What Working Mother magazine won’t tell you, part 1

September 27, 2007 | Ethics,Family,Journalism,PR,Work,Working Mother

The Work, Family, and Equity Index, published by the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University and the Project on Global Working Families. The report studied and compared 177 countries, finding that the United States does well regarding an equitable right to work and guaranteeing time-and-a-half for overtime. The United States, however, lags behind all high-income countries and even many medium- and low-income countries, especially regarding 1) leave around childbearing, 2) breastfeeding support, 3) work hours and 4) leave for illness and family care.

Of 173 countries studied for this topic, 169 countries offer guaranteed leave with income to women in connection with childbirth; 98 of these countries offer 14 or more weeks paid leave. Although in a number of countries many women work in the informal sector, where these government guarantees do not always apply, the United States guarantees no paid leave for mothers in any segment of the work force, leaving it in the company of only three other nations: Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

• Fathers in 66 countries get paid paternity leave or have a right to paid parental leave; 31 of these countries offer 14 or more weeks of paid leave. The United States guarantees fathers neither paid paternity nor paid parental leave.
• At least 107 countries protect working women’s right to breastfeed; in at least 73 of these the breaks are paid. The United States does not guarantee the right to breastfeed.
• At least 137 countries mandate paid annual leave; 121 countries guarantee two weeks or more each year. The United States does not.
• At least 134 countries have laws that fix the maximum length of the workweek. The United States does not have a maximum length of the workweek or a limit on mandatory overtime per week.
• While only 28 countries have restrictions or prohibitions on night work, 50 countries have government-mandated evening and night wage premiums. The United States neither restricts nor guarantees wage premiums for night work.
• At least 126 countries require employers to provide a mandatory day of rest each week. The United States does not.
• At least 145 countries provide paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 136 providing a week or more annually. More than 81 countries provide sickness benefits for at least 26 weeks or until recovery. The United States provides only unpaid leave for serious illnesses through the FMLA, which does not cover all workers.
• At least 49 countries guarantee leave for major family events such as marriage or funerals; in 40 of these countries, leave for one or both of these family events is paid.

According to its 2004 report:

• The United States is tied with Ecuador and Suriname for 39th place regarding enrollment in early childhood care and education for 3- to 5-year-olds. Almost all European countries perform better and a range of developing and transitioning countries — despite being poorer — had higher enrollment rates than the United States.
• Employer-sponsored childcare in the United States is available to only one in eight employees.

It is legal in most states for employers to discriminate against American mothers.

While illegal, American women deal with pregnancy discrimination every day. (Just in case you don’t think it happens, here’s a lawsuit filed by an employee who was fired in December 2005, two weeks after telling her employer she was pregnant.)

The only way for American women to get a chance at guaranteed affordable, high-quality child care is to join the military.

Women still earn less than men do, and mothers earn less than anyone.

Many of the “benefits” and “perks” offered by the “100 best” companies are completely voluntary and certainly not permanent. Time to slash 2,000 jobs or cut the budget? Let’s cut [insert family-friendly benefit].

While many of the companies offer six weeks of paid maternity leave here or a lactation room there, not one of the companies measures up to what’s required of employers in much of the rest of the world. While Working Mother compares the “100 best” to other U.S. companies (click on “Download a snapshot of how the 100 Best compare to all the rest”), it fails to mention that many of the “100 best” operate in Canada, Norway and Sweden — for example — and, by law, must provide employees in those countries with some of the most generous and comprehensive benefits in the world. That’s not required in the United States, though. Instead, some of the things Working Mother cites as cool “benefits” American employees might get, depending where they work:

• Yoga or exercise classes
• Meditation classes
• Knitting classes
• Surfing lessons
• Massage therapy
• Stress-management counseling or stress seminars
• Financial-planning advice and/or tax software
• Online support groups
• A diaper bag
• Event-planning service
• First-aid classes
• A parenting kit
• A pop-up window that tells employees who fire up their work computers on Saturday or Sunday that, “It’s the weekend.”

Know your Working Mother press releases

September 25, 2007 | Ethics,Family,Journalism,Parenting,PR,Work,Working Mother

Along with a media kit (for advertising in the coming year, natch), Working Mother apparently provides canned press-release text for each of the winning companies. It goes like this.

