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Emma Kook – Reader Response for Unfinished Business and The 30% Solution

Can women really have it all? Slaughter seems to believe it can only be the case if caregiving dilemmas become a gender neutral issue. Deriving from personal experiences, Slaughter found it difficult to move up in her career while finding time for family commitments. When she finally decided to choose family over a promotion she was greatly criticized by colleagues. This seemed odd when most people at work were going through the same problems. The main problem appeared to stem from the workplace. It made people choose, which led to a lack of value for caregivers. Slaughter says we are locked in “the struggle to combine competition and care in a system that rewards one and penalizes the other.” In order to change this, Slaughter has proposed to make it everybody’s business. Change it from a primarily female issue to an issue that affects all parents in the situation, while educating companies on the importance of balancing family and career goals.

The 30% Solution complemented the Slaughter piece well. Its main idea is to push the number of women found in leadership roles to 30%. The belief is that by having at least 30% of women represented in these roles, equality will happen and changes will be made to ensure it does. In other words, solutions for gender equality will be implemented because they won’t just be talked about but will be taken seriously with women at the helm. As Senator Landrieu says, “Do you really think if the US Senate was comprised of 91 women and 9 men we’d still be just talking about good child care instead of making it happen?”

These two pieces are significant because they raise the issue that women are still the primary gender that has to choose between promotions or family. Slaughter believes the solution is to convert caregiving into a neutral dilemma which will begin to trigger the 30% Solution. Once caregiving becomes a neutral issue, more women will likely stick in the competition and move up to more leadership roles. This will, in turn, start to create an equal working environment which will lead to more gender equality solutions being implemented, forming almost a circle of progress taken from the two pieces.

Allie Hubbard- Unfinished Business Reader Response

One issue that Anne-Marie Slaughter raised in Unfinished Business, which I found very interesting and significant was the concept of America being a place of workaholism. Slaughter mentioned a Cadillac ad during the Super Bowl praising the virtues of America being “crazy driven, hardworking believers”. I completely agree with Slaughter who was disgusted by the ad because are not the true values of America, the true values are ones of happiness and human connection. I believe this ad really captured what the working world views as valuable and shows how we need to change these beliefs. I really resonated with the one reporter that wrote: “What working like crazy and taking no time off really gets us? It gets Americans to the grave earlier, it’s made us more anxious than people in other developed countries and it’s created a group of people more disengaged from their jobs than in countries with more leisure time.” It’s very interesting how this “workaholic” mentality differs across cultures also, in America you are considered successful and elite if you have this lifestyle. While in other countries, such as Denmark you are considered boring because you don’t have time to read a book or see a play and Denmark is the happiest country in the World, while the U.S. comes in fifteenth. If the data back the idea of “less is more” than how come we are still operating in a workaholic culture. This type of culture is leading to women not being able to reach the top, after work they have duties at home they have to attend to, going to soccer games and parent teacher conferences. However, if there is no such thing as “after work” and you are on-call 24/7, how can we do both?

Jorge Fournier | Unfinished Business Reader Response

It was great to continue reading Anne-Marie Slaughter. I really enjoyed her first article in the Atlantic and see this text as a continuation of this article with more research. I previously did not believe what Slaughter proposes that parenting and caregiving should be as respected as another profession. She did not see this idea accepted when she decided to leave the U.S. State Department to return to her family. I loved how she went into this personal experience in the text. Now, after taking at least ¾ of this class, I really believe that women and men should both make it a priority to develop an equal and flexible schedule to care for their children. My mom was running her own business when I was growing up and I remember the long days in the shopping mall while my mom sold clothes in her store to people walking by—I hated it. I was so bored and growing up I kind of wanted that my mother stopped working so that she could focus on taking care of my sister, brother, and I. Eventually, the business closed and she resorted to taking care of us before starting to work with nonprofits when we were both in high school. Now, my little brother is 9 years old and I am beginning to push my dad to get more involved in my little brother’s school work, activities, and parent responsibilities. This will avoid the “halo dad syndrome” that Slaughter also explains in the text. Maybe I can even mention to my mom that she needs to “let it go.”

