RANT for Single Working Women’s Week, July 31 – August 6, 2022

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Yes, it’s almost time to celebrate the single working women in your life, including you if you’re one. But wait a second.

I need to vent for a minute.

Are you celebrating much these days? Consider this stuff:

Given the above, I want to spend as much time as I can with the people I love. If you saw the movie “Don’t Look Up!” you’ll remember that was the ending. It’s not a great movie, but the conclusion that all we can do is love one another, is a good one. Since we are all going to die one day, sooner or later – even if we manage to reverse course on climate change – we all face the devastating loss of loved ones dying. So having faith in each other and celebrating our loving relationships now seems like the best thing we can do for ourselves and for each other.

Thank heaven we’re still here, single working women and all! So let’s go ahead and celebrate all the relationships we share – with our neighbors, our friends, our SOs, kids and other relatives if we have them. Plan to have fun together as often as you can – in ways that contribute as little as possible to the existing problems. “Be the change you want to see.” ~Ghandi

Thank you for letting me get that out of my system. Thank goodness Congress is today close to enacting a meaningful piece of legislation that addresses many of these pressing issues and is paid for by a significant tightening of tax loopholes for mega-corporations. It’s a small step forward in the long and hard-fought battle that is costing us all too much.

July 31 to August 6, 2022. Happy Single Working Women’s Week!

 

Single, smart , analytically minded women get the short stick – from everyone

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Can you believe it? Bloomberg News reports that single women who are analytical and smart are penalized in their careers – fewer promotions, etc. – more than any other type of worker, including single men and married women!

If you’re sharp-minded and not known for your people skills – as are so many men – you will be punished. And check out the paragraph about vacationing with friends versus with husband and kids! Just unbelievable. And, as they say, depressing.


Amazing – though maybe not – that smart single women are still such a threat to so many, male and female, in our society. The way some of the laws around reproductive rights and voting are changing makes me think the next thing you know, smart single women will start getting thrown into bodies of water to prove they’re actually witches.

Here’s the link. Read it and weep. 

Happy Single Working Women’s Week 2018!

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Here we are again. Ready to celebrate another Single Working Women’s Week.** Do you feel like we’ve made any progress towards liberating ourselves to celebrate the challenges and joys of being a single woman in today’s world?

Sometimes doesn’t feel much like it, right?

Just saw a tweet from @SinglePhobia passing on the frustration of seeing no one on the @MorningJoe television show even try to stand up to a conservative author whose new book claims “feminism has failed us.”

I’d say feminism has made some significant changes. Certainly we’ve made great strides in the workplace in terms of career opportunities – with miles yet to go over terrain that can still feel particularly grueling. See research by Psychology Today’s Single Living editor.

The first time I watched an episode of Mad Men, the television series about the advertising business in the 60s, I almost got sick. Simply couldn’t watch it because I’d lived through that time, and the men’s snide, condescending attitudes brought back miserable memories.

Recently, after hearing over and over again how many awards the show had won, I decided to control my revulsion and see if I could figure out what was so good about it. Suffice it to say, the acting was pretty darn good, but the plot line – which too frequently involves the tall and handsome, privileged-but-somehow-vulnerable male star sleeping with practically every female who comes into his field of vision – wore thin after a few seasons.

The net effect of watching was to remind me just how subjugated women tended to be back then. The most amazing character in the series was the single woman who rose from copywriter to creative team coordinator by standing up for herself – a courageous move that in the real world would have been just as likely to get her fired. She also completely hid the pregnancy brought on when she fell for one of the ad execs saying he couldn’t stop thinking about her – and let him impregnate her on the couch in his office. Once he dumped her because she was too uppity about being promoted, she never let him know about the pregnancy. Just wore disguising outfits and put up with the snide comments about her getting fat – and then gave the child up for adoption, probably because pregnancy termination was illegal back then.

Read the Huffington Post article about feminism that started the Tweet storm. And you may want to know I finally saw the last few episodes of Mad Men and found them surprisingly satisfying.

Happy Single Working Women’s Week**!

 

**Single Working Women’s Week in 2018 goes from July 29 to August 4. And of course Single Working Women’s Day is Saturday, August 4 every year. As seen in Chase’s Calendar of Events 2018.

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Abortion vis-a-vis single motherhood

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Interesting interview in the Cornell Sun with a pro-life advocate. Says abortion has become the easy choice for young women who get pregnant–and that abortion betrays feminism.

The woman makes a really important point–women are not adequately supported by our society. Single mothers in particular must generally learn to leap tall buildings just to survive with their child(ren). Saying all single women who get pregnant should become mothers is kind of like saying abstinence-only is a good way to prevent teens from having sex. It’s plain not happening.

Our society not only pays women less but also disapproves of single mothers and denies them access to benefits that most married couples take for granted. Asking a woman to give birth to her accidentally conceived baby no matter what the circumstances is forcing her to start life with her baby with two strikes against them. It’s not surprising that abortion is often the choice. And as the African American pro-lifer–who herself had an abortion when she was young “so my child wouldn’t become a statistic”–rightly points out, nothing stays with a woman like an abortion. So let’s not pretend that it’s an “easy” choice.

Being a single woman today means you’re part of the 51% majority of women in America who are. With numbers like that, it’s time for our society to start finding a new attitude.