When Cardi B announced her pregnancy on SNL during her performance ‘Be Careful” the gasp could be heard around the world. Through months of speculation it was finally confirmed that the rising star was expecting her first child with fiance Offset.
What was most surprising however, was the response from celebrities and fans alike to her after performance expression “I’m finally free”. Women from Rihanna to Remy Ma congratulated the female rapper on her new bundle joy and paid homage to the rapper for her courageous feeling of letting the world know she was a soon-to-be mother and feeling relieved.
For years in the entertainment industry, pregnancy was looked down upon especially for emerging artists as the new role of motherhood would hinder their career. For men, this was not the fact. Men who were expecting children were not thought less of. They were not expected to give up their careers and were not ashamed.
Let’s look at it from a more everyday perspective. There’s millions of women in the workforce today, however, many cannot get over the glass ceiling that has been set in place for centuries. The number of mothers in the workforce in 2015 with children under 18 was at a whopping 69.9%. However, the discrimination against women is alive and well.
A key indication is when Cornell performed a study by sending out fake resumes to hundreds of employers and found the results that, “Mothers were half as likely to be called back by prospective employers, while fathers were called back slightly more often than the men whose résumés did not mention parenthood.” A study performed by ThirdWay.Org found that fathers are rewarded because their earnings increased by more than 6% when they had a child that lived with them compared to women who experienced a 4% decrease with each child she had.
Why is that in 2018, women becoming mothers is often a punishment to their careers. In today’s society there are women who are running for president of the United States, Governors, Mayors, Neurologists, College Professors and everything in between. So why is this an issue that still plagues today's society.
Everyone deserves to celebrate such a critical turning point in their lives and enjoy the wonder of motherhood without feeling as if they have to conceal it for as long as possible to avoid reparations. Every women should feel liberated in her own body and be able to celebrate her experience openly and freely. Every women deserves to be given the same treatment men receive when they announce they are expecting a beautiful bundle of joy.
It’s essential that as women move towards more powerful and prominent positions in the world, we all encourage them to be proud. Be proud of being a woman and support them on their journey to a new part of their life. We all come from a woman, a woman who carried us in her womb and provided us life before we even knew what life was. So why would we shame the others. How would we feel is someone shamed our mothers about bringing us into this life. The change starts with each of us. We can all be the difference we want to see.