Moriarty- Farmer Jane Response

Of all the women in “Farmer Jane,” I found Gloria Decater’s life work particularly compelling. Decater, who runs the 40-acre biodynamic “Live Power” farm in California with her husband, aligns her business with nature—rather than against it—in order to succeed. The “biodynamic” approach to farming Decater has adopted uses microbes inherent to the soil to increase productivity and looks to the “cosmic and planetary rhythms of the earth” (Costa 50) for guidance.
I always find it ironic that so many of the answers to the “big questions” pressing our society—rather than calling for complex technological solutions–—can be found in going back to basics. The world is governed by inescapable rhythms—like the changing of the seasons—that establish the natural pace of our existence. While we may suppress them in our feverish quest to further our own shortsighted human agendas, all of us have a deeper instinct that tells us we are beholden to forces more powerful than ourselves. The crash-dieter—even while counting calories and pushing aside desserts—always knows she will eventually return to her baseline weight, just as the oil tycoon liquidating nature’s underground fuel wells must know the earth—even if he is no longer walking it when it does—will ultimately pay for his greed. The only enduring solution is to cease fighting for the upper hand against nature and instead live in harmony with its rhythms, which know the secrets to prospering on this planet far better than we do ourselves.

Luke Vith – Farmer Jane

The most interesting person I found when reading Farmer Jane was Jesse Ziff Cool. When her passage started with “The customer comes last” I was immediately interested in her story. This is backwards compared to what most restaurants believe today. At most restaurants they want to make sure their customer is happy and is treated well in order to ensure good business. What I ended up finding out when reading this story is that this notion is not necessarily the case. Instead of making sure the customer is happy, Cool wants to make sure that her product is up to her very high standards. This is important because she sees the providing of good and healthy food as a necessity and she doesn’t want to break away from that. I also thought that she was making a profound impact in the community of farmers because she is helping small local farms be able to continue to function. With the average age of farmers being 57 it is a dangerous trend of such a old age because in the future if we don’t have young farmers food won’t be able to be produced on such a mass level. Her idea of going into the farms and making products based on what the farm produces is also different than most. This allows her to make the farm profitable without the farmers having to do much change within their property itself. I think that it is this forward thinking that is essential to continue to grow the farming industry and force people to eat healthy as a whole.

Emma Kook – Reader Response for Farmer Jane

Reading the opening chapter of Farmer Jane stirred a memory from my childhood. When I was about 5 years old my class took a trip to Walton’s Farm, a local farm filled with fresh fruits, vegetables, and free roaming animals. This place was incredible to see, especially from a young child’s eyes. At that age, you do not think about where your food comes from therefore an experience like this opens up a new world to a child. I decided to do some research, as this book sprung curiosity towards my hometown, and I found that 80% of Bermuda’s food is imported, and that is not a small feat by any means. It has to be shipped or flown over to Bermuda, which usually takes a few days meaning most of the food we get is processed or full of GMOs as to preserve the produce. It is sad to think, especially after reading this book, that Bermuda believes its land has more worth than to be used for farming. Not only is this devastating from the sustainable and environmental viewpoint, it is also scary in terms of survival. If there were a crisis that prevented transportation to Bermuda, 80% of the population would be without food.

Therefore, I believe the woman whose story had the greatest impact on me was Dru Rivers, Farmer of Full Belly Farm. A laughing Buddha icon welcomes families and children to the diversified, organic farm. A farm which is full of music, food, laughter, and thousands of people. Full Belly Farms has taken farming to a whole new innovative level by creating a fun and exciting environment for city-dwellers. They create seasonal produce boxes which they serve to over 1,500 customers while providing a hands-on experience to appreciate the importance of farming. Rivers has changed the thinking associated with farming. She has created an exciting, happy, and healthy environment that has greatly encouraged people to think organic before heading to the grocery store. Receiving constant requests to expand, it is clear Full Belly Farm is changing the consumer mindset behind purchasing food. Yet, Rivers believes in the importance of not becoming ‘removed’ from the family business by staying local and appropriately seized. For Rivers, farming is more important than the money.

Farmer Jane Reader Response- Andrew Gormley

Farmer Jane Reader Response: Jo Ann Baumgartner

Jo Ann Baumgartner is an author and the director of Wild Farm Alliance, an organization that works to bring biodiversity conservation to organic farming. She works with farmers to teach them methods that are significantly more friendly to the environment than the current standards and to change their practices and perspectives about how their farm can and should be interacting with the local ecosystem. As the article stated, “Jo Ann knows it’s possible to move the equation towards more on-farm self-sufficiency while preserving nature and enhancing the farm’s business.” I found Baumgartner to be particularly interesting because her organization serves many positive purposes. For one, she teaches farmers to preserve species by working with native animals and insects instead of killing them and destroying their habitats. In addition to the obvious benefit of preserving native species, this helps to keep the local ecosystem in check to avoid issues like a surge in rodent population, as often happens when larger predators are eliminated. Secondly, they save farmers money by teaching them to use their natural resources to protect their crops. For one, they establish nesting sites for predatory insects around the farm, which keep the population of invasive insects low and eliminates the need for pesticides. Additionally, she educates farmers on the benefit of using manure to fertilize crops rather than industrial fertilizers which can be detrimental to the environment. Thirdly, the resulting food is organic and natural and therefore healthier for humans to consume than it would have been had it been treated with pesticides and industrial fertilizers. As a result of Baumgartner’s work, essentially everyone and everything involved benefits, from the ecosystem, to the farmers and their families, to everyone consuming the food.

