recognition of the central role that our own consumption plays in global warming and other environmental challenges.

There are a number of legitimate reasons people may want to bear more children:  One concern comes from indigenous peoples whose numbers have been decimated by external forces (war, disease, adverse policies and ‘development’).  Yet another concern is the work load that women bear and the functions children can fulfill (help with daily work, contributions to income, security in old age).   Finally, some local populations have been decimated by diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria.  All of these are legitimate concerns that any individual woman might have, and want to respond to by continuing to have babies.  That should be her right.

A less legitimate concern, in my view, comes from some economists, who argue that as incomes rise, women will automatically adopt birth control—so nothing need be done.  That may be, for those whose incomes rise (though certain parts of the Middle East represent a notable exception to this rule).  But what about those whose incomes have not yet risen, and in fact show no signs of rising?—-as is the case in and around the world’s tropical forests.  Are these women to be doomed to a life of continual childbearing, with increasing numbers of living children and with older people living longer, both representing ever greater dependency on these same over-worked women?  This does not strike me as a fair scenario, but it’s an accurate one in many places.

The legitimate concerns mentioned above do not mean that we should deny the existence of a global population problem on the one hand, and genuine, life-enhancing potentials for women who have access to birth control on the other.  The secret is not to pretend that either of these issues does not exist—as has been done in recent years, a silence that continues in many important policymaking circles.  Rather it is to link birth control access to women’s desire for such services, to provide these services where they are wanted—and ideally as part of a [locally appropriate] package focused on reproductive and primary health care.  I have imagined and proposed linking such services to forest management efforts at my own institution—-however, with little success.  The fear of touching this subject is deep and wide.

The interest of many women in controlling their own births, combined with the global concern about population, means that this issue could benefit both individual women and the global environment.  Women gain the capacity (if and when they want) to control their fertility; and the number of births almost inevitably declines.  The sticky part is making sure that birth control is provided in a respectful and responsive way that recognizes human rights and desires—including women’s, most fundamentally.  Women’s bodies are the vessels from which children come and through which they are largely nurtured—as things now stand.  As/If men’s roles in childcare increase, their voice in reproductive decision-making should increase as well.  But women should always have a stronger voice.

My perplexity remains…if people see these facts, they should act to address these issues.  If they are simply ruled by fear, they should be ashamed—and overcome their fear!  Women’s lives depend on it; and the world could be a better place when populations are stabilized (even reduced!) and when women’s lives are less constrained by unwanted fertility.

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Shifting Cultivation, Gender and REDD+

Posted on 22 July 2012 by Carol

‘Shifting Cultivation, Gender and REDD+’* is the name of a meeting I attended yesterday at the office of a USAID contractor in Washington, DC.  It was a refreshing combination of GIS and remote sensing experts on the one hand, and anthropologists, on the other; and it concerned, among other things, two large scale and comparatively long-term projects in Central and West Africa (CARPE and STEWARD, respectively).  I was there as a ‘gender expert’ with some experience in the region.

The fact that the meeting took place at all was something of an anomaly.  Shifting cultivation has been a serious bugaboo from the standpoint of the forestry world (in which REDD+ planning and activities have been most directly incorporated). From colonial days and into the present, foresters have generally considered shifting cultivation to be a destructive and primitive form of agriculture, a direct threat to the trees foresters spend their lives trying to grow, tend and harvest.  National policymakers in developing countries have by and large accepted this negative interpretation, and continue to see shifting cultivators as a kind of national embarrassment—‘primitive people’ in their midst.  Many, while generally tolerating it as too common to police effectively, render it technically illegal.  So the global policy arenas in general and the forestry world in particular have represented a very inhospitable world for shifting cultivators.

Additionally, many shifting cultivation systems are what has been termed ‘female dominated’.  In many parts of Africa, food crop production has been dominated by women—a pattern considered bizarre (perhaps even unbelievable) by many of the (generally male) American agricultural experts who offered technical guidance throughout the mid to late 1900s.  Like the European colonialists that preceded the Americans, their images of desirable farms included rows of permanent mono-crops, managed by men; and such interpretations were reinforced by economists’ analyses, which were often marred by inaccurate assumptions about how these differing worlds functioned.

There has been a small, but not completely insubstantial, number of researchers—anthropologists, geographers, agronomists, ethnobotanists–who have looked carefully into shifting cultivation systems in sites all over the tropical world.  These researchers, focusing on intact systems in geographically specific locales, with the associated human cultures, have found differing, and much more complex realities than those seen and portrayed by (most) foresters and national policymakers.  Rather than destructive systems that cut trees, plant crops and move on—-as typically portrayed—-many of these systems are complex combinations of agriculture and forestry.  Many shifting cultivators creatively use (and create) forest plots of varying ages, to maintain access to useful and varying products while allowing the soil to regenerate in these partially fallowed lands.**  Indeed, virtually all the lush forests of the tropics have persisted for millennia in co-existence with such farmers. 

