Monthly Archives: March 2012

Assault on Women in the United States

25 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Family Life, Human Behavior, Relationships, United States

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Source: http://www.irregulartimes.com

As a woman and mother, I am perplexed and troubled by the latest attacks on women in the United States. Prominent men of influence and power agitate to pass laws that will dictate women’s sexual activities, their use of contraceptives, and their decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, even at its inception.

For a nation that is a beacon to the world and a nation that prides itself on upholding the individual rights of its citizens, this assault appears to be a return to the Middle Ages. Is this the time to beat up women when millions of American families face unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity or right out hunger?

In the United States, citizens and non-citizens enjoy the right to individual religious affiliation or non-religion. Our upbringing, religious beliefs and practices, and personal conception of what is morally right and wrong help to determine our behavior and the choices we make in life. Our sexual relationships, whether or not deplorable to others, are based on our individual choices.

Jesus said: Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. (The Jerusalem Bible, Luke 6: 36-37)

Does our government – a secular government that separates Church from State – have the right to determine a couple’s decision to have sex or not?

Does our government have the right to determine a couple’s method of birth control? I know from personal experience, as a married woman, that abstinence is not a reliable method of birth control.

Will state governments that seek to prevent women from obtaining contraception through their medical insurance coverage also prevent men from having vasectomies?

This current focus on women’s sexual lives and birth control practices serve only to complicate, even more, relationships between men and women. Does this assault arise from a deeper problem of insecurity among some American males in the face of a growing number of successful and independent women?

Is a woman’s decision to have only one to two children, or none at all, a threat to the designs of men-in-power?

While men-in-power are fixated on protecting the unborn life developing in women’s wombs, they have no qualms about sending our healthy sons and daughters to die in distant wars that serve their own ends. Other men-with-power ensnare our vulnerable young innocent sons and daughters into sexual slavery for their personal enrichment.

It has never been easy being a single woman, wife, and mother. In spite of all the progress women have made through education and professionalism, we are still a long way from having equal rights with men – men we nurtured in our wombs and raised to adulthood (sometimes alone).

Women open your eyes. Be informed. The day that the men who rule Earth take control of our wombs will be the day that women become mere breeders.

On Being a Working Solo Mom in Brazil

18 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in About Me, Brazil, Family Life, Working Life

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Rosaliene and Sons – Fortaleza – Ceará – Brazil

As a working solo mom in Brazil, I learned to juggle my priorities: me, my two sons, and my job. When my sons were too young to stay home alone and go to school on their own, I needed reliable help. My next-door neighbor, Dona Maria – a widow in her sixties – helped me find an empregada. In addition to staying with my sons during the morning, the maid helped with the cleaning.

My sons attended the afternoon school session (1:20 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.). Returning home during my two-hour lunch break, I had lunch with them and then took them to school. (I woke early to cook lunch.) The bus-ride took about an hour both ways. Their school stood a brisk five-minute walk from my workplace.

When I changed jobs and could not go home during my lunch break, I made several short-lived arrangements for them to get safely to school. In those days, children disappeared from in front of their homes. With trepidation, I had to let them go to school on their own.

After eighteen months and three maids, I learned that young maids in Fortaleza were unreliable. The third quit after two weeks, without notice. Dona Maria told me that was not unusual. I concluded that they did not like working for a gringo. Taking Dona Maria’s advice, I desisted in hiring another maid. Dona Maria offered to keep an eye on my sons, then eight and ten years old. To my sons’ dislike, she remained true to her word.

Continually rising educational, health, and living expenses demanded that I earn more. Unbridled inflation showed no mercy to a working solo mom. Focused on our survival, I participated in 16-hour specialized courses for international trade professionals.

The climb up the unstable ladder had its pitfalls. In the 1990s, Brazil’s economic plans to curb hyperinflation took down many good companies. Two of the firms I worked for also became victims.

I also faced another challenge. I discovered that men in a similar job position earned twice my income. Stepping out of my comfort zone, I asked for a salary increase. My boss looked at me in the eyes and called me presumptuous. Although I did not get my desired increase, I did get a raise. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At another firm, the Managing Director did not hide his displeasure at my audacity. “You people never have enough,” he told me, in the presence of the General Manager. “You always want more.” I interpreted you people as the working class. He approved the increase I asked for, but I had to swallow a lot more insults after that.

I endured. I had to. . .for my sons, for our survival.

Being the sole-provider for my sons did not earn me an equal salary as my male counterparts. They did not welcome me into the Men’s Club. Without the help of neighbors, close friends, and school teachers, I could not have raised my sons to become fine young men.

