Women make up half the workforce, get degrees in droves, and have their own careers. So it's little wonder that a role that requires women give that all up is an awkward fit.

As long as there have been presidents in this country, there have been first ladies at their side. The role is traditionally to act as a homemaker and hostess, tending to the family and the White House. This was the purview of middle and upper class wives, after all. But now that we live in an era where women represent almost half of the workforce, pursuing independent careers and even sometimes acting as the breadwinner for their families, we're still playing catch up. The role of first lady in particular continues to be murky and old-fashioned. Not elected, yet married to the most powerful man in the country. Highly influential, yet often resented for using that influence. And above all, educated and often professionally successful, yet expected to give up their careers. It's an anachronistic role that has fossilized an older ideal of womanhood and wifeliness. And it traps many smart women. Enter Michelle Obama.

When Michelle Obama entered the White House, I was hopeful that we would see a return to the model of a strong first lady who stakes out an agenda. After all, she's a Harvard-trained lawyer who had a career of her own. But I quickly became impatient. Mrs. Obama -- or advisers -- seemed more interested in preserving her sky-high poll numbers than giving her an aggressive agenda. She tackled obesity -- but never touched agriculture policy or our health care system. She reached out to military families -- but said nothing about our need to bring troops home.

I held her in contrast to Eleanor Roosevelt, who had tremendous influence on the White House and the country. But in an excerpt from her new book The Obamas, Jodi Kantor shows there may be more similarities between the two than I had been giving credit for. Kantor's interviews "show that [Obama] has been an unrecognized force in her husband's administration and that her story has been one first of struggle, then turnaround and greater fulfillment." Something similar could be said about Eleanor Roosevelt, except perhaps the part about going unrecognized. Both women, successful professionally, struggled with their roles in the White House when they first arrived. Yet it seems that Obama may be starting to follow a trajectory similar to Roosevelt's -- exerting her influence over her husband's administration and beginning to find her place. As well she should. The role makes little sense given the changes to our workforce, and smart, powerful women must make it their own.

Both women faced their coming roles with anxiety after their husbands won the election. As Kantor reports, "Even as Mrs. Obama dazzled Americans with her warmth, glamour and hospitality early in the presidency, she was also deeply frustrated and insecure about her place in the White House." Nothing could be truer of how Eleanor Roosevelt felt about her coming duties. As Blanche Wiesen Cook wrote in her biography Eleanor Roosevelt, "After the election of November 1932, ER worried that her talents would not be used; that she would become a shut-in, a congenial hostess in the political shadows politically sidelined." Obama tried to delay moving to the White House; Roosevelt went further and allegedly told friends she would run away with FDR's bodyguard, Earl Miller.

This ambiguous and potentially confining role came for both women after highly successful careers that they were asked to drop upon taking up residence in the White House. Cook writes that Roosevelt "enjoyed many careers and was all in a day teacher, editor, columnist, and radio commentator" before the presidency. This was in the '30s, before World War II opened the floodgates for women to enter the workforce, but it was a sign of changing times.

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Obama was, of course, a Harvard-trained, practicing lawyer. She exemplifies the high numbers of women seeking higher education today and moving (albeit slowly) into male-dominated professions. Obama, unsurprisingly, at first chafed at the change: as Kantor writes, "A Harvard-trained lawyer, she had given up her career for what initially seemed to her a shapeless post, and she tried to wriggle out of some ceremonial events that she saw as not having much purpose." Roosevelt also at first obliged grudgingly -- although later on went back to work as a unionized reporter, among other roles.

Both of these stories display the inherent contradictions first ladies face. Both women were/are smart and successful, yet were/are supposed to give up all public roles, become the country's hostess, and stand by their man. It's little wonder that upon entering, Obama told her aides she

never wanted to be the kind of first lady who interfered with West Wing business... It was her husband's administration, not hers, she sometimes said. She had little appetite or expertise for policy detail, and she knew the history of first ladies -- like Nancy Reagan and Mrs. Clinton -- who had been deemed meddlers, unelected figures who wielded unearned power.

That's what tradition dictates. But it goes against her intelligence and skills. Once in, she told her advisers she "wanted a more central role in communicating the administration's message," particularly in selling health care reform. West Wing advisers declined, haunted by the ghost of Hillary Clinton past.

It's taken some time to adjust, but it looks like Obama is warming to the fact that she can make this role what she wants. Kantor writes that later on, "Michelle Obama's trajectory in the White House was changing. She was mastering and subtly redefining the role that had once seemed formless to her, and becoming more acclimated to her new life."

