Nine
to Five--Still!
“...Workin'
9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'
Barely
gettin' by, it's all taking and no givin'
They just
use your mind, and they never give you credit
It's
enough to drive you crazy if you let it
9 to 5,
for service and devotion
You would
think that I would deserve a big promotion
Want to
move ahead, but the boss won't seem to let me
I swear
sometimes that man is out to get me...”
Dolly
Parton (“Nine to Five,” vs. 2)
Don't ask me why, but I
woke up with this Dolly Parton song running through my head. Always
when that happens, I first think “what the heck,” but then I
begin to probe where it came from, why, and why now. Because I am no
longer in the workplace, I just assume that this issue applies to
other women, and not to me. But then, my psyche says, “Not so fast,
it was after all, your waking dream.”
When I reflect on the
words and the 1980 movie of the same name, I realize how pervasive
this problem is—it was true when I was a young woman (long, long
ago), it was true forty years ago, when the movie was made, and it's
still true now as we are approaching the third decade of the 21st
century. What the heck! Women now make up more than half the
workforce and are equally well educated, sometimes better, and yet...
I have to own up to this
being partially because women of my generation, and perhaps the one
behind me, simply accepted the role of “lesser being.” I didn't
expect more. I just took what was offered, and naively assumed that
was the way it was for a good reason. As I've said before in this
blog, when my first husband and I separated in 1973, I had no credit
of my own, even though I was the one with a job and he was in
graduate school. Everything we owned, which wasn't much, was in his
name alone. It was a rude awakening. And, it's one I'm still
confronting, because the last time I attempted to refinance a
mortgage, I was denied because there was no W-2 proof of income from
a job. When a male friend, also retired, offered to co-sign the loan,
the arrangement suddenly became acceptable to the bank.
I think all of this is a
hold-over from the patriarchal view that women are somehow unequal to
men. We can see it more clearly in other countries where women are
still considered to be the property of their fathers or their
husbands. Where girls can be killed by their own family if they are
in anyway defiled and therefore no longer valuable as property. But
we don't seem to see it, or even want to see it, here in America. I
grew up with aunts and cousins who worked in textile factories where
they were paid by the piece. When they began to produce enough to
make extra money, they were moved to a different machine or given a
new job with a learning curve. Teachers, of which I was one, make
less money than rock-band roadies, even though they have college
degrees, because most of them are women. At my first teaching job, in
the late 1960's, I was offered as salary, $3,000.00—for the year.
And, I gladly accepted it because I loved to teach, and I needed a
job. So, today, when I see teachers out on the street protesting low
pay, I cheer them on.
These things, and all the
many inequities that exist in this world, have consequences—karmic
consequences. We are paying for it now in the way that our children
are unprepared for the job-market of today. Salaries for teachers
will not attract the best and the brightest until they are
competitive, which means that all our children will fall behind the
rest of the world in their academic skills—and already have. There
are soul consequences, too. Every time we fail to stand up for “the
least of these,” we are breaking our contract with the Divine . We
are stewards of this world, and that includes its women and children.
It's time, and way past time, to give equality a chance.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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