Instead they toiled in what the sociologist Sharon Hays calls “intensive mothering,” exhaustively enriching their children’s lives by virtually every measure, then advocating for them anxiously and sometimes ruthlessly in the linked high-stakes games of social jockeying and school admissions.
.. I was thunderstruck when I heard mention of a “bonus” over coffee. Later I overheard someone who didn’t work say she would buy a table at an event once her bonus was set. A woman with a business degree but no job mentioned waiting for her “year-end” to shop for clothing. Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe.
A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a “good” school — the same way their husbands were rewarded at investment banks. In turn these bonuses were a ticket to a modicum of financial independence and participation in a social sphere where you don’t just go to lunch, you buy a $10,000 table at the benefit luncheon a friend is hosting.
Taking on the Banks: A Conversation with Anat Admati
Over the weekend, I had an e-mail conversation with Admati about the conference, which has another noteworthy feature: all of the presenters and moderators are going to be women. In addition to Warren, Yellen, and Lagarde, they include Esther George, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; Brooksley Born, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and Claudia Buch, the deputy president of the German Bundesbank. These days, of course, there are other high-level women’s conferences, including one organized by Fortune magazine and another by Tina Brown, the former editor of The New Yorker. But I can’t recall a major economics or finance conference in Washington or New York at which all of the presenters were women. (Of course, there have been plenty of conferences where all of the presenters were men.)
.. We avoided inviting people who work for private, for-profit financial institutions, whose interests are sometimes in direct conflict with those of the rest of society. My experience is that they often make vague, perfunctory, or, worse, misleading statements, which muddle the debate and waste valuable time.
Apple Put A Woman On Stage—Okay, She’s A Supermodel, But It’s A Start
Perhaps Apple will take gender diversity seriously when it has an impact on sales. Many women critics have observed that while Apple’s Health app is designed to track and record biological signals like heart rate, it does not track periods or fertility, a service that women who buy iPhones and Apple Watches might be interested in. It’s hard to imagine Apple’s keynote dude crew introducing a product feature like that gracefully.
Home Economics
Of all those acquirements, which more particularly belong to the feminine character, there are none which take a higher rank, in our estimation, than such as enter into a knowledge of household duties, for on these are perpetually dependent the happiness, comfort, and well-being of a family.
Early rising is one of the most essential qualities which enter into good household management, as it is not only the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages. Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain that her house will be orderly and well managed. On the contrary, if she remains in bed till a late hour, then the domestics, who invariably partake somewhat of their mistress’ character, will surely become sluggards.