Lean In. Lean Out. Stand. Sit. Run. Rest. (Guest Post)

By Lynne Adrine

Girlfriends.  All friends. Help a sister out. My rant for today.

I have been reading, with rising levels of discomfort, all the recent entries into the feminist/corporate/capitalist/lean-in/get married/mommy wars. And I think the overall discussion misses the larger point.

Could it be that perhaps we don’t need to be spending energy on how women can better fit and triumph in 2013 corporate America? Maybe our time would be better spent on changing the rigidity of corporate structure so that more people – male and female – could fit in and find a way to their best efforts without leaving their personal lives strewn on the floor like so much debris? 

Click to read more ...

On the Internet, As In Real Life, the Onus Is On The Woman to Not Get Burned

Adria Richards speaking at a tech conference.Adria RichardsTo paraphrase Smashing Pumpkins, "The Internet is a vampire, set to troll." It can get pretty ugly out there and it's gotten very ugly for Adria Richards, who after tweeting about lewd language at a tech conference her employer was co-sponsoring, found herself out of a job. The ensuing publicity surrounding the case resulted in fine Internet dialogues like this ... and this:

Click to read more ...

Motherhood In Retrograde: Can People Miss What They Never Had?

My college-educated, former school teacher mother chose myself and my two sisters over her career. It was a choice she and my father made together. (Picture, my mother and my baby sister, Deidre)Feminism is back, guys! (Of course, if you ask the editors at Ms. Magazine and the women of NOW, it never left.) But thanks to Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In" and its advice that women need to stop pussyfooting around and get to running stuff everyone's talking about feminism like it's 1969. Case in point: New York Magazine has a feature called "The Feminist Housewife" which I thought was going to be about someone like my mom -- a woman who chose a traditional marriage but raised her daughters to be independent and self-starters -- but instead it's just about some lady who really likes staying at home, raising her kids and still believes in all the traditional gender roles.

Click to read more ...

In Celebration of Passive-Aggression, My Choice Form of Aggression

In honor of Women's History Month I'm dedicating various posts to the ten different women who I've called my "best friend" at different times in my life, as well as the dozens of other women who are my close friends as well. Who've been there for me. Who have even saved my life. This one goes out to two women I'm not friends with anymore because fighting is not a way of life for me:

There wasn't a follow up conversation when I decided it was over.

No negotiations. No back and forth. No drawn out accusations. It was just over. In email form. Two years of intense friendship cracked under the pressure of one person too aggressive and another too passive aggressive.

I was the passive aggressive one.

Click to read more ...

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: Are Women In Their Own Way?

Facebook COO Sheryl SandbergOn 60 Minutes this Sunday there was an eye-opening interview with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg where, pushing a new book, wondered if women were the ones holding women back. 

Click to read more ...

In Celebration of Difficult Women: She's Not Crazy, She's My Friend

In honor of Women's History Month I'm dedicating various posts to the ten different women who I've called my "best friend" at different times in my life, as well as the dozens of other women who are my close friends as well. Who've been there for me. Who have even saved my life. This one goes out to the half of you my guy friends won't date because they're convinced you'll reign terror on them for imaginary slights when you only attack when provoked by cheaters, liars, abusers and other horrible people you may date:

"I don't think you should do that," I tell her ... or should I say, I tell the 1,001st version of her I've known. She's a friend. She's a very good friend. She's a best friend. I love her and she loves me more. She's funny and loyal and caring and always there. 

She's also the one all my guy friends call "crazy."

Click to read more ...

Clutch Magazine: Gender and Your OB/GYN

This Thursday for Clutch Magazine Online I ask readers if gender matters when picking a gynecologist. Here's a snippet: "Before the 1980s, all the doctors who’d treated my mother were white males. Not because she’d explicitly wanted a male doctor, but because in the 1970s, there wasn’t much variety in St. Louis, Mo. So the minute she could find get some diversity, she went for it. Even the vast majority of my childhood pediatricians were either foreign-born or women. But for her, having a female gynecologist was especially important."

Read the full story here at Clutch Magazine Online.

Clutch Magazine: Poor Women Find Diminishing Reproductive Choices

Image by the Guttmacher InstituteIn a recent post for Clutch Magazine Online, I tackled the plight of poor women who deal with tougher choices when it comes to sex, children, family planning and birth control than their better off, insurance having counterparts. The reality -- that no one likes to talk about when they're passing judgment -- is that half of all U.S. women, regardless of race or class status, before turning 45 will have at least one an unplanned pregnancy. The main difference between the sexual habits of the poor and the not-so-poor isif you're better off financially, have insurance or live in an area with better access to health care services your reproductive choices stay between you and a doctor and can be dealt with quickly.

Poor women, don't have the same options, so they're becoming the "face" of abortion due to being underserved by family planning programs. 

Click to read more ...

Clutch Magazine: Ladies Can Have It All (If You Get A House Husband)

For the extremely career-oriented like myself (I've always wanted to be a writer. This is what livin' the dream looks like), career v. family is a battle constantly being waged within ... as I have no immediate family without. I have some adult sisters and verging on elderly parents, but no children or significant other of my own. This has left me lamenting why-oh-why I can't have the kind of marriage my father had -- where you get your spouse and kids and you get to keep your great career too. 

For Clutch Magazine Online, I examine my desire for what my father had ... and the realization that getting either side of the deal in my parents' marriage will be hard to come by. (It's not like I'm turning down a bunch of awesome bread-winning males left and right, I'll take what I'm compatible with, whether that's Joe Ambition or Joe the Cool Dad.)

Click to read more ...