The above title is a fact. It does not mean that Mrs. Romney hasn't worked hard to raise a family. But working hard to raise a family can not be compared to experiencing the work-a-day world up close and personal. In fact, both Mitt Romney and Mrs. Romney are shockingly inexperienced and tone-deaf to the issues that those who live in the work-a-day world discuss at their kitchen tables.
The Wealthy Perceive the World As Fair & Square - Perception Is Their Reality:
Full confession here: I was raised in a wealthy family. Nothing approaching the Romney's or any of the super-rich that define wealth in the 21st century - but fears about financial security were notably absent. My Grandfather was a CEO, my father was a lawyer and we all lived very, very well.
My mother worked and had a career prior to her marriage, she did so in the freelance world and did not have to take every job that came her way. After she married, she lived a life not unlike Ann Romney's. And like Ann Romney, she saw the world of business and work as a decent place where people were reasonable and advancement was based on a meritocracy. During my teen years, our situation gradually changed but I didn't have to face the work-a-day world until I was almost 20. And I confess that I was totally unprepared for how capricious and unfair it could be. And my late mother, learned vicariously through me, that her vision of the world of work was flawed. You have to experience it to "get it".
The latest round of republican rhetoric regarding contraception has left my head spinning. Sure, I expect the social conservatives and elements in the tea party to brush off the abortion issue every four years but the out and out open attack on contraception and Planned Parenthood was beyond my wildest imaginings. Its a horrifying thing and proof positive that freedom can not be taken for granted for so much as a minute These are issues that I thought were settled either before I was born or shortly thereafter - nearly 50 years ago!
It doesn't seem so long ago...the halcyon days of my misspent youth. The year was 1992 and my mother had just been admitted to the hospital for a potentially fatal case of the flu. She had inflammatory lung disease of unknown origins - and a case of flu could be a fatal complication. Indeed - when she arrived at the ER her condition was critical. Here, in a nutshell, was how my passion for molecular biology was born. From my Granfather's diabetes to my mother's life-shortening lung disease, I was consistently exposed to the limits of modern medicine - not its marvels.
Like many - I was fooled by "scientist shortage" reports of the 1990's:
On that day, I said goodnight to my mother and talked briefly to her attending physician. After assuring me that my mother's condition was stabilized, the conversation turned to research. I mentioned briefly what I did for a living (I was a lab manager/technician) and my plans to get a doctorate. The doctor nodded sagely that it was well known that the U.S. needed more Ph.D.'s in biomedical science.
How many times does a lie have to be repeated for the general public to be hoodwinked into thinking it is true? In those days, it was quite true that getting a reasonably high-paying job in biotechnology straight out of graduate school was completely doable. What no one seemed to grasp was that the flood of graduate students post-docs coming to the US from abroad was already sowing the seeds of the massive glut that I would face upon graduation from a doctoral program. By the time I was out of the pipeline, there were no industry jobs for new graduates. Freshly minted Ph.D.'s were shoved unceremoniously into the post-doctoral logjam into which most would disappear for 10 years of further "training" at coolie wages before "qualifying" for a real job with a salary and benefits.
Here we go again - the great STEM career shortage rides again:
So it was with a feeling of deja vu that I heard the president's senior advisor and assistant for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs say that the thing to do was to encourage women and our youth, in general, to train for those valuable STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and math) - because this was how to secure their future!
Are you kidding me? A career in any of these fields involves a long and arduous education generally involving several YEARS of post-graduate study. A lot can change in those years. Shortages turn into gluts as people chase the career tracks that are profitable - for the moment. Once a critical mass of "bodies" is reached, the field becomes commoditized and you can kiss that nice salary and secure future good-bye.
Right now people are flooding into computer science and programming - again. Efforts to encourage women to enter this field are in full force - again. The reason I say "again" is because we have heard this all before - back in the 1980s. One such effort appeared in the New York Times today. ("Giving Women the Access Code" by Katie Hafner.
Ask many of the graduates of higher education in STEM fields how valuable that degree has been and more than half will laugh hysterically. My computer science counterparts learned the hard way - as I did - that employment opportunities can turn on a dime creating a situation where long term educational commitments are nothing more than a crapshoot.
We need more than a bandaid for this problem...
Encouraging students to enter STEM fields without first understanding the cyclic dynamics of these industries is the height of irresponsibility. These types of degrees promote "hard skills" that are not easily transferable to alternate disciplines.
So it should be no big surprise that women and men are shunning these fields in favor of a softer skill set in business where sliding from field to field is not so difficult.
