Puff, puff, puffing along...

I feel like The Little Engine That Could puffing along on my organizing kick right now.  This week I've been sorting through my research and categorizing my articles.  This has helped me set up my rough draft outline.  I am pleased at its easy flow and hope that I can do justice to this topic that demands attention.  While reading my paper mentally will be completely different from hearing me read my paper aloud, I hope that my belief in this cause comes through regardless.  I also hope that my nerves will not get the best of me when I present.  It's not that I don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't like the attention of everyone at once.  I get embarrassed when everyone focuses at me and sings Happy Birthday. I'm trying to take it slowly and realize my paper needs to be written before I can present anything so I should make that my focus now instead of presenting.  I'm trying to psych myself up by telling myself that this is a crowd willing to listen to my idea and I just have to be calm.  As my amazing cousin would say "I got this!" :)

A Paper by any other name would still be a paper

As it turns out, it was a matter of linguistics.  So a paper it shall be! As I mentally set up my outline I notice the gaps in areas I have not considered.  Meeting with Prof. Tweed was great.  She helped me work through ideas and provided me with some really useful feedback about where I can go from here.  I also had a nice partner chat with Ashlee.  I think helping her find her own way to narrow her topic helped me realize some narrowing of my own as well as, like I said, exposing the gaps.  I feel more confident now, even though I feel like this is simply the eye of the hurricane.  Big crazy research part over, calm narrowing research, intense writer's block.  It's like mother nature knows!  With that being sa- er - written, I have a lot of reading to do now.

When Research Goes Personal

On the outside I am calmly reading articles from The Shriver Report from the last few days that have caused me inside to throw an adult tantrum like Adam Sandler.  I am reading story after story about successful career women who are heavily debating opting out or stay-at-home dads that think for some reason their staying home means they are not required to do all the things the mom does.  Who cares about mismatched socks?  Who cares if he still expects his wife to cook dinner after being at work all day because he was home with the kids?  A volcano of four-letter words comes to mind when I think of how much this all bothers me.

Perhaps it is true, we research things that matter the most to us.  And true, perhaps we get too attached to our research to objectively see things anymore.  Is it wrong that I want to take the SAH Dad and shake him until somehow it clicks that being a SAH Dad means all the things that the SAH Mom do are now his responsibility?  Cooking meals, laundry and cleaning are not things that require a vagina to do properly.  And while there ARE some men out there that understand this concept, the majority of SAH Dads seems to be disillusioned that they don't have to do things the same way because they aren't moms.

Has the women's lib movement died and no one told me?  Did all those strikes and sit-ins and protests over equal pay and rights mean that women now get to go to the jobs that pay less for them simply because they are women while their husbands stay home to watch the kids yet still feel justified in asking "what's for dinner?"  What's for dinner?!?! How about WTF? When did we accept that going to work meant we only added more work to our load and receive only a fraction of the benefit?  How much more of getting a fraction of the whole are we going to take?  Are we not outraged enough?

Or are we simply too tired to think of anything else except the next time we can hit the pillow for a few hours before we have to do it all again?  We are wearing ourselves out.  We cannot fight because we are too weak.  We stretch ourselves too thin and we have become weaker instead of stronger.  This is how I see it, if the SAH Dads can ask their breadwinner wives once they come home from work when dinner is, we have every right to reply, "Whatever you made. I've had a long day and I'm tired."  As women, we already know what it is like to be the one responsible for the housework and children.  We want a taste of the business world.  If men want a taste of our world, should we not hold them to the same standards we placed on ourselves?  It is obvious to any woman who breaks the glass ceiling that to play with the business men, one must be able to keep up with the business men.  If I have to miss a parent-teacher meeting to attend a board meeting, my SAH husband can make a meatloaf without overcooking it and having to order a pizza instead.

Reports? Data Sheets? Oh my!

For my annotated bibliography you might notice that several of the reports I found are from over the summer, when I first proposed this idea to my program directors.  I still think they provide a good foundation for me to build upon with scholarly articles and interviews.  I know that I still need to take that interviewing class ASAP. I intend to do so this week.

I will need your help in figuring out how to correctly cite reports that I find online.  I will admit that I use easybib.com for my MLA sourcing and while it is not always completely accurate, it works for me.  However, I get confused when I am referencing someone's else's research when it is being mentioned by someone else.  Also, I know I will need your help in trying to figure out how to properly cite reports and fact/data sheets published by various sources, like AAUW or the Census Bureau.

This is what I have been mulling over in my wording - to include "daily life" or not.  I am leaning towards the phrasing "The financial impact of enforcing the Equal Pay Act for working Latinas [in their daily life]."  I am leaning against adding it for I think it tries to group something that is too diverse - there is not "Latina working experience" because the places Latinas work are not all the same - teachers and doctors have different schedules and pay grades and education levels, etc.
- Jennifer Rey :)