What counts as relevant experience in l'age moyen?

As Caroline Kennedy throws her hat into the ring to take Hilary's Senate seat the question arises, what counts as work experience in l'age moyen? The work paradigm dictates that unpaid work is of less value than paid work. So if Caroline Kennedy has spent most of her adult 'working' life as a volunteer raising millions of dollars for charity, sitting on boards etc., does that count for less than Barack Obama's work, albeit paid, as a community organizer? What's the difference really?

Gender is the great divide in this instance. As a man, Barack could not duck out of the workforce for a few years to raise his daughters and devote his work energy to volunteer work in the form of community organizing. He was a full time, paid community organizer. His wife made the big bucks as a hospital executive. I imagine childcare was arranged for their children although it probably cancelled out his income.

Here's where the work paradigm affords women a legitimate alternative to paid work but with a catch. As a woman you can raise kids and work as a volunteer for a period of time or, if your household income permits, the rest of your life. The catch is when Caroline or Franca or Nancy want to apply for paid work the validity of that time as a homemaker/volunteer is called into question.

Jeffrey Tobin, a writer for the New Yorker and CNN political commentator, was quick to comment that for most of her life Ms. Kennedy has been a homemaker. He admitted that she had raised millions of dollars for public education in New York, written a couple of books etc., but really she was just a homemaker. As a low paid community organizer Barack took a few hits for the relative obscurity of his work, but by and large he was able to position it as a platform for negotiation and activism that propelled him to the White House. Seems to me Ms. Kennedy is attempting to do the same - the difference is he was paid, she was not (in fact, she did receive $1 per year from the NY Board of Education for fundraising).

Let's face it, about 25 - 30% of women continue to stay home with children full time and a greater number take extended time out of the paid workforce to raise their children. Many spend a portion of that time raising money, volunteering in the school or participating on community committees and boards. Women often return to paid work in l'age moyen (children are of an age and women are ready for the next phase of their lives). Do any of these women leap forward in their careers when they decide to return to paid work as a result of this broadened life/work experience? Hardly. It is simply discounted and by and large you have to make up for the lost time by returning to your pre-leave role or starting anew. The work paradigm rewords continuous years of work with access to influential, well-paid jobs. This paradigm negatively affects a woman's ability to build wealth in the 2nd half of her life which in turn, affects her ability to prepare for a secure retirement.

So can the paradigm shift to recognize the variety and depth of experience acquired by l'age moyen regardless of the venue? It is quite possible that leadership requires broader thinking and wider exposure than what is currently seen in the paid workforce. Would all leadership benefit from folks having spent an equal amount of time out of the paid workforce? Could this financial crisis (caused mostly by short-term greed) have been avoided if people in leadership roles were better grounded in raising the next generation and building functioning communities?

I don't think Ms. Kennedy should be anointed Senator because she is a Kennedy, but I object to her qualifications being discounted simply because she has not been in the paid workforce.

Blog List and RSS Feed

I've added two things to l'age moyen. First, I've started a list of blogs that I regularly check in with and might be of interest.

Secondly, I've added an RSS Feed which, if I understand this correctly, will allow viewers to add l'age moyen to your bookmarks and it will list the posts in order of most recent. Look over here to the right for the orange icon with the diagonal lines and the word 'Posts' beside. Just click on it and it will ask to add it to your bookmarks. I'm new to this and have just RSS'd myself to a few blogs that I follow to see how it works. Let me know if it is useful (or useless).

Briefly, the blogs I've listed here are my absolute regulars for the following reasons:

Chocolate and Zucchini: I much prefer to read about food and cooking than do it myself. This is a fun blog hosted from Paris. She has a great reading list.

The Sartorialist: Well, I've written about this blog early on. I love it. Pure pleasure. My only beef is that he features a disproportionate number of photos of young women and middle-aged to well-aged men. When he does show a women in l'age moyen, it is wonderful, but doesn't happen often enough. Hence, my inspiration for the photos on this blog (without the photographic expertise - bear with me).

Junk Food Science: Debunking all the stuff we read about. She presents a compelling counter-argument on the mamogram as an effective tool for detecting breast cancer. Lots to read here on science and medicine.

Seth's blog: He has a lot to say about blogging (along with marketing and business)and is a kind of guru on what's going on with the www. For a neophyte like moi, it is a good grounding.

Is it worth living lighter to live longer?

I read an unconvincing book called "Princessa" by Harriet Rubin. Unconvincing in the sense that I'm somewhat persuaded but not thoroughly convinced by her argument that women should not attempt to play "a man's game" because we'll inevitably lose. Instead, she advises, harness the power of our feminine strengths (and wiles) and remain steely eyed. In my view, it is nearby impossible to come up with a winning strategy in what remains a male paradigm, but any advice should help. The career advice isn't what stayed with me.

I was more gobsmacked by the comment that women live longer because they live less intensely. What a damning fate! The truth in that statement is patently unjust and irritates me like a sliver. It's no secret that up until the last 20 years women's use of the healthcare system has been more frequent and for less serious health issues than men. Men save up their usage for middle-aged whoppers like heart attack, stroke or cancer. Men continue to live shorter lives, falling fast and hard when they retire.

L'age moyen delivers a thundering crash to the physical durability men have always assumed. After 40 the aches and pains turn to chronic shoulder and knee problems. They get vicious colds or worse pneumonia. They drink cranberry juice (urinary tract problems?) and stick to one cup of coffee per day. They are gradually becoming careful, conscious of their mortality and how the stats stack up against them. We can joke that once they're over 40 we should turn them in for a younger model but we'd probably still outlive this version. Here again men have the advantage with the trophy wife scenario. Having skipped the painful rise to affluence those broads will live even longer!

With women working full on in the last 20 years, on top of maintaining most of the household management duties, there has been a corresponding rise in heart disease and other serious illnesses among women. Still, we continue to live longer and, among my mother's generation anyway, spend a good chunk of time caring for ailing husbands alone and often unsupported, mirroring their younger lives at home with children.

I had a conversation with two men, one with youngish children. They were in agreement that bike helmets negatively affected the pleasure found in cycling and so neither were in favour of this safety practice. The women, on the other hand, thought less of their own pleasure and more of the responsibility they had towards their children, ageing parents etc. Their role as caretakers superceded the pleasure principle. Is gender or personality at work here?

The question for women in l'age moyen is, should we live harder and more fully now at the risk of dying younger? In short, take off the safety equipment in all its forms. Does it speak volumes that I use the word 'risk' in this context at all?

Is it inevitable that we will book-end our lives with caretaking instead of living for ourselves?

I know three things

Three things I know today:


1. The vast majority of women in l'age moyen look better in skirts. When in doubt ditch the pants.

2. You are admired for changing your ways: Justifying only demeans the act. Just do it.

3. Birthdays should never be made convenient. Celebrate each person's separately no matter how simple the party.