Alison Channon, Program Assistant

My Take

Mothering on Nickels and Dimes

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: May 12, 2012 at 02:35 pm

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

My whole life, whenever I would thank my mom for doing something for me (or on those few occasions when I might grumble that she was being a little overprotective), she would always respond, “that’s what they pay me for.”

What she was really saying is that picking me up from school in the middle of the day because I was sick, or helping me with homework assignments, or asking if I was eating enough calcium (yes, Mom) was all part of being a parent. But I know that no one ever paid my mom to mother, even though it is hard and extremely expensive work.

So while there was no motherhood bureau paying my mom for raising her daughters, her employer was paying her a living wage with benefits.

Unfortunately, not every mother receives a living wage or benefits like paid vacation time to attend parent-teacher conferences and school plays, or health insurance to care for themselves and their children. Between the gender wage gap, the concentration of women in low-paying jobs, and a slow economic recovery for women, too many moms are parenting on nickels and dimes.

The millions of women who lived in poverty in 2010 aren’t thrilled about it, neither are the hundreds of thousands of women who lost their public sector jobs in the last two years, but a large portion of Congress doesn’t seem to care about struggling families.

Forget "Slash-onomics," Investing Is Better for Kids

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: March 29, 2012 at 03:05 pm

The winter before I graduated college, my mom took me shopping for a job interview suit. We settled on a great black suit. It was beautiful, but a bit pricey. I told my mom I was worried about the cost but she said, "Alison, you need this suit for interviews. This is an investment in your future."

My mom understood that even five months before I'd don my cap and gown, purchasing a nice professional suit wasn't wasteful spending, but a wise investment in my future. And she was right — I found a job!

Over the past year, it's become clear that many in Congress aren't following my mother's "invest-onomics" philosophy and are instead proponents of what I'd like to call "slash-onomics."

Nothing sums up the stark differences in these opposing viewpoints like a quick comparison of Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal for FY2013 and Senator Tom Harkin's newly introduced Rebuild America Act.

Let's look how each piece of legislation might affect the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start, two programs that help nurture low-income and at-risk young children and provide for their social and cognitive development in their critical early years.

Across the Pond, Austerity Hurts Women Too

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: March 08, 2012 at 05:01 pm

Tuesday, the New York Times published another article in its “Female Factor” series entitled “Women Bearing the Brunt of Austerity in Britain.” As you might imagine, reading it was like déjà vu. In the United Kingdom, like in the United States, budget cuts have caused stagnant wages and layoffs in the public sector, and cuts to vital programs like child care and pensions. And unsurprisingly, women are hit hardest.

Over the course of the recovery in this country, which officially began in June of 2009, we’ve reported on the public sector job losses that have especially hurt women. Our most recent numbers show that women, who make up 57 percent of the public workforce, have lost an even larger share of the hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs lost during the recovery.

Like American women, British women are overrepresented in the public sector – they comprise two-thirds of the workforce – so they are more likely to be affected by public sector cuts. The British government’s Office for Budget Responsibility predicts the public sector will likely lose an additional 710,000 jobs in the next five years, which will hurt women’s employment further.

Save the Screenings (And Women's Lives Too)

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: February 01, 2012 at 03:50 pm

Last September, my sister marked the 6th anniversary of her breast cancer diagnosis when she was only 24. Thanks to knowledge about self-exams and a kick in the butt from our family's medical history, my sister knew she needed to see a doctor. Thanks to excellent medical insurance, she was able to catch her cancer early, and pursue the course of treatment her doctors recommended.

My sister was lucky. She was employed full-time with great insurance. Seeing a doctor for a breast exam wasn't out of her reach financially and thank goodness, neither was surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

But for too many women, the medical treatment my sister received is an economic impossibility. Nineteen million women had no health insurance in 2010, and in 2005, when my sister was diagnosed, the Affordable Care Act wasn’t there to allow adults under 26 to stay on their parents’ health plans. As of yesterday, the life-saving treatment my sister received is even more out of reach for low-income and uninsured women.

That's because yesterday the Planned Parenthood Federation of American announced that Susan G. Komen for the Cure has withdrawn its financial support, cutting off 19 affiliates from grant money supporting breast cancer screening. In Orange County, California, Komen money supported the local affiliate's initiative to provide breast health education to Vietnamese women. In Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, $165,000 slashed from the Rocky Mountain affiliate's budget means hundreds of women won't get screened for breast cancer. And in Clallam County, Washington, losing Komen money means losing funding for the local affiliate’s mobile clinic that provided breast cancer screening for 400 under-served and isolated women last year.

Tags: Family Planning, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | 1 comment

Happy Birthday Roe v. Wade, It’s Been a Tough Ride

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: January 22, 2012 at 10:30 am

Happy 39^th birthday Roe v. Wade! You’ve had a rough life but you keep on persevering, and that is something to celebrate. Because of you, American women have had the constitutional right to abortion for 39 years. But you know better than anyone that for the better part of your life, we’ve had to fight tooth and nail to keep the rights you gave us.

I don’t have to tell you that 2011 was a really rough year for reproductive rights. State legislatures passed 92 measures that undermine women’s access to safe abortion services. The previous record was 34 in 2005. And of course from the attacks on Planned Parenthood funding to the recent ‘Let Women Die Act,’ the House of Representatives had a field day taking the axe to women’s health and bodily autonomy.

It seems there was no bigger political goal in 2011 than rewinding back to before you were born (or before your buddies Griswold v. Connecticut (U.S. 1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (U.S. 1972) were born).

I hope the attacks are firing you up and not tearing you down. Women across America are seeing very clearly that they can’t take you for granted. And hopefully, they’re seeing more and more what a big difference public policy can make in their individual lives.

Marcia Greenberger to Receive Award

NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger has been chosen to receive the 2012 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award at American Bar Association's annual meeting on Aug. 5 in Chicago. The award honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence and paved the way to success for others, and previous winners include Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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