From Your (Wo)manInWashington blog 
MOTHERS changing the conversation @ www.MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org

Mother's Day became my favorite holiday exactly 14 years ago—the first one I observed as a mother in my own right. It followed on the heels of my realization that no amount of education, professional experience, personal achievement, or effort would insulate me from the disadvantages of being an American woman.

Since that time, I've learned that phone calls, cards, and flowers are just the tip of the maternal iceberg. Largely absent from our modern-day celebration is any notion of the real origin of Mother's Day. In her 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation, feminist Julia Ward Howe calls for "a general congress of women...appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient," asserting that women have a duty to influence their societies at the political level.

In truth, we do have such a duty. Sadly, we have yet to fulfill it.

The number of women in elected office in the United States is astonishingly low, and the least of any industrialized nation. Yet women comprise over 50% of the population, a majority of high school graduates, a majority of students earning undergraduate degrees, and receive more master's degrees than men. If "a general congress of women" was convened today, there would certainly be no lack of qualified candidates!

And what would the impact of such an estrogen-fueled congress be? If women (even mothers!) were swept into office, eliminating the gender gap in government, what would be the result? Obviously, the first order of business would be to double the number of stalls in every public women's restroom by federal statute. But what next?

In my mother's mind's eye, this is what I see:

• Women could give birth at home, in the hospital, on their own terms, and in their own time. It would be illegal to send them home until they felt good and ready and could walk—unassisted—out of the hospital.

• Men and women would receive the same pay for the same work. It would be impossible to lose your job because you took your sick child to the doctor, or went to a parent/teacher conference.

• You could be successful at your job even if you worked less than 60 hours a week. Part-time workers could participate in their employer's retirement savings plan and group health insurance plan, and they'd be paid proportionately to full-time workers.

• As many women as men would sit on corporate boards, run banks, and be CEO's of Fortune 500 companies.

• Mothers and fathers could take sufficient time to adjust to life with a newborn or newly adopted child, with pay, before returning to work.

• Stay at home fathers would be just as common as stay at home mothers, and women would be cheered for financially supporting their children.

• You could hold down a job, coach your kid's sports team, be a community leader, and still have time for a pedicure.

• Every community would have a Mother’s Center, a place where mothers could find information about their baby’s healthy development, options for family leave, what post-partum depression feels like, adult conversation, support and friendship.

• When your parents get sick or die, you can be there to hold their hand and not get fired. When you get sick and ready to die, your spouse or son or daughter or grandchild can care for you without making themselves poor.

• No one would be poor in retirement because they took time away from paid work to raise children, care for disabled soldier spouse, or look after a family member suffering from a serious illness.

• We would never have to apologize for loving our family, wanting to work, wanting to be home, wanting to have power and influence and wanting to make a difference.

• We wouldn't have to apologize…for being women.

That's the country that I want for Mother's Day. That's the country I want for myself, for my daughter, and for my son. And when women fill the seats of the U.S. Congress to the same extent they make up the U.S. population, it's the kind of country we will live in.

So what is it, exactly, that we are waiting for?

‘Til next time, and Happy Mother’s Day,
Your (Wo)Man in Washington

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