Linda Hirschman: A Danger to Frugal Women Everywhere (Painfully L-O-N-G)

I made a fatal error last Thursday night by watching the Colbert Report. No, I take that back—Stephen made an error in booking her as a guest.

Stephen’s show mocks Fox News and Republican conservatism, and I watch nightly, but this woman just about made me get up and rip the cable out from the wall behind the TV.

Linda Hirschman was hawking her book called Get Back to Work. It describes in detail her feeling that women of all stripes should shuck the “bonds of female servitude” by working outside the home whenever and wherever possible—her sad attempt at brushing the dust off feminism. She feels that we women are unempowered by not working and qualifying for Social Security.

Oh really? I’m glad she has such confidence in the system. IRAs weren’t liberating enough for us?

My questions to her:

• Must you continually buy your way out of problems by being a corporate slave, rather than learning to use imagination, cut back, and make do on one income?

• Is hearing the word NO so hard for you?

• Do you understand the meaning of “home economics”—emphasis on economics?

• What rock have you been hiding under for the last 20 years or so?

This woman wants us to make ourselves eternally beholden to a boss and Uncle Sam—both presumably male—by going back to work for pay, flying in the face of her precious feminism.

She wants us to disempower other women (nannies and housekeepers) to work inside our homes so we can work outside it. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? We take away some other woman’s power just to have our own, according to her own definition—I don’t think so.

And she’s convinced she’s dead right. Unless this woman is a single-earner, she hasn’t dared to sit down and run the numbers even once—either that or she’s married with a high-paying job and little outgo. Why should she concern herself with anyone qualifying for a federal retirement handout that may or may not be there when we retire? Maybe this is her way of ensuring herself a Social Security check when she retires—by co-opting other women into (or back into) the workforce to prop up the ailing system. It’s the tale of the ant and the grasshopper (or locust) all over again.

All I could think of was Gloria Steinem, and who had obviously picked up her dropped torch. Even Gloria knew when the mission was accomplished. Can anyone else hear the irrelevant silence of all those other women’s movement organizations that marched and rallied back in the 70’s? It’s much like the deafening irrelevance of unions in the workplace—both were slowly replaced by federal work laws and rendered moot.

For all the countless women out there who HAVE run the numbers and discovered that it’s more profitable, both monetarily and personally, to stay home and make the most of what DOES come in, I give you a big giant YOU GO, GIRL! Too bad Linda doesn’t know the story, whole or even half. The only story she knows is one of poverty--both her parents had to work throughout her life, and now she’s grown up to perpetuate the same. Nobody was home to teach her the math, nor presumably how to cook and shop. I wonder who taught her how to use a microwave? Certainly not Home Ec class—not in her time!

Tell me, frugal women, do you feel like less of a person, or somehow demeaned, for not working outside the home? I sure as hell don’t—in fact, I feel more empowered than ever doing more with less, planning and allocating purchases, investments, and retirement contributions, and how to make a dollar work best for me. My cats sure appreciate the time and effort I put into their diet and care. If I had kids, my time and efforts with them would show as well.

I gladly gave up my spot on the economic ladder to someone who had more need of it, and I have no problem with that--the world didn’t come to a screeching halt over my decision. My family pays less in taxes, has better health, has more space, time, and savings, and harbors no stress because of the fact that I stay home to plan, organize, execute, and track it all. I don’t consider myself a “loser” for choosing to put my strengths to work for ME and my family instead of some faceless corporation (who would’ve chewed me up, spit me out, outsourced my job, and wrote me off on their taxes anyway). I run the money, therefore, I am empowered. I’m the boss around here, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I do what I want (that’s legal, of course) and when I want, I wear what I want, eat what and when I want, and I don’t answer to anyone except hubby (as consultation) and Uncle Sam (for taxes)—if that’s not empowerment, then I don’t know what is.

Oh, the things one can do between loads of dishes, laundry, assembling and cooking meals, sweeping and mopping, vacuuming, book devouring, semi-annual furniture rearrangement, and occasional fleeting sessions of CNBC, CNN, and C-SPAN 2, thanks to home computers and the internet. Oh, and there’s kids in there, too, for many of us.

If Linda Hirschman could realize the importance of jobs she WASN’T paying attention to, she wouldn’t be writing such feminist trash for money to prop up her miserable life. She obviously finds no satisfaction in staying home and getting her own hands dirty, and it shows. It’s “spend, spend, spend” for these locusts, so they need an income that supports it. Why do something herself when she can pay someone else to do it for her? That way, she can go on feeling real good about herself and her clean hands—sheesh, give me a break.

Just because she chooses to deal with killer commutes, glass ceilings, job outsourcing and off-shoring, sexual harassment, backstabbing co-workers, ungodly stress, deforming shoes in the name of fashion, time and idea constraints, the threat of being replaced by software, foreign workers, or illegal aliens, and lousy “short-timer” management (never mind the costs of a second vehicle, a work wardrobe, convenience foods, and added taxes) doesn’t mean we have to as well. We’re much smarter than that! We’ve been there, done that, and got the commuter mug and parking sticker to prove it. Our high heels got yard-saled or E-bay’d off long ago.

Personally, I felt most liberated seeing other women buy pieces of my work wardrobe out in my front yard. The strong symbolism wasn’t lost on me.

Don’t let her book keep you from doing what you do best. Don’t let her or anyone else make you feel guilty for staying home. Be proud that you CAN. This woman has “Boomer locust” written all over her, and apparently has no option to stay home. She’ll join the ranks of the “broke retired” and will end up working until she drops, scratching out a living within Social Security work limits, while we sail past her in our paid-for boats to our paid-for marina condos, or waving to her from a ski-slope chair in Aspen, Colorado.

Someday Linda will discover what we’ve known for years—the secret of abundance with freedom from work, freedom from pressures, and freedom from excess taxes and expenses. If that doesn’t empower a person, I guess I don’t know what does. I still can’t believe what she wants us to do for the security of a mere $1000/month. My IRAs alone will pay me more than that, never mind hubby’s IRAs, his 401(k) plan, the separate stock portfolio, the rental homes…you get the point. She’s telling us she’s gong to NEED her Social Security money, while the rest of us are planning for the system’s demise.

Linda: This housewife-slash-family CFO is telling you that the ways to true liberation lie within the tax code—learn how to use it, and you’ll be empowering, instead of enslaving, yourself. To shatter a glass ceiling, find the room above with a glass floor, and stand around in it wearing a skirt and no underwear.