There are many variations of shifting cultivation, some more useful as sources of insight than others.  But many provide otherwise unavailable information about species, their usefulness, their patterns of growth and/or behaviour; the systems are flexible and resilient, responsive to changes in context and climate; and they maintain a largely unmeasured but substantial amount of biomass—if the true area of each farm is included in calculations.  Women’s active involvement in such systems provides a possible entrée for those of us who see improving women’s well-being globally (a mandate of the Millennium Development Goals) as a significant component of attempts to improve human well being.

But REDD+, situated as it is within the forestry world, has been moving in a direction that ignores these opportunities for flexible adaptation to climate change, and misses a potential REDD+ innovation with both emissions reduction and human welfare advantages.  At the same time, the REDD+ policies being proposed to ‘stop slash and burn’ spell danger for the people who practice these complex, resilient, and in many ways forest-friendly systems.  Many who have studied shifting cultivation, or ‘swidden agriculture,’*** see this as both a fundamental error of interpretation, based on a profound misunderstanding of how such (variable) systems function, and as a threat to the well being of millions of swiddeners. 

Almost all ‘solutions’ to the ‘problem’ of shifting cultivation include policies to obliterate it.  These solutions include

  • resettlement (routinely shown to have adverse effects on those resettled),
  • agricultural interventions (which typically strive to import pre-selected technologies that wreak havoc with the local division of labour, ignore people’s differing value systems, and usually fail).  There’s another irony related to such attempts:  They essentially encourage people to adopt permanent agriculture, wherein forests completely disappear!  Biodiversity and forest cover in shifting cultivation systems, including the forest fallows, are far greater than in conventional agriculture.
  • criminalization and related enforcement of anti-shifting cultivation laws, essentially rendering people’s whole way of life illegal—a significant abrogation of their human rights and a direct attack on their means of subsistence.

In our USAID meeting, which included a number of the people who had conducted indepth research on shifting cultivation systems, we shared our views on the positive aspects of shifting cultivation.  I argued for longer term, site-specific involvement with communities, to analyze the local system and develop collaborative solutions, based on existing practices.  Such an approach is even more important when trying to understand and build on women’s lives and goals, than when dealing with the men of a community.  There are too many constraints to gaining quick access to women:  lower levels of literacy and education, greater time constraints, assumptions from those conducting surveys that men can ‘represent’ women’s views, norms that inhibit interaction with outsiders and can even prevent women from expressing their views at all.  Such constraints, rather than reducing our commitment to addressing their concerns as ‘too much trouble,’ indicate the urgency of doing so—women are half the global population!

But REDD+ decisions are being made now—vital decisions that could have wretched implications for local people, including loss of their lands, their productive assets.  So, although I believe that real solutions will only be found when local people (including women!) have significant voice in decisions about their futures, a useful intermediate step is to involve policymakers with active local researchers in recurrent meetings to discuss and share preliminary findings, as the substantive, long term, collaborative research progresses.  Such involvement can build a ‘community of practice’, improve our collective understanding and result in sharing of findings within a region.  Insofar as citizens of the countries involved are active in these communities of practice, a sense of national ownership of collaborative methods and of the ensuing results can develop.  Perhaps real changes in people’s attitudes about shifting cultivation can be brought about—-to the benefit of both forests and the people who live in and around them.

 

——————————-

* Any get-together at USAID [United States Agency for International Development] is plagued by acronyms.  REDD+ refers to an international concern entitled Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation’.  Additional acronyms about to appear include:  CARPE – Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment, and STEWARD – Sustainable and Thriving Environments for West African Regional Development.

** For descriptions of one such system in Borneo see

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce and Richard G. Dudley 1993. Shifting Cultivators of Indonesia: Managers or Marauders of the forest? Rice Production and Forest Use among the Uma’ Jalan of East Kalimantan. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Colfer, Carol J. Pierce, Nancy Lee Peluso and See Chung Chin 1997. Beyond Slash and Burn: Building on Indigenous Management of Borneo’s Tropical Rain Forests. Bronx, N.Y.: New York Botanical Garden.

Colfer, Carol J Pierce 2009. The Longhouse of the Tarsier:   Changing Landscapes, Gender and Well Being in Borneo. Phillips, Maine: Borneo Research Council, in cooperation with CIFOR and UNESCO.

