Jana Badger and Dr. Valerie Hudson, Political Science
Since the 1970s, the field of gender research has shown incredible correlations between the value and treatment of women and the overall welfare of societies. This research has contributed to international efforts to curb violence against women and open doors of opportunity previously closed to one-half of the world’s population. However, two roadblocks currently impede international efforts toward understanding and improving women’s well-being. First, the data available to researchers is limited and very difficult to access. Second, the variables that are traditionally considered in evaluations of “women’s status” often devalue a woman’s role as a mother, particularly in advanced industrialized nations. Dr. Valerie Hudson’s WomenStats project addresses both of these problems; my work on the project has been very rewarding academically and personally.
The first problem, a dearth of accessible information on women’s status, is part of the purpose behind Dr. Valerie Hudson’s WomenStats project. When complete, it will include 212 variables for each of 171 countries for a total of 36,252 individual data points; while it is currently only about 50% complete, it is already the most comprehensive dataset of its kind in the world. Access to WomenStats will enable scholars in all disciplines to produce richer, more accurate research that can foster scholarly discussion, inform policy making, and improve the lives of women worldwide. For the past six year, I have worked with Dr. Hudson in compiling this dataset. I have searched through many hundreds of pages of government and UN documents to find data that contributes to the completion of the database. The funding I received from the Office of Research and Creative Activities allowed me to continue working as a research assistant for WomenStats at a time when we each sought to supplement the project’s funding by finding sources for our individual income.
There were some difficulties I encountered in my general WomenStats research, mostly centered on the reliability of our data sources. When governments self-report the indicators of women’s well being in their nation, there is an obvious tendency to exaggerate the positive and under-report the negative. In many nations, the inaccuracy of reporting may not be intentional, but rather a result of the difficulty of gathering the statistics. For example, a nation facing civil strife or economic instability will find researching and reporting accurate statistics to be difficult and at a lower priority than their more urgent problems. We addressed the issue of data accuracy by gathering as many sources as possible, including non-government reports, so that researchers using the WomenStats database will have many viewpoints to draw from.
One aspect of the WomenStats project that makes it unique in feminist research is its focus on women’s role as mothers. Mainstream feminist research tends to limit variables to indicators such as women’s participation in government or in the formal labor market. While these are very important and also included in the WomenStats database, they minimize a woman’s role as a mother. In effect, measuring women’s well being based on such workplace-centered variables renders non-wage-earning mothers invisible to researchers, and therefore puts them out of reach of many pro-woman projects and policies. Some of the mother-focused variables that WomenStats includes are breastfeeding laws, rates, and social support, child custody laws, and measures of caregiving or household work that is not part of the formal labor market. What I found in many cases is that some societies have very high indicators of women’s participation in the formal economy and in government, yet they lag behind in support for pro-mother and pro-family policies such as maternity benefits or support for breastfeeding. This is particularly true of advanced industrialized nations. Having for the most part overcome grosser inequalities in areas such as women’s legal standing, health care, and civil liberties, such countries are often seen as being close to an “ideal” level of gender equality. However, these same societies are facing decreasing populations, disintegrating families, and high levels of female depression. Many of these countries are slowly self-destructing because of sub-replacement birth rates, a phenomenon which we argue is one consequence of a society that undervalues motherhood.
Ideally, research would easily incorporate variables concerning “women as individuals” and those concerning “women as mothers.” However, the truth is that motherhood has an uncomfortable position in gender research. On one hand, a woman’s role as mother to future generations is generally appreciated as being integral to a healthy society. On the other hand, mainstream feminism and increased emphases on equality between men and women has, in some situations, pitted motherhood and feminism against each other, as some see a woman’s reproductive and nurturing role as an obstacle to economic and social gender equality. In terms that we see every day, mainstream feminism sees becoming “just a mom” as a failure of woman to meet her potential. WomenStats seeks to bring researchers the tools necessary to create policies to bring motherhood into the equation for gender equality.
My work as part of the WomanStats team was intellectually enlightening and academically rewarding, but more valuable to me was the deep personal growth and discovery that I gained.
During my last six months as a WomenStats researcher, I had the unique experience of researching motherhood variables while also preparing to become a mother; I was expecting my first baby. My research and my interaction with my mentor and the WomenStats team brought deep and peace-giving insights to my life. As a woman who has always been very achievement-driven, I used to be part of the “just a mom” philosophy—I felt that I would be selling myself short if I were content to be a stay at home mom outside of the career world. Now here I am writing this report with my beautiful four-month-old boy (finally!) napping, and I can only shake my head and smile at the changes in my life. My personal goals, such as continuing my education, have not changed, but my vision of the future has changed from self-centered to family-centered. Now that I have seen how profoundly important motherhood is to me, I understand even more fully the importance of bringing a woman’s role as a mother into the academic and policy-making dialogue of feminist research. This, among its other contributions, is the unique and ongoing mission of the WomenStats project.