For starters, she's begun to play a similar role within the administration that Roosevelt did: keeper of her husband's conscience. The role of the West Wing advisors is often to figure out what deal is possible; these first ladies look for what deal is the right one. Cook wrote of Roosevelt, "FDR liked to boast that he was a "practical politician." He knew how to compromise, make deals, be duplicitous. ER understood the nature of the game, but wanted some assurance that it would be played for the right reasons, the most needful causes." Obama similarly, as it would seem from Kantor's article, butted heads with advisers because she "cherished the idea of her husband as a transformational figure" and "she saw herself as a guardian of values."

The idea that women are no longer confined to the kitchen and tending to children still makes some people queasy. But it's been our reality for half a century. Our policies still haven't caught up, and the role of first lady is perhaps even more outdated. Here's hoping that Michelle Obama is allowed to take control of it, make it her own, and influence this country for the better.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.

Flawed policies intended to break down barriers to a good education are perpetuating other forms of inequality.

School choice has a troubled history in the U.S. It was first employed as a policy option to thwart desegregation efforts. Parents in the South, facing court-mandated school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education, began enrolling their children in "whites-only" private schools. Yet now proponents of school choice argue that it is a solution to integrate schools, raise student achievement, or both. The achievement rationale is based on the idea that all parents deserve a choice in which school their child attends, especially poor and minority parents who may not have the financial option to move to a better school district or send their children to private school. The integration rationale is based on the fact that because many neighborhoods are racially segregated, eliminating neighborhood schools removes this de facto segregation of students in schools.

School choice policy takes several different forms, including inter-district choice, intra-district choice, charter schools, magnet schools, and voucher programs. To begin evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of these programs, let's take a look at how intra-district school choice policy has been implemented in my home city of Boston.

It's the start of a new year, so parents in Boston are beginning the process of registering their children for school in the fall. But this registration is not as simple as filling out a form at their school district office and sending their child to the neighborhood school. The Boston Public Schools system uses a controlled intra-district choice policy to assign students to schools, so where children go depends on a variety of factors, including their parents' ranking of schools. Boston's system is complex, so here is just an overview of what parents are up against.

Intra-district school choice allows parents to move beyond their neighborhood schools by letting them rank the top schools they'd like their children to attend. In its purest form, this policy creates an open district where students are assigned to a school based on a lottery and their personal ranking of schools. In reality, intra-district school choice is controlled and students are matched with schools based on a formula that takes into account priority factors such as siblings and walking distance to the school, as well as controlling factors such as socioeconomic status. In Boston, the priority factors include "walk zone," siblings, and random lottery numbers. This choice may help parents avoid failing schools near their home in favor of higher-performing schools throughout the district in hopes that their children will receive a better education. Additionally, proponents of intra-district school choice note that the policy has the potential to integrate school districts in spite of de facto segregated housing.

Intra-district school choice was first used to integrate schools after the intense outcry against the busing movement of the 1960s and 1970s. While parents were allowed to rank their school choices, the school assignment formulas included controlling racial and socioeconomic factors to achieve integrated schools while still presenting the option of parental choice. In Boston, intra-district school choice arose once the federal courts returned power to the district after the drastic desegregation efforts of the '70s led to white flight and race riots. As one of the nation's first intra-district school choice programs, Boston was commended on the policy. However, the ranking system meant to provide parental choice and desegregate schools has not achieved the academic success and integration hoped for. Instead, even today, many schools in the city lack racial and economic diversity and these are often the schools considered to be the worst performing.

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The criticisms of intra-district choice are numerous:

First, as with any policy, intra-district school choice has led to the creation of difficult-to-understand and often unknown placement formulas. Most school districts do not release their placement formulas, leaving parents wondering why their child is not enrolled in one of their ranked schools. This secrecy means that some intra-district school choice policies lack the accountability needed to ensure confidence in the policy. Further, most school choice formulas limit the options actually available to the parents. In Boston, requiring parents to only select from schools within their home zone or that operate citywide narrows the list of available schools. Further, Boston schools fill 50 percent of their seats from students within walking distance of the school, leaving only half of the seats open for children who live outside the walk zone. While intra-district school choice was designed to eliminate neighborhood schools segregated by race and socioeconomic status, home zone and walking-distance factors keep schools partly neighborhood-based. On the one hand, this limits the effectiveness of school choice, but on the other, it ensures that the schools remain tied to the area and that communities take ownership of their schools.

