2006 Mothers Day Campaign:
Mothers at Work

POWER Loop

For the Mother’s Day Campaign, the POWER Loop will feature guest speakers to discuss weekly topics featured within Mothers & More’s POWER Plan, our advocacy guide that details the changes we want to see in public policy, private practice and cultural attitudes and how we will contribute to the effort of securing social and economic equality for mothers.

Check back often as our guest list continues to evolve! Confirmed POWER Loop guests so far include:

The Mother’s Day Campaign Schedule

May 17-23: All women deserve recognition and support for their right to choose if and how to combine parenting and paid employment.
Guest speakers:

• Shirley M. Clark and Patricia S. Reed of Choose 2 Lead Women's Foundation
  The staff and founders at Choose 2 Lead are dedicated to empowering women with tools to lead in their work lives, as they negotiate the roads out and back into employment opportunity. They have been meeting with women across the country and gathering data for a study funded by the Department of Labor’s Workforce Training Administration.
  Shirley M. Clark is a founding partner of Choose 2 Lead Women's Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to providing information and education to women that will promote advocacy and lifestyle change. She is also the owner of Shirley Clark & Associates, LLC, an organizational consulting firm in the financial services industry. With over 25 years of business and management experience in both entrepreneurial and Fortune 500 companies, her endeavors now focus on organizational change and change management. Along with her Choose 2 Lead co-founder, Shirley co-authored "Win-Win Workplace Practices: Improved Organizational Results and Improved Quality of Life", a report that analyzed the bottom-line impacts of innovative workplace practices for the U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Their current study, for the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, is an in-depth qualitative look at the career paths of highly educated and achieved women and their workplace opportunities will be released later in the year.
  Patricia S. Reed is a founding partner of Choose 2 Lead Women's Foundation and President of Reed Strategies, LLC. Patricia has over 20 years of experience in policy, regulatory and management consulting, including communicating with the public and facilitating cooperative ventures between government, industry, and interest groups. Patricia is the co-author of "Win-Win Workplace Practices: Improved Organizational Results and Improved Quality of Life", a report that analyzed the bottom-line impacts of innovative workplace practices for the U.S. Department of Labor. She is the former Director of Programs at the Independent Women?s Forum, where her areas of emphasis included work/family balance, education, and environmental and legal issues. She also spent 15 years as a Program and Project Manager in the management consulting industry in Washington, D.C., Denver, and Philadelphia.
• Katie Corrigan, Sharon Masling and Barbara Cammarata of Workplace Flexibility 2010
  Workplace Flexibility 2010 is a campaign to support the development of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility at the federal, state and local levels. The vision of Workplace Flexibility 2010 is an American workplace where valuable flexibility options, benefiting employers and employees alike, are the standard.
  Two legal scholars who job share with the project will talk about why public policy should be part of the conversation on flexibility and explain some of the models that are out there right now. The Flexibility 2010 project does not advocate a particular policy position of its own at this time, but its staff have a depth of knowledge on the range of models and on comparative policy solutions.
• Amy Nassisi, Mothers & More member and founder of the Flexibility Alliance, San Francisco, CA
  Known as the "on-ramp to flexible work for highly skilled mothers," the Flexibility Alliance’s vision is for every skilled mother in search of balance to be able to succeed in her career on a flexible basis. Ms. Nassisi’s life roles span that of Sr. Director of Business Development at Seibel Systems, a community leader and advocate, as well as that of entrepreneur and mother. She has a terrific sense for the kind of equality and balance mothers need to seek at home, as well as within the workplace.
• Leslie Morgan Steiner lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three young children. She works at The Washington Post. Her blog about working motherhood is www.washingtonpost.com/onbalance. Her recent compilation of mama-essays, The Mommy Wars: Stay at home moms and career moms face off about their choices, their lives and their families, has generated aclaim and as well as controversy.
  Her writing was first published in Seventeen Magazine when she was 21 and a senior at Harvard College. After college she worked as a writer and editor at Seventeen, exploring subjects ranging from eating disorders to teen runaways to family relationships. She went on to contribute to Mademoiselle, Money Magazine, and other magazines, and to work as a restaurant critic and feature writer for New England Monthly. Her essay "Starving for Perfection" appeared in the anthology The College Reader (Harper Coll ins).
  In addition to years as a nonfiction magazine writer and editor, Steiner has an MBA degree in marketing from the Wharton School of Business. She launched Splenda Brand Sweetener around the world for Johnson & Johnson, the world's largest consumer healthcare company. Over the years, she has turned her professional experience into advocacy for abused women as a spokeswoman at The Harriet Tubman Center in Minneapolis. She joined The Washington Post in February 2001.
  Leslie feels passionate about the need for workplace flexibility and joins us to discuss the many different roads she's been on during her parenting years, and brainstorm with us about how the road could be better for everyone.
• Joan Blades is co-founder of MoveOn.org and Berkeley Systems with her husband, Wes Boyd. She is on the steering committee of "Reuniting America: A Transpartisan Campaign of Political Reconciliation", a group engaging people from diverse political points of view in respectful dialogue that leads to creative, breakthrough solutions to the challenges facing our nation.
  Joan is the author of Mediate Your Divorce, and is also an organizer of and a contributor to MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Be a Catalyst for Change. In collaboration with author Kristin-Rowe Finkbeiner (below) her latest book,The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want and What to Do About It explores an agenda for moving the persistent needs and issues of mothers and families forward, into the public arena. The proceeds of this book will be dedicated to kicking off an organization to champion these issues, MomsRising: Breadmakers and Breadwinners, at www.momsrising.org. She lives in northern California with her husband and two children.
• Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is an author, freelance journalist, and consultant in the field of environmental policy and political strategy. Kristin is the author of the award winning book, The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy--Women, Politics, and the Future. In collaboration with lawyer, business leader and activist Joan Blades (above), her latest book The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want and What to Do About It explores an agenda for moving the persistent needs and issues of mothers and families forward - into the public arena. The proceeds of this book will be dedicated to kicking off an organization to champion these issues, MomsRising: Breadmakers and Breadwinners, at www.momsrising.org. She writes frequently on the public policy and women's issues. She lives in Washington State 2001.

