Where are all the working women?

I normally don't write on this blog about things that I read in other blogs. (Although that is changing.) I reserve this blog for things that I encounter being both a mommy and a law student - things that are funny, things that make me think, things that I think are important that someone else might want to read about. But I don't tend to comment about things I read in other people's blogs.

I read other blogs because it is a way for me to find out the perspectives of other people without having to meet them in person. And if it turns out that I'm not sure that I agree with what they write or I don't have an interest in what they're currently blogging about, I can click the "mark as read" button and I don't have to come up with any funky excuse about why I didn't answer their email or return their phone call, and I don't have to try and think up any more small talk while I wait for someone to come rescue me like I do if I'm in a social setting.

But this post on Modite caught my attention. First of all, it specifically addresses working women in the midwest. But as I read the post, I felt that it could equally apply to women in the Northeast, or the Pacific Northwest, or small rural or suburban communities on the West Coast. In short, there is a shortage of women blogging about their experiences being working women. Second she specifically asks for experiences of women who live in Wisconsin. And as I read that my law school brain lit up and said "Wisconsin! Joy Nonweiler is from Wisconsin. And she was the first women from an online law school to take and pass the Wisconsin bar. And this is a second career for her, and...and...and" which caused me to look back at the plea for more working women to write about what it is like to be a working woman, and think about the question again.

Because I am a working woman. And I go to school full time - in the same online law program that Joy graduated from. And if you kept track of what I post to Twitter and FB in my status area you would assume (rightly!) that I pretty much eat, sleep, take care of my kids, and go to law school. And there are other times that you would assume (not as rightly - but understandably) that somewhere along the line my kids and sleep disappeared from my life and I took up residence in the law library. A close college friend of mine who lives 10 minutes away from me told me "I would call you and try to get together with you more often, but most of them time I get the impression that you are buried in a law textbook and using a snorkel to breathe." This was not in any way a slam or a complaint - our friendship went through a similar hiatus when she was in medical school - but just a frank honest impression of just how busy I was.

Which brings me back to the issue of the working woman who blogs - we don't. Even though I keep a blog, the amount I post does not rate the title of blogging. Unless it is written in our job description to blog or we happen to be someone who blogs rather than journals, or we happen to be very techy and like blogging, very few of us blog because we view our time as a precious commodity and are careful what we do with it. What little time we have we spend taking care of the other areas of our life that are outside of our work day. We take care of kids or parents or sometimes both. We call friends who live close by or far away and plan time to see them (when we aren't breathing through a snorkel because we have an essay due for Con Law and the proper flow for an essay on the commerce clause is eluding us). We feel guilty because we aren't "doing enough" to advance the goals and interests of women in society. We feel guilty because we aren't "spending enough time" taking care of the needs of our children and families. We feel guilty taking 10 minutes and spending it on "self-care" even when our therapist or PC physician has told us that we need it.

We don't blog because it isn't a priority. Clearly there is a need for it - my blog list features more mommy blogs than working women blogs, and the working women blogs I subscribe to are often women without kids who blog as part of their job, not because they are part of the community. So in answer to the question - where are all the working women? Hopefully they are out from behind their computers doing something for themselves or their kids.