Are You Mad?

We know about law enforcement's much-criticized practice of "racial profiling." And now a new term has been coined to describe employers' practice of using a woman's parental status to decide whether to hire her, when to promote her, and how much to pay her: maternal profiling. The practice is illegal but, like many cases of discrimination, hard to prove and hard to prosecute. The victim who protests often faces future discrimination as a whistleblower that paradoxically makes it riskier for her to protest than it is for the employer to discriminate.

Last Thursday, the New York Times ran a story Mom's Mad. And She's Organized that describes post-feminist, pro-mom groups, including MomsRising, Mothers & More, and the Mothers Movement Online, that have sprung up recently to fight maternal profiling and other workplace discrimination against moms. These advocacy groups have given power to moms -- who have traditionally been hamstrung by organizational difficulties, lack of a mainstream power base, family and cultural pressures to stay silent, and limited time to protest, strategize and galvanize due to their triple roles as childcare givers, workers and political activists. Women's groups, empowered by the Internet, have recently made communication, community, and organization accessible to moms no matter what our employment status, household help, family support or number of kids.

Thanks to the immense power of the Internet, moms no longer have to leave our kitchens to become politically active and make our voices heard. "You get an e-mail to sign a petition," says a member of MomsRising quoted by the Times. "and it takes five minutes and you're done for the day."

Are you mad? Have you joined any of these groups? What role does the Internet play in your life as a mom? What are your ideas for making moms' voices heard?

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  February 26, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Moms in the News
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