*** Swidden is the term used to describe the agricultural plot (usually planted with food crops) within the overall mosaic of agricultural and forested plots.

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The Quarterback of Chaos

Posted on 13 July 2012 by Carol

I have just left the home of my aging mother, after a one month stay, and—after hearing of my day last Thursday—my husband lovingly referred to her as the “Quarterback of Chaos”.  The ‘quarterback’ moniker dates back to a comment of hers, years ago:   A psychologist in her prime, she read one day a psychological description of the role of quarterbacks on football teams.  Much to the amusement of the assembled family (particularly my football-loving father and brother), she immediately likened her own role in the family to that of a quarterback.

My husband’s reminder of this event seemed particularly appropriate a few days back:  My mother is 88 years old, takes care of her demented 91 year old ‘partner in crime’, manages a household with the help of five paid and several unpaid non-family members (all of whom come at different times and days, and have different and varying skills and tasks to perform), plus myriad family members who come and go (including me).  In 2012, for instance, there has hardly been a day that has not included some family member coming to help.  [I can well imagine the ambivalence with which our help (including my own) has to be perceived.]  As I left, last Sunday, my brother arrived, to be followed by the second of her partner’s daughters, and so on…

Last Thursday was a slightly unusually busy day in the household.  Mom had a dental appointment at 10 AM and had checked to make sure I would be home to greet the workers; a crew of tree cutters and pruners was scheduled to come at 8:30 to cut down a tree that endangered the house; Mr. Fix-It was coming to complete the repairs to, among other things, the chair lift that had functioned since the mid-1970s with hardly a hitch; it had finally shorted out and refused to budge a couple of months back.  And a physical therapist was coming to check up on Mom’s partner’s situation, strengths and weaknesses—as a follow-up to his recent brief, but unpleasant hospital stay.  

The day began early, when the tree folks arrived unexpectedly at 7:30 AM.  They cut and pruned and straightened and rendered into sawdust a whole range of overly enthusiastic greenery in our yard.  But I was relieved that they were unable to cut down the beautiful, straight, majestic Douglas Fir that had sadly grown exactly between my mother’s house and her neighbour’s, its roots running upending part of our driveway, wreaking havoc with drainage, basement walls and other human concerns.  Its location meant that the cutters would have to render it into small (10-inch) lengths—a travesty for someone like me who was surrounded by foresters for nearly two decades.  I was attuned to timber;  Looking up at it, I felt its  grandeur and beauty.  I hated to think of its being cut down….as in fact did the tree cutters.  The 1987 Lincoln Town car that my mother has kept (“Your father really loved that car!”) was in the way and its battery was dead; we were given a reprieve.  All were happy for any excuse to postpone the destruction of nature’s awe-inspiring bounty.

Mr. Fix-It was late, arriving at 10:45, but he quickly got to work on the chair lift.  In the meantime my pseudo-stepfather had grown seriously tired of all these extraneous human beings; he decided that Mr. Fix-It (an unusually creative, motivated, and, in fact, kind young man) was ‘bad’.  He made such rude remarks to Mr. Fix-It that I felt compelled to take our visitor aside, apologize and explain the elder’s state of mind.  Fortunately, Mr. Fix-It had had experience doing repairs at a special residential facility for Alzheimer’s patients, and was both experienced and understanding.  He got to work on the stair lift—right next to the dining room table (where my pseudo-stepfather remained all day long—guarding the household I’m sure, and periodically glaring at the nice young man).  Mr. Fix-It continued working on a broken toilet and some electrical problems in the basement until 10:30 PM!

At the appointed time during this increasingly insane day, my mother managed to disappear and go to the dentist.  She returned in time to greet the physical therapist who arrived at 12:45.  I was initially relieved to see that it was an attractive young woman—usually a surefire guarantee that my stepfather would be pleasant.  Not so.  He had her fixed in his mind with his unpleasant stay the week before at an alien hospital (the nearest one available)—though she in fact was totally unconnected with either that hospital or his bad experience.  He argued with her, answered her rudely, refused to cooperate with her questions or requests.  My mother and I took her around the house, told her about his two recent worrying falls, listened to her sensible suggestions about installing poles and/or hand rails hither and yon in the house.  Although we consoled ourselves that she was used to such responses from those with dementia, it was still uncomfortable.  We had trouble reconciling what we realized were her entirely good intentions with this undeserved unpleasantness emanating entirely from his dementia.  He’d have been horrified at his own behaviour had he been in his ‘right mind’.

