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Working Life for Working Mothers, chapter 2020: the Covid Years

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Lady Writer on the Verge What has working life been like for mothers under lockdown, I hear you cry? Far be it from me to hold back. Here is my view from the edge. My experience of 'working motherhood' is no longer linked to corporate life. As avid readers of this blog will know only too well, I was an academic, a lecturer at Cambridge in the early noughties, but was bullied into resigning after having my first baby, by my female head of department. Blah blah blah, old news. Ever since, I have focused on, experimented with and written about effective practices for working mothers — been frustrated by the ineffective ones, and taken matters into my own hands. Matters, maters, martyrs, eventually ending up on the yoga mat. I have worked from home as a writer and education consultant since 2012, when I told my husband, “I’m not going back into an office again”.  After my beloved mother died, I built an office in the garden, in the Autumn of 2018. It is my Room of Mum’s Own, my She

Literary Movement – a review of Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking

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Literary Movement Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking ed. Duncan Minshull Notting Hill Editions,  2018,  £9.99 Beneath My Feet is an anthology of writers meditating on walking, intended to be ‘tucked into a rucksack’. Conjuring visions of hiking with Kendal mint cake in one hand and Wordsworth in the other, it is a wonderful assemblage.  I originally wrote this review for another publication, but managed to miss my deadline by a few days, after which it seemed to go walkabout. So I’ve decided to post it here. After all, this particular gem may come into its own again, if Covid comes back to bite us in the Autumn.  I blame Rebecca Solnit for missing my deadline. ‘I sat down one spring day to write about walking and stood up again, because a desk is no place to think on the large scale,’ she begins.  As soon as I read this sentence, I went for a walk.  It may not have been on a large scale, but early morning constitutionals, golden hour passeggiata, foraging for elderflower, photographin

Care for the carers or they won't care for you

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Anni Albers's loom This, published in the New York Times, 8 May 2020. Where have you been all my life, Kim Brooks? I love you. Forget Pancakes. Pay Mothers . Yes. Yes. Lysistrata. Cinderella. Wages for Housework, Italy, 1972. Studs Terkel. Work done in the home is work . Cooking, cleaning, making, mending. Labour. Labour should be remunerated. Fairly. It takes skill to clean and care. It can be itemised, shown as a workload document. This work is not invisible. It exists and can be quantified. It is invisibilised, feminised, certainly. But it is not women's work for all that. I needed a doctorate to raise children. I needed a doctorate to ward off the shit that is flung at women once they become mothers (or indeed if they don't become mothers). Shit is just flung at women, and they are expected to suck it up, clean it off, say nothing, be pretty, and be flung on the heap when they're done. Fuck that. Pay carers, or you'll end up paying the

Women are writing less during Lockdown than men. Why would that be, then?

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The stereotyped image of the 'working mother' Female academics are writing less during Lockdown than men. Why would that be, then? To enlighten myself, I read an article today – here's the headline: Women academics seem to be submitting fewer papers during coronavirus. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ says one editor.  Men are submitting up to 50 percent more than they usually would I wonder if readers of this blog will be able to guess my response? Yes? No? I'm unable to restrain myself anyway, so here goes…To sum up, and at the risk of sounding like the Daily Mash , this is more fabulous Motherload nonsense from the No Shit Sherlock School of Research, University of Life. Go on then, I know you know I want to. Let me spell out why.  Particular restatements of the problem, as opposed to doing anything, anything at all, about the solution (um... men need to do more housework and let go of some of their entrenched power; women need to stop trying to do

The Pandemic and the Female Academic or Motherload in a time of Covid

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Two people recently sent me a piece called ' The Pandemic and the Female Academic ', so I felt it incumbent upon me to clamber back onto my Motherload soapbox, lean from the top floor window of my coronavirus lockdown retreat, and scream into the indifferent winds. Very yogic. This is a paraphrased version of what my poor unwitting friends received in response: Thank you! Mmmmm… thesis: "it's going to be even harder for women with children to get their work done if they are on lockdown at home."    I don't want to appear rude, but isn't this of the No Shit Sherlock school of writing? This is normal Motherload, merely topped off with the whipped cream of pandemic.   And BTW I have never heard the term 'maternal wall' before, in all the years I've spent banging my head against it, writing about the nonsense that is combining children and a career as a woman. Speak soon, love, Ingrid. Although when I come to think of it, whenever I have