May 24-31: Wrap Up - Discussions will include creating a month devoted to mothers and the Mothers’ Movement.
Guest speakers

• Judith Stadtman Tucker, Mothers & More member, founder and editor of Mothers’ Movement Online
  Judy is a co-founder of the Mothers & More POWER loop and the conscience of the emerging mother’s movement. Motherhood motivated her to become an activist and independent scholar for the benefit of all mothers. She has appeared during the last several years at numerous conferences as a guest speaker and panelist and is the author of "Care as a Cause: Framing the Twenty-First Century Mothers' Movement" in the anthology "Socializing Care" (2006). She currently serves on the NOW Mothers and Caregivers Economic Rights Committee and the Board of Directors of Take Back Your Life.
• Kristin Maschka, member of Mothers & More and President Emeritus of Mothers & More. Kristin joined Mothers & More even before the birth of her daughter when she realized that she would need all the help she could get to move from one kind of life to another as she hit "the maternal wall" in her professional life, and the numbers for continued workplace participation just did not "add up." After hanging out with members of the POWER loop, Kristin was inspired to start a chapter in Pasadena, California and to volunteer her powerful and transforming knowledge base and skill set to the work of the Mothers & More Board of Directors. Kristin is an expert and professional consultant in the field of organization development and change, and got her start managing training and organization development for the Internet company, Earthlink.

June 1-7

• Caitlin Flanagan, New Yorker columnist and author of To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife
  Caitlin Flanagan's essays are passed from friend to friend, challenged and championed in the media, and often made the subject of book group discussions. Her article "Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor," has earned Flanagan a spot in the Best American Essays 2003 and Best American Magazine Writing 2003. A contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, and now, The New Yorker, her work sparks debate as well as laughter among readers. To Hell with All That explores the events and conflicts of modern life for mothers with a gaze back at the life of Flanagan's own mother.

Recent POWER Loop Guests

May 1-8: All the work mothers do - whether paid or unpaid - has social and economic value.
Guest speakers:

