Commentary

America beat Jim Crow not only because African-Americans insisted but because the white majority finally got the message that it was a system that made our democracy look like a joke.

Our stagnant pay-equity gap today likewise outs the land of the free as being not-quite-sincere.

So far our country's collective response to gender wage discrimination doesn't even approach radical demands. It's the political equivalent of a shoulder shrug and a "bummer, dude."

A March 2 front-page article ("The women's movement: Has it stalled?") is a case in point.

It conceded, as many informed discussions do, that American women still work on the cheap because feminism ran out of steam.

Women make up more than half of the nation's workforce. We control 85 percent of consumer spending decisions.

By day, we power the national economy. Then we inexplicably show up for an unpaid night shift at home.

Our culture cheerfully aids and abets this.

Here's a recap of America's messages to women since the 1996 Welfare Reform Act: Society verges on collapse for two reasons: Middle-income mothers went to work, and low-income mothers didn't.

Paid working women are selfish and heartless. Middle class stay-at-home mothers ("soccer moms") are overprotective and pathetic. Low-income stay-at-home mothers are conniving welfare queens.

The dearth of affordable child care -- even in the wake of a huge welfare reform -- is your problem. Your unreasonable demands for equality, after all, created this mess.

American women's daily scramble for "balance" reveals that we actually believe this nonsense. Ask "how are you" of the average working woman, and you hear a frantic recitation of her to-do list.

It's as though we're repenting for our growing political and economic power by working 10 times harder than those who would judge us.

We're a strange, powerful group communicating an exhausted but fierce belief that our families will disintegrate if we don't start cooking dinner right now.

For the single mothers who head up 18 percent of U.S. households -- many in or close to poverty -- this is, unfortunately, true.

The rest of us, however, can afford to acknowledge the big fat elephant in the room: Working fathers aren't doing enough work.

Obviously, an enlightened minority of men have thought through this women's equality thing. They get it that male privilege is a nasty little addiction that prevents the rest of us from getting our oxygen.

These guys aren't heroes; they're grown-ups.

Heroes are people like Rosa Parks, an ordinary woman who nudged the ball forward in a high-stakes game by simply sitting down.

We could do that. Working women could collectively just take up some space at the front of the bus.

We could bring on a future in which men "man up," fully expecting themselves to do half of the cooking, meal planning, cleaning, grocery and clothing shopping, school dropoffs, day-care pickups, homework oversight, and activity signups.

I feel better already.

It won't be pretty. It could take years of women's self-restraint before men pick up their own slack.

I'm talking about screaming-match-worthy clutter; kids going to school in stained and tight clothing; unsigned permission slips; unanswered invitations, and grandmas going without birthday gifts.

I mean dealing with the fact that "letting go" from an outsider's perspective looks exactly like selfish, maternal neglect.

Revolution at home will also make for some really awkward conversations: "Did you call the sitter?"

"No."

"What's for dinner?"

"I dunno, whatever Daddy's cooking."

Breathe in, breathe out. Sit down, shut up.

No guilt, no repenting. (And no refolding the laundry to our own control-freak specifications.)

Contemplate the aftermath: The average man would tolerate the average woman's unpaid workload for a full 10 seconds.

Then they'd demand (and get) the family-friendly policies women have sought for decades: flexible hours, job sharing, on-site child care, paid parental leave.

Men's and women's career tracks could finally run parallel. And, eventually, so would our paychecks.

Katie Pierson is a mom and freelance writer in Minnetonka.

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