My dad died last May. He and my mom had been married for 62 years. That is a long time to be married; much less to one person. She is lost, not quite sure how to fill her days. Also, not quite sure what her role is without my father around.
My parents married in 1947, right after my father returned from the war. He went to work, she started having children. It was the time of Tupperware, Avon, come-as-you are breakfast fundraisers and MacCarthyism. Sunday dinner was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and homemade yeast rolls. Life was good. My father was a union man, and every paycheck garnered funds into his pension.
Until recently I never heard my mother say what she wanted. She was a responder. She responded to the needs and wants of her husband, and her children.
Now, her husband was dead and her children long since out of the house. She was no longer a responder. While visiting with her recently I noticed a photograph on her desk. It was of my two nieces and my nephew.
My nephew is eight years old. His sister and their cousin – a female – are seven. They’re cute. They’re too young to be otherwise. For their holiday photo last year, the three of them had it taken together. My nephew, all eight years of him, was seated in a miniature lazy-boy, his legs positioned in a “manly” type cross. My two nieces were on either side of him. One kneeling on his left side with her hand demurely placed on his arm. The other niece was standing at his side with her hand place on his shoulder. I shuddered! Ohhh, Ohhh!
I turned to my mom “Mom, what do you think of this photo?” “The photo?” she asked. “Yea,” I replied “where John is sitting in a miniature lazy boy and Joyce and Janis are on either side. Why is he in the chair they aren’t?” “Because he is the boy?” she responded. Her faced changed, the color seemed to drain away. She looked at me in a way I had never seen her look before.
We spent the next hour talking about men, penises, women, girls; in essence the hegemonic world that she lived in, and the current one that was enveloping my nieces and nephew. We talked about why. Why men are privileged; just because they are male.
I watched her. What I did not say was that the poverty rate for widows – which she was one – has persistently been three to four times higher than that for elderly married women. And that today women earn just 76 cents for every dollar a man earns, doing the very same job.
The high poverty rates among elderly women results from a number of factors. Women generally earn less during their work lives due to lower wages, occupational segregation and more time out of the paid labor force for family care-giving responsibilities. They therefore usually qualify for lower Social Security benefits on their own earnings record than men. In addition, they are less likely to have participated in employer pension programs and therefore receive smaller pension incomes. Finally, women have a longer life expectancy than men and therefore a higher likelihood of outliving their assets or having their savings and non-Social Security income eroded by inflation.
If she had only had a penis she may have gotten a higher education; a better paying job; earned more money, and be more financially secure. But she doesn’t.
