Weekly Activism Blog #6

Activism

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate in anything with my Service Learning partner this week. I must admit I am a bit bummed, as I was looking forward to really getting started. I have been getting emails on a weekly basis with the volunteer opportunities for that week. However, I haven’t gotten any for the past two weeks. I emailed my community partner to ask about opportunities for volunteering this week, but I never heard back. So it is nobody’s fault really, but it still is disappointing. I really don’t want this same thing to happen next week, so I have looked into the volunteer opportunities more and I emailed my community partner again about volunteering with specific programs, such as their Coaching Girls into Women project or the Project Courage Youth Facilitators. I am most interested in volunteering with their court advocacy program, but I cannot take part in that until I go through my 30 hours of CORE training, which I cannot take until February. Therefore, I will have to wait a good while before volunteering with that project.

Reflection

Since I don’t have direct experience to connect with the text, I will just use the act of domestic violence in general. This week in class we talked about gender and the workforce. One article that was particularly terrifying to me was “The Mommy Tax.” It talked about the ways the workforce basically discriminates against mothers (or the primary caregiver) and how “mothers are the most disadvantaged people in the workplace (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 337). In terms of domestic violence, imagine how much harder this makes things. In many domestic violence situations, the batterer wants control, and one form of exerting this control is by not allowing the woman to work. He may use the reasoning that he just wants her to stay home with the kids. Now imagine the woman eventually is able to get her and her children out of this abusive situation. With it so difficult for a woman to get back into the workforce after she has taken leave to care for her kids, and since “working mothers not only earn less per hour than men, but also less per hour than childless women,” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 340)  then how is this survivor supposed to get back on her feet?

Reciprocity

I haven’t really gotten too much out of it this week since I wasn’t able to volunteer. I am continuing to learn about this terrible issue. I hope once I get some hands on experience I will have more to say about the rewarding experience I’m sure it will turn out to be.

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 4^th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.