Just in time for Mother's Day, the AFL-CIO has released its Ask a Working Woman Survey 2002.
The timing is deliberate, of course, given that 72 percent of all American women with children under 18 are in the work force.
The report -- available at www.aflcio.org -- offers a much needed reality check for a nation that tends to exalt or sentimentalize motherhood while declining to give it the real-life public policy support that exists in so many other modern countries.
Two examples: 128 countries provide paid, job-protected leave related to childbirth, while the United States provides neither. And the unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted with much fanfare in 1993, today does not cover 45 percent of workers, and many of those who are covered can't afford to take it.
Anyway, given that this is an election year, the AFL-CIO survey could prove instructive for savvy politicians looking for a road map to "the women's vote."
The survey, conducted by Lake Snell Perry & Associates, was based on a national random sample phone poll of 1,250 women and 350 men. The method is important, lest anyone suspect the pool of respondents was skewed in the direction of organized labor.
The men are important, too. Their work-family priorities turn out to be very similar to those of the women. It's a critical point, because so-called "women's issues" historically have been much more likely to be denigrated or brushed aside by overwhelmingly male bosses and lawmakers.
Overall, the survey draws a picture of female workers who are more likely than ever to work long hours, nights and weekends (28 percent), often with different schedules than their partners (40 percent, with women of color more likely than white women to fall into this category).
Note to the crowd in Washington pushing marriage as an antidote to poverty: Research by Harriet Presser at the University of Maryland shows that couples with children in the first five years of marriage are six times as likely to split up when men work nights, and three times as likely to do so when women work nights.
Furthermore, the survey shows that anxiety about health care coverage has shot up 12 percentage points over the last survey in 2000. Now 69 percent of women rate affordable health care their top legislative priority.
Overwhelmingly, those surveyed want to see more public policy support in the areas of health care, pensions and Social Security, child care, family/medical leave and equal pay.
The survey also contains this myth-busting piece of information: The majority of working married mothers are not part-timers. In fact, 68 percent of working married moms put in 40 hours a week or more, compared with 60 percent of women without children.
Overall, the survey showed, 63 percent of women work 40 or more hours a week, up from 60 percent two years ago.
"The presumption that married working mothers don't work full time is just not true," said Karen Nussbaum, assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
The reason for the long hours, she said, is basic economics.
"It's still very hard to make ends meet in most families, and that's compounded by the big fear we see about benefits.
"The pressures are enormous in every segment of the work force," Nussbaum said, "whether it's the woman lawyer who's repeatedly expected to stay until 11 o'clock at night to finish a brief and doesn't get to see her family, or the hotel maid who has to take two buses to drop her kid at day care and another bus to work.
"Women want to work and need to work. They should be allowed to work without it costing them their sanity or quality of life."
The survey also showed that women support fair pay and benefits for part-timers, and that 66 percent of women and 63 percent of men say employees should be free to form a union.
So, it seems, what women really want this Mother's Day is not available at the card shop. But even so, Nussbaum doesn't advise skipping the more immediately doable gifts from the florist and candy counter.
"It would be really good to make sure you give her the hearts and flowers this year," she said, "because she's having a very tough time in the workplace."
Sally Kalson's e-mail is: skalson@post-gazette.com
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