This day alone, however, understates the chaos my quarterback mother manages, as this was a Thursday (a day usually with no ‘help’—she and her partner normally go to Kiwanis for lunch on Thursdays):  Monday and Friday mornings person A arrives to do 2-3 hours of simple household tasks while doing eldercare (so my mother can attend her ‘gentle aerobics’ swimming exercise);  Person B comes on Wednesdays for the same purpose (although she is unreliable about time and doesn’t follow orders well, she has excellent home repair skills).  Person C (and sometimes Person D also) comes to do yard work or painting or house maintenance on Wednesdays.  Person D’s arrival time, like Person B’s, is totally unpredictable.  In fact, Person D also came for a while that Thursday afternoon, to work on  new doors for the shed in the backyard.  Person E comes every second Tuesday for a full morning of serious cleaning, sometimes bringing her teenage daughter.  There are others who come unpaid and unpredictably, usually helping, sometimes hindering household functioning. The Meals on Wheels people come four days a week, bringing hot lunches that, though unappetizing, are welcome and nutritious.  All schedules seem infinitely alterable—Mom’s a very adaptable quarterback.

My mother occasionally worries that she may be ‘losing it’ because she finds all these people and schedules confusing.  But it is quite beyond me to imagine how anyone could be anything but confused under these circumstances (my suggestions on how to simplify were met with polite disinterest). 

The Quarterback of Chaos thrives on complexity.  By and large, she keeps her ‘team’ functioning very well; and maybe we all play a role in keeping her mind sharp. 

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What ‘Eldercare’ Really Means

Posted on 4 July 2012 by Carol

Moments of utter boredom as I wait for my pseudo-stepfather’s foot to make it—ever so slowly—from the side of his chair, past the table leg, to a position under the table; or walk at a snail’s pace, up the driveway and down for one of his ‘constitutional walks’.

Moments of relief that I’ve gone on the walk with him, as I catch him when he stumbles.

Moments of deep satisfaction as my mother delights in the familiar foods I’ve cooked for her.  She savors every taste, expresses her pleasure abundantly.  My stepfather looks up at me and smiles gratefully as I give him his fifth or sixth cup of coffee, his second half glass of wine.

Moments of amazement when she confuses dates and times utterly, when he forgets whose daughter I am.

Moments of repressed impatience as both struggle and fail (or eventually succeed) to find the words to express their thoughts; or when his shaky hand spills his wine on his trousers, his food on the floor.

Moments of revulsion as I see his messy eating, the old food I find in the refrigerator, a certain greed that surely comes from having so few remaining pleasures.

Moments of deep concentration as I try to figure out what he could possibly be trying to say.

Moments of irritation when my customs and my mother’s do not coincide.

Moments of sorrow as I realize my mother’s incredible losses—the relationship with her partner has dwindled to one of caretaking.  She tenderly sees to all his needs.  Yesterday, she learned that she would not be able to take their camper to the upcoming family reunion as she’d planned.  Significant family members worried that he would fall getting into or out of it, and she sadly, with tears, acknowledged the correctness of this conclusion.  She began to accept that loss as well:  her camping days with him were over.  We tried to console her that he might recover for next year, we implied that she might go camping after he died—but she knew this was excessive optimism as well as we.

Moments of humour when my pseudo-stepfather makes a joke appropriate to a five year old; or manages to tell a coherent story that is pure fantasy; or when my mother shares a funny story from her youth.

Moments of exhaustion, after I’ve done myriad small errands and made what seems an endless number of phone calls—many including tedious long waits and complex phone menus—only to discover I need to make yet another call, find yet another missing item, bring yet another cup of coffee.

Moments of discomfort when he has forgotten that I am like his daughter and flirted with me inappropriately (an action that would have horrified him, in his right mind).

Moments of tenderness as I realize their vulnerability, their needs, and try to please them.

Moments of empathy, when I understand how difficult it is for my mother to relinquish, little by little, her autonomy and independent decisionmaking power, to accept a dependence she’s never accepted before.  She’s an independent spirit and it chafes her to have to depend on others.  Her spirit is indomitable; her body is not.

Moments of shared pleasure, when she and I appreciate and console ourselves with the beauty of the tall, deep purple iris or the big, beautiful and fragrant Oregon roses in her yard.

Moments of admiration, when I see her still managing a complex household with multiple helpers and visitors and a full schedule of activities for all.

Moments of anxiety, as I watch him try to rise from the chair, wondering if this time he’ll be unable to do it; or realize the degree today of my mother’s forgetfulness—will she be able to remember her own medications and his, her own doctors’ appointments and his; when will she be unable to drive and what will we do then?

