Equal Pay Day

Find out more about Equal Pay Day, (SO IMPORTANT) and in the meantime, let’s explore that truly holds value? We know the value of money in a capitalist society. What about the ‘human capital‘ Alexia Nye Jackson talks about in Mother The Job? When we raise children, we’re investing in people.

What about all the things I do, that I don’t get PAID for, but are so VALUABLE like: my creativity, time, ability to mentor others, ability to create something from nothing, the time I spend consoling babies and counseling the teens who work at the museum, my ability to leverage my human capital every day in ways that create meaningful work for me and better the community around me. Atypical – yes. Worth exploring – yes. I’m a ‘happy’ person. What’s the price of that?

I’m invested in teaching my children, who are all young adults, that its narrow-minded to think of self-worth, only in terms of how much money one makes. While I absolutely recognize and support the importance of equal pay I want to encourage us to revolutionize the way we think of our net worth.

In Search Of HER-story during Women’s History Month 2013

This week I spoke at Marymount Manhattan College about Women’s History Month.

The topic of the presentation was ‘In Search Of HER-story‘. Many of us acknowledge the need for women’s voices to be heard and to be authentically reflected in history, social policy and in the arts and culture. It’s certainly the core of what we address on a daily basis at the Museum Of Motherhood in NYC.

Many of our exhibits feature images of Suffragettes, posters on ‘Birth Practices Throughout History’, timelines and more on the Women’s Movement in the United States.

When I think about the last several thousand years and how women, specifically women who are mothers, have birthed and raised future generations, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, it astounds me that so much of the information isn’t through their voices. In fact, I remind students when they tour the museum, that for much of history, women were considered the property of their husbands.

Pictured below is just one slide from my forty page presentation. (Yes, there were plenty of statistics to keep me going for forty pages!) Keep reading below to see another great article on the subject by the Mothers Center. The students love getting educated about this stuff. They were super engaged and it was a real honor to present.

~ Joy Rose; find out more about me at Joy-Rose.com

Every Mother Is A Working Mother, from Joy Rose powerpoint presentation – Marymount Manhattan College 3/13

Women Without History, by Valerie Young

I opened my daughter’s history book the other day, and it hit me all over again.

We may be in the 21st century, but our history is still the history of men.   Men who were kings, who invented machines, conquered weaker nations, compelled religious conversions, made scientific discoveries, sailed to foreign lands, and slaughtered each other with increasing efficiency as the centuries rolled by.  For every Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Dolly Madison, there’s a thousand famous men, like Caesar Augustus, Marco Polo,  Eli Whitney, Karl Marx, John Locke, Mahatma Gandhi,  or Richard Nixon.  Honestly, you could be forgiven for thinking that women did absolutely nothing of consequence until 1920, when women won the vote, insisted on equal rights in the 1960′s, and then nothing again, until Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. Full article

Never Give Up!

Never give up.

Never quit.

Never think that you are unimportant –

Believe with every fiber of your body

that somewhere, sometime,

probably when you least expected it, or

surely without knowing it –

You have impacted someone

in ways that will forever make them feel special,

important, and loved.

That is your worth.

That is your value.

Keep grasp of it at all times;

it is more important than anything

and worth more than gold.

It’s your countless treasure,

and true purpose as a human being.

– JR

(RIP Mindy McCready)