Headline: [Insert company name] Named to Working Mother ‘100 Best Companies’ List

[Insert dateline] Sept. 25 — For the [insert number] consecutive year, [insert company name] ([insert NYSE link]) has been named one of the “100 Best Companies” by Working Mother magazine, the company announced today. [Optional sentence, if applies] In 2006, [insert company name] was inducted into the Working Mother Hall of Fame in recognition of its [insert number] consecutive year on the list.

“Every year our winning companies raise the bar for what it means to be an employer of choice for working families,” said Carol Evans, CEO and President, Working Mother Media. “[Insert company name] not only offers essential benefits like flextime and telecommuting — they go above and beyond with a range of best practices and policies to ease the difficulties for working parents and their families. Their supportive culture makes a huge difference to employees who want to be great moms and great workers.”

Added Suzanne Riss, Editor-in-Chief of Working Mother magazine, “As a working mother myself, I understand how absolutely essential it is for companies to find ways to nurture the personal and professional lives of employees. I commend [insert company name here] for conceiving and effectively implementing programs and benefits that offer an inspiring paradigm for the rest of corporate America: it is possible to be both family-friendly and financially successful.”

Working Mother measures and scores companies in seven areas when compiling its list of the best companies for mothers: workforce profile, compensation, child care, flexibility, time off and leaves, family-friendly programs, and company culture. Profiled in the October issue, [insert company name] fosters an environment and culture that recognizes the professional and personal needs of all employees — including working mothers.

[Insert company name] was selected for the 2007 Working Mother 100 Best Companies based on an extensive application of 575 questions. The application included detailed questions about workforce, compensation, child-care and flexibility programs, leave policies, and more. It also checked the usage, availability and tracking of programs, as well as the accountability of managers who oversee them. Seven areas were measured and scored: workforce profile, compensation, child care, flexibility, time off and leaves, family-friendly programs, and company culture. For this year’s 100 Best, particular weight was given to flexibility and family-friendly policies.

“We are proud and honored to be included in the Working Mother ‘100 Best Companies’ list again this year,” said [insert name, title and department]. “[Insert company name] is committed to attracting, developing, and retaining talented individuals, and we are pleased that the success of our efforts is once again recognized by Working Mother.”

For example, [insert company name] offers a number of attractive options to help employees balance their professional lives with their personal responsibilities. Today, many women find it difficult to return to the workforce after having children — or staying out of the workforce longer than expected.(1) [Insert option reference.]

“At [insert company name], more than [insert percentage] of our employees are women, so we have a vested interest in encouraging them to return to work after having children — and facilitating that process,” [insert name] said. [Insert company name] has seen significant improvement in its employees’ work/life balance by offering flexible work schedules, including [insert example, such as telecommuting, job-sharing, and flextime]. In addition, employees have access to [insert another example, such as company-sponsored on- or near-site child care centers]. [Insert other examples].

One of the themes of the October issue of Working Mother is benefit equity: at the 100 Best, benefits are available to everyone — from the top executives to hourly-wage earners. To illustrate that point, the issue features a profile of [insert carefully selected success story, title, work location].

[Insert company name] also offers a number of development programs for its female employees, including [insert program name].

In addition to recognition by Working Mother, [insert company name] has also earned [insert names of other awards].

About Working Mother

Founded in 1979, Working Mother magazine reaches nearly 3 million readers and is the only national magazine for career mothers. Its 22-year signature initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, is the most important benchmark for work/life practices in corporate America. The publication also releases the annual list of the Best Companies for Multicultural Women in the June issue. Working Mother is published by Working Mother Media (WMM), which also owns the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), NAFE Magazine, the annual 100 Best Companies WorkLife Congress, as well as the Best Companies for Multicultural Women Conference and regional Town Halls. In 2006, WMM acquired Diversity Best Practices, the preeminent organization for diversity thought leaders.

About [insert company name, information and link].

Editor’s Note: For more information on the 2007 Working Mother 100 Best Companies and for a complete list of winners, visit www.workingmother.com.

(1) McGrath M, Driscoll M, Gross M. “Back in the Game — Returning to Business After a Hiatus: Experiences and Recommendations for Women, Employers, and Universities.” Wharton Center for Leadership and Change. June 2005.

Examples

Carlson

General Mills

GlaxoSmithKline

Goldman Sachs

The McGraw-Hill Companies

Verizon Wireless

P.S. Internet search hits are up to 364 368.