Failed Expectations of a Work-at-Home Mom

11 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in About Me, Family Life, Guyana, Working Life

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Photo of Seamstress: http://www.michelleshaeffer.com

During Guyana’s struggle for independence from Britain and the years following independence in May 1966, my parents raised five children – two girls and three boys. My father’s wages at a small import and wholesale family-owned firm could not cover our basic expenses. As far back as I can remember, our mother worked at home as a seamstress to assist our father in providing for our needs. She was a housewife and a work-at-home mom.

As the first-born and a female, I helped my mother with the housecleaning and in taking care of my four siblings. By twelve, with the help of my brother or sister next in line, we often went to the corner shop for groceries and to the market for fresh produce.

My tasks in the afternoons, after school, included hemming, sewing on buttons and hooks, doing bead-work on evening gowns (fashionable at that time), and collecting covered buttons and buckle-heads from the lady in the neighborhood who specialized in this service. When dresses were not ready on the delivery date, I became the delivery girl. I must confess that I was not always a willing assistant. I had my school work. I wanted time to go out with my friends.

To take care of our washing and ironing, my mother hired a domestic servant (as they were called at that time) to come to our home twice a week.

Our work-at-home mom had no fixed working hours. Whenever she had a large dress order, such as a bridal gown and gowns for the bridesmaids, she would work through the night until dawn. Her determination, persistence, dedication, and hard work shaped our lives.

The money she earned went towards our private high school fees, school uniforms, and school books. Regretting that she had never had a high school education, she wanted a better future for us. In so doing, she sacrificed her own dreams.

This year, she will complete 79 years. She laments that she has never lived. Even though my siblings and I have succeeded in our chosen professions, we have failed to meet her expectations in our choice of spouses. She believes that the sacrifices she made for us were to no avail.

My reunion with my mother in the USA, after 31 years of separation, swept through my life like a tsunami. As I struggled to save myself from drowning in her anger and bitterness, I learned an important lesson. As a mother, I cannot expect my sons to fulfill the dreams I have for myself or my dreams for them. Regardless of my sacrifices in raising them, they have to make their own choices and live their own lives.

As women and mothers, we have to cultivate our own gardens. We have to take delight in our own achievements, however insignificant they may seem to others. When we fail, we cannot lay our failures at our children’s feet.

Big Brother in the American Workplace

04 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in United States, Working Life

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Security Camera in a Hollywood Store – Southern California

Source: Villanueva Photography (www.flickr.com)

Smoky gray glassy half-balls, like eyes of a giant fly, lined the ceiling in long neat rows. Hidden surveillance cameras followed my movements on the store floor and in the stockrooms of the West Hollywood retail store where I worked. This was a new workplace reality for me, a newbie to the USA. The knowledge that someone was spying on me while I worked made me feel vulnerable.

If the cameras were meant to deter customer theft, they were not doing a good job. Everyday, we found tampered packaging with no product.

I am not a thief. But to Big Brother anyone could be a thief. That thought disturbed me. As an employee, I had to be careful not to behave in any suspicious manner.

“Forget the cameras,” my supervisor told me when I shared my concern with her. “If you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s no need for concern.”

But those cameras bothered me. They were out to get us, I thought.

When I had learned how to pull merchandise from stock, my supervisor sent me to pull handbags from the small stockroom in the rear of the store.  I entered the stockroom with an empty shopping cart. I was alone. As some bags were located on the top shelf, close to the low ceiling, I wheeled the ladder to the section. I was perched on top of the ladder when another staff member opened the door.

“Need any help?” he asked, holding the door open.

“No, thanks, I’m almost finished.” With two handbags in one hand, I secured the ladder with my free hand and climbed down to the floor. “Do you need something?”

“No, the Manager was concerned about you climbing the ladder.”

“Really? You can tell him I’m fine.”

He left the stockroom. Perplexed, I glanced at the glassy eye in the far corner of the ceiling. You should be watching the customers in the store, not me, I thought.

On one occasion, Big Brother rescued me from a disgruntled male customer, the size of Hulk. He insisted that I adjust the band of a watch to fit his wrist as thick as the calf of my leg. A security guard appeared at the jewelry counter to find out what the problem was.

In time, I learned to forget the presence of the prying gray eyes and to move about with ease around the store. Then – without warning – I witnessed my first staff arrest. I watched in dismay as a policeman handcuffed a young female staff member and, together with a second policeman, escorted her out of the store.

Did management have to shame her like that, in front of the staff and customers? I asked myself.

“That’s a warning to the rest of us,” my supervisor said, joining me.

I wonder: Who is watching the Men in Suits on Wall Street who are gambling with our lives? Who is watching Big Brother?