Moments of gratitude, as I realize that she’s begun to make accommodations to the transportation issue:  she’s investigated and tried out the handicap van, which is a viable solution, albeit not a terribly satisfactory one.

Moments of resignation, as the need for constant and continuing adaptation to change—on all of our parts—hits me again.

Moments of fear, realizing that death could come for either of them at any moment, that the future is eminently uncertain.  All is well right now, but we all know that won’t last.

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On Professional Life, with Special Reference to Mothers

Posted on 1 July 2012 by Carol

Anne-Marie Slaughter recently wrote a long article in the The Atlantic, entitled ‘Why Women Still Can’t have it All’.  It describes the difficult dilemmas and decisions that professional women (and men) have, trying to combine their responsibilities to their jobs on the one hand and to their families on the other.  I (along with many other women who have tried to do both throughout their lives) have had a positive response to this article. It nicely captured some of my own internal struggles, as well as the sacrifices I’ve (sometimes unwittingly) imposed on my children and husband[s].

I’ve been intrigued by the somewhat negative response that has also emerged, from some younger women (google Slaughter’s article to find them):  One issue has been the title itself, which on further reflection does seem rather unfortunate.  There’s no doubt that the author was not literally arguing for ‘women [not men] to have it all’, but rather that women could work both inside and outside the home.  The ambiguity of the title seems to have led to some misinterpretation. 

Another major complaint was its focus on mothers (not all women are mothers).  She acknowledges this in several places, as well as the fact that many of the issues she raises also trouble men who would prefer to have more active parenting roles.   As a mother myself, Slaughter’s observations hit home; her favoring of mothers over non-mothers did not disturb me. Most women do in fact become mothers, and most working women are mothers—so I think it’s fine that an article should address the issues they (we) face.

For myself, I found the article quite excellent.  Its central point is that the way the professional and domestic worlds are currently structured, one cannot avoid the home/work balancing dilemmas and conflicts that have so troubled most professional women and many professional men.  She argues cogently that we are lying to ourselves and others—especially aspiring young women—when we continue to ignore the fact that doing both high-level, demanding professional jobs and a good job of parenting is currently very very difficult and in many cases impossible.  I agree with Slaughter’s conclusion that we have been ‘air-brushing’ reality.  I believe that such air-brushing is contributing to our inability to address these dilemmas and difficulties with effective systemic change.

Slaughter analyzes a number of factors that make parenting relatively incompatible with professional work, as ‘the system’ now functions (her central point is about our need to change the system).  She writes of other workers’ and bosses’ (sometimes subtle) disapproval of workers who have to respond to domestic emergencies (recurrent when one has small children—and I would add, when one has elders who can need assistance at any time).  She writes of the guilt one feels when one opts for either area of responsibility over the other.  She cogently addresses the solutions we’ve tried (she calls them myths):  ‘just being motivated enough’, ‘marrying the right person,’ and ‘sequencing things right’—all elements we have tried, all helpful but incomplete.  She provides ample examples from her own experience and that of her colleagues—examples that hit home for those of us who have struggled with these incompatibilities for decades. 

She concludes we need to change the structure and values of the working world.  I agree.  This is not an argument that anyone needs to go back to a life of domestic drudgery in an intellectual wasteland.  It’s an argument for us all both to be more honest about the difficulties of combining work (as it now stands) and motherhood, and to get our creative juices flowing to develop more congenial, people-friendly work structures and values.  Slaughter outlines a number of concrete steps that can contribute to a better balance between paid and domestic work, and that can render the home life of children (and workers) more comfortable, more humane (and most likely more productive too!).  There is already, in fact, considerable evidence that people-friendly, flexible, accepting policies, bosses and co-workers can increase the motivation, productivity and creativity of all workers.

Her conclusion, that we need to change our work structure and values, harkens back at least to the 1960s—a time when we believed (as Obama argued nearly fifty years later in 2008) that we could change the world.  I do not deny an element of naiveté in such utopian ideals.  As we’ve seen with both  my generation’s attempts and with Obama’s, the task is not easy.  But having spent a lot of my life in other countries, I believe that a major part of America’s successes derives from our willingness to dream and to believe in our ability to make things better.  I still value the fact that we have dreamed and we have tried to realize our dreams of gender equality; and I still dream of a world in which women and men everywhere can do the things that excite and strengthen them.  To make such a world a reality, we need to continue re-examining the values that drive us and to re-structure work accordingly.  We have come a long way (in some parts of the world), but we still have a long way to go—if we really want to spare young people the difficulties that my generation (and our own children) have endured.  Acknowledging and analyzing such difficulties is a first step toward creating a world where all people can realize their dreams while responsibly caring for the young and the old.

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