• Joy Rose, founder of Mamapalooza
  Joy has said that working at her craft, making art, saved her life and reconnected her to aspects of her identity that had been discarded through the years of mothering her 4 children. Seriously ill, divorced - barely hanging on - she discovered that the music kept dogging her. She had to make music or die. She combines her passion for making music in the band, Housewives on Prozac with taking care of her children, recognizing that both of these require work that is often invisible and underappreciated. She is the founder and director of Mamapalooza, art and music festivals held around the country, featuring women and mother-inspired rock music.
  "Mothers like her are starting to make a noise across the US. In the past few years, an underground movement has spread from Detroit to Dallas; women who grew up listening to punk, indie rock and alternative folk have had children, but concluded there must be more to life than being a "soccer mom" and baking apple pie."
  Rose explains the mom-rock phenomenon this way: "It is happening now because we are global, college-educated women who came out of the feminist movement," says Rose. "We have briefcases and business suits, but when we get into the arena of the home, it has not changed much. In America, once you have a baby it is like you cover your tracks. Forget make-up, deny your sexuality and make life clean, clean, clean. But women are still vital, sexual, passionate beings. Music and motherhood are not mutually exclusive."
  *Excerpts from Socks ‘n’ cake ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll, Anne Dixey, The Times Online, December 11, 2004.
  Mom Rock - Birthing a 'Movement' How We’re Doing it! By: Joy Rose
• Joni B. Cole, co-editor, This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America
  Ms. Cole is a returning guest to the POWER Loop. She was featured last year, also in connection with the Mother’s day Campaign, for her wisdom about the issue of time and the American woman.
  Joni B. Cole was having a bad day when she thought up the idea for This Day in the Life. Trying to deal with a serious illness in her family, a huge tax bill, and a child who refused to wear socks, she wondered if any one else was feeling so low. Surely not. But what were other women doing and feeling and thinking on this very same day? And so a book was born, out of self pity, curiosity, and a need to connect. In addition to her work as a writer/editor, Joni leads community fiction-writing workshops and is the author of the forthcoming book, Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive (University Press of New England, July 2006). She received a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies with a concentration in creative writing from Dartmouth College. She and her husband, Stephen, a psychologist, and their daughters Esme, 9, and Thea, 7, live in Vermont.
• Beverley Smith of Kids First and author of Anchors and Sails. On January 4, 2002 Canadian homemaker and teacher Beverley Smith wrote to the Attorney General of Canada, Anne McLellan, requesting that she refer to the Supreme Court of Canada for hearing six questions of law concerning the value of caregiving in Canada.
  In March 2006, she participated with women from all over the world at the United Nations Church in New York City to voice the need for recognition of the value of homemakers and at-home caregivers.
  "Linking women and men from around the world, this simple meeting defines a huge goal. It is about finally expanding traditional definitions of what ‘work’ is, of how an economy ticks, and of how societies can really value all roles their citizens play," says Beverley Smith, long time lobbyist for the value of unpaid work.

May 9-16: Mothers have the right to fulfill their caregiving responsibilities without incurring social and economic penalties.
Guest speakers:

• Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood and If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything
  Ann Crittenden is an award-winning journalist, author, and lecturer. Her latest book, If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything, received critical praise and was featured in People magazine. Her previous book, The Price of Motherhood, garnered widespread media attention and was named one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year in 2001. The book is already being called a classic. A women's magazine editor wrote recently, "If The Feminine Mystique was the book that laid the seeds for the women's movement of the 1960's, The Price of Motherhood may someday be regarded as the one that did the same for the mothers' movement." A frequent guest on the Mothers & More POWER Loop, and a keynote speaker at the Mothers & More 2001 National Conference, Ann continues to be an outspoken, passionate and invaluable resource for those framing the work and issues encapsulated in a "mother's movement." This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Price of Motherhood's publication. The members of Mothers & More are pleased to welcome Ann in celebration of this milestone, as we talk about "Mothers At Work" with the author who made the work of caregiving - and its price - visible.
• Heather Boushey, Economist - Center for Economic Policy Research
  Heather Boushey joined the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in 2003. Her work focuses on the U.S. labor market, social policy, and work and family issues. Dr. Boushey’s work ranges from examinations of current trends in the U.S. labor market and how families balance work and child care needs to how young people have fared in today’s economy and health insurance coverage. She has testified before Congress and authored numerous reports and commentaries on issues affecting working families, including the implications of the 1996 welfare reform. She is a co-author of The State of Working America 2002-3 and Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families.
  Dr. Boushey is a Research Affiliate with the National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and on the editorial review board of WorkingUSA and the Journal of Poverty. Her work has appeared in Dollars & Sense, In These Times, and New Labor Forum, and peer-reviewed journals, including Review of Political Economy and National Women’s Studies Association Journal. Previously, she was at the Economic Policy Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research and her B.A. from Hampshire College.

The POWER Loop is a member benefit and online forum for intelligent, informative and lively discussion, news articles and recent studies related to the impact of our American culture and society on the shared experience, social value and economics of motherhood. The mission of the POWER Loop is to explore Patterns Of Women's Experience and Employment with Respect and Recognition for Mothers. The chance to participate in online discussions in the POWER Loop is one of the benefits of membership in Mothers & More. See who has visited in the past.