Questions arise in MSM about Working Mother list

Ethics,Family,Journalism,Motherhood,MSM,Parenting,PR,Work,Working Mother

Working Mother posted its 2007 list online. Magazines probably won’t hit newsstands for a while, but press releases are out in full force. A search this morning for the magazine’s best 100 companies for 2007 got 200 hits.

TIME published an article yesterday, raising skepticism about this list.

Here’s an article I wrote about last year’s list. I haven’t read through the whole 2007 list yet, but the names look familiar, which means I probably just need to update last year’s article instead of starting from scratch.

Hat tip for the TIME article: Devra

Lucky ducks survive country’s top ‘mean streets’

September 23, 2007 | Death,Family,Safety,Traffic

I was on my way to pick up my son from preschool on Thursday when traffic came to a complete stop. I looked around, wondering if there had been an accident or if a car stalled. Nothing. Was an ambulance or fire truck coming? Nope. Then I saw it. Lunch-hour traffic had stopped for a duck and a duckling crossing the six-lane highway.

Isn’t that sweet?

This is the city …

• that topped the list of the Mean Streets 2004 report published by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, which said that 3.69 per 100,000 people died in pedestrian accidents here.
• where children holding hands across the street are killed and put in the hospital by hit-and-run drivers.
• where students are killed using the crosswalk on the way to school. Or getting off the school bus. Or trying to get to a bus stop.
• where mothers pushing baby strollers are killed. And killed. (Imagine the aneurysm, heart attack and stroke I had when I learned a visiting relative had been pushing my then-18-month-old son along the highway.)
• where a pedestrian is hit by not one, not two but five cars.
• that has almost as many of these

and these

and these

as it does stoplights. It has so many “drive safely” signs and memorials, in fact, that county commissioners approved a policy to standardize them because there are so many and people can’t agree on whether or for how long they should be posted.

This is the city where the woman who killed my dog right in front of my house still screeches around the corner practically on two wheels (with an organ-donation bumper sticker on her car, no less — so many organ-laden pedestrians, so little time?) ignoring this

and this

and must be confused about the big 2 and 5 on that other sign, thinking it means minimum speed limit.

Stop for babies, children, students and mothers? Eh. Not so much.

But ducks? Yeah. We’ll stop for ducks.

Parents face jail for truancy in children

September 18, 2007 | Education,Ethics,Family,Journalism,Opinion,Parenting

Editorial writer Joseph H. Brown said sending parents to jail for not sending their kids to school is a good thing: “Making Parents Accountable.”

When it comes to our public schools, accountability is mandatory. That’s why we have the FCAT here in Florida and the No Child Left Behind Act at the federal level.

Teachers and administrators are held accountable, he said. So are governments and schools, he said, but parents aren’t.

There’s one important component in the education process, however, that always escapes accountability: parents.

That’s about to change, though, because Circuit Judge Ross Goodman in Escambia County plans to charge parents of chronically truant students with misdemeanors and the possibility of jail time. (His wife, Marci Goodman, is a judge in Santa Rosa County and once sentenced a woman to two years in jail for keeping her child out of school for two years.) This came about because 583 students (of 40,000 total) in his county were absent without an excuse for at least 30 days last year.

If the parent is not sending the child to school, then I can send the parent to jail. — Circuit Judge Ross Goodman

Brown says everyone else is held accountable, and it’s time to hold parents accountable too. My question is, though, when teachers, administrators, schools and governments fail children, do they go to jail too?

This isn’t new. Parents across the country were arrested for their children’s truancy, according to a 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor. And they’ve established similar programs in the United Kingdom.

What do you think? Should parents go to jail if their children are chronically truant from school?

Comment to Creative Ink

August 22, 2007 | Blogging,Family,Lawyers,Motherhood,Work

Wendy Hoke’s blog, Creative Ink, won’t let me leave a comment, so I’ll do it here. Regarding her post, “Women lawyers falling behind at local firms,” I say … good points. I especially like her deconstruction of Bob Duvin’s quote about how dazzled he is by working mothers. Brilliant.

Speaking of lawyers, I just read this morning that some have reached the $1,000-per-hour level. (The article is behind the paywall until Rupert Murdoch decides to make the Wall Street Journal available free online and fill the main news holes with Paris Hilton every day.)

Frankly, it’s a little hard to think about anyone who doesn’t save lives being worth this much money. – David Boies, a trial lawyer at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP

You don’t say.