Farmer Jane Reader Response- Matthew Fernandez

Farmer Jane tells the stories of thirty women that are working to change the farming industry for the better. The essence of the book is that we have become detached from the land that we rely upon to sustain us. One story that I enjoyed was about Anna Lappe, which is located in the Advocates for Social Change section of the book. At an early age, Anna learned from her mother the importance of environmental justice. Anna and Francis set out to find research for their book Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. This led them to travel the world and interact with farmers and community members throughout India, Brazil, Keya, and France. They found that many people are bringing their food closer to home through urban farming. This helped her find out that “hunger is not a scarcity of food, but a scarcity of democracy”. I found this interesting because there are so many people in this world that do not have the luxury of always being nourished.

 

Another part of Anna’s story that I enjoyed was the fact that she moved to France to strengthen her culinary skills. Anna says that she experienced something new about shopping for food. Anna was surprised how many people would buy fresh food on a daily basis. It did not occur to me until reading this that I had the same experience while living in Barcelona, this past fall. I remember shopping at local markets for fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat with my roommates for dinner later that night. We would only buy what we were going to eat for dinner and almost never had any leftovers. Now coming back to the United States, I almost never get fresh food to cook at night. I think Anna’s story is important because she has dedicated her life to create an improved food system.

Farmer Jane Reader Response – Adam Dailey

It’s difficult to choose whose experiences and accomplishments stood out the most while reading Farmer Jane, but if I had to pick one woman I would say Lois Ellen Frank led the most interesting and inspiring life. Her interest and compassion for Native foods is a prime example of how new fields of study are born and then continue to flourish after their inception. Food has always been among the most genuine and positive modes of overcoming cultural differences, as feeding someone is always a gesture of care and kindness but it is also a way of opening yourself up to your guests. When you cook something for someone that has cultural or familial significance for you, you’re kind of opening yourself up to them in a way, and saying “this is who I am”. I think that while it can’t be denied that Lois Ellen Frank was passionate about culturally significant foods by themselves, I think what probably drew her the most was the combination of kindness and openness that they entail.
Through Frank’s initiatives of cooking Native foods she is also raising awareness and respect for the Native American people, and the cyclically positive nature of Red Mesa is also helping to give hope to an astonishingly disenfranchised people. What I like most about Frank and Red Mesa is that it is founded on a premise of kindness and openness, and uses that kindness and openness to help a suffering community.

Farmer Jane – Hannah Lafferrandre

From the beginning, I was most interested in the urban farming section of Farmer Jane. Willow Rosenthal was the most outstanding in this section for me because of her unique idea to purchase empty lots, some as small at .08 acres, and create a farm, complete with beehives, carrot crops, chickens, ducks, compost piles and a wood fire oven. She purchased this empty lot in the middle of Oakland, California, which contains several major food deserts. The inequality of access to healthy food is disturbing in these places. The community that Rosenthal targeted, for example, had one grocery store that was intended to supply food to 23,000 people. Conversely, more affluent areas have grocery stores for every 4,000 people. Additionally, the single grocery store has limited produce, it is usually in poor shape and it is more expensive than the unhealthy, processed food. I know that Winston-Salem struggles with this issue, and I think it could desperately use an urban farm. I like the distinction Rosenthal seeks to make between an urban farm and an urban garden. Primarily, Rosenthal wishes to produce a bulk of sustenance crops that can be sold or simply distributed to low income families. She believes a crop of sweet potatoes is more beneficial than planting flowers or herbs. She wants to combat the lack of access families have to fresh produce, and allow them to reimagine their usual diets. Additionally, Rosenthal has started the Backyard Garden Program which equips people with gardening tools and the assistance they need to grow their own food. Rosenthal discovered that many people have the knowledge and skills to grow food but the equipment is expensive, and it is no longer economically advantageous for the grower if she has to purchase tools, etc. The families in this program are also given a mentor, who helps them get their garden started and sees them through a few seasons. This idea is brilliant because it simply ‘teaches a man to fish,’ and allows him to take pride in what he puts in his body.