Second, intra-district school choice requires strong parental engagement and involvement, as parents need to know they have a choice and understand the different school options available for their children. In Boston, before making their school selections parents often visit schools and talk with teachers in addition to attending school information fairs. For middle-class parents, this level of engagement may not be difficult. But for poor families, immigrants, or students without stable homes, the amount of engagement and information required to make an informed decision is difficult to come by. While Boston does provide information fairs throughout the year and support through Family Resource Centers, informational asymmetries still remain. As Professor Curt Dudley-Marling notes, the intra-district school choice system is "rigged for parents who have the most resources." In fact, one of the strongest criticisms of Boston's intra-district school choice is that often parents do not make any choice at all, because if the paperwork is not filed in time, students are automatically placed without any ranked schools in their formula.

Finally, intra-district school choice has often failed to achieve equal access to schools for poor and minority families. Middle-class parents are often better equipped to deal with the realities of an intra-district school choice policy. They have the education, skills, and resources necessary to make an informed choice. More importantly, they often have the financial resources needed to remove their child from the district and enroll him or her in another school when the child is not placed in one of their ranked schools. On the other hand, poor, minority, and immigrant families are often forced to remain with the school their child is assigned to, as no other public school option is available.

The many flaws in intra-district school choice point toward much needed reforms. These reforms include providing easily accessible information for parents on their choices as well as curtailing the effects of home zone and walking priorities and improving schools throughout the district in order to increase the number of schools parents can choose from. In Boston, the school assignment formula has been modified throughout the years to make the effect of the parental rankings more prominent in the assignment of children to schools. Currently, the city is working to overhaul the school assignment process with help from a federal grant. While a change in the school assignment formula and the structure of the home zones was rejected because the policy would provide fewer options to poor and minority students in the city, the process of developing an improved assignment formula continues. Still, for parents in the process of registering their children for the fall 2012 school year, the old formula remains. They have to deal with the system as it is, improved slightly over the years by district and school quality policies but still limited in terms of true choice and effectiveness.

Amy Baral is a Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline Fellow performing legal and policy research on the Boston Public Schools, focusing on access to quality education and school choice. She is also a 1st year law student at Boston University School of Law.

Husband buys wife a car with their combined income, without her permission. Happy holidays!

Ah, the holiday car commercial. You know the one. What did dad get mom? Just a little box… with a key in it to a new car! The family rushes to the yard, where a shiny new car waits with a big red bow on it. Apparently the tradition was started by Lexus in 1998, when it began its yearly “December to Remember” campaign that promotes a new car as the perfect gift. And it’s been successful: December Lexus sales are traditionally better than any other month. Other car companies have followed suit.

Some of these ads now feature girlfriends buying boyfriends cars for the holidays, but the most traditional form seems to be a husband buying one for his wife. There’s something wrong with this picture. As Annie Lowrey tweets in parody of these ads, “Husband buys wife a car! Wife expresses horror that he made a major financial decision unilaterally, on impulse!” It is strange to think that a man would up and buy his wife a car without consulting her, particularly as most married couples combine their earnings. But it hearkens back to a time when women didn’t have their own earnings, couldn’t buy their own cars, and actually did have to rely on husbands to buy them a new set of wheels.

Take a look at this vintage holiday car ad:

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Look familiar? Or take this non-holiday ad:

Why do these women have to beg their men for cars? Because many can't afford to buy cars outright, but before the 1970s, women, minorities, and low-income families were excluded from credit products. Women in particular were denied loans based on social biases such as the idea that their salaries weren’t dependable because they would become pregnant and stop working. Not to mention that many women didn’t even have their own incomes; in 1950, only 34 percent of women were in the workforce.

These days, women make up almost half of the workforce. Thanks to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, they can take out as many car loans as any man. And while only four percent of husbands made less than their wives in 1970, by 2007 that percentage had risen to 22. A quarter of households are headed by women. Yet even with women having made such strides in income and the ability to make purchases equally with their husbands, this ad celebrates a man who buys his wife a car without permission as if she is helpless to do so.

Nothing says "happy holidays" like some old timey sexism that assumes women can't buy themselves a car when they want one.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.

As states pull back on support for childcare services, single mothers will have an even harder time building wealth and staying out of debt.

Single mothers aren't faring very well in the recovery. Their unemployment rate was 12.4 percent in November, up from 11.7 percent in June 2009. An unemployed single mother will clearly need help with at least one thing to go out and get another job: childcare. And those who have jobs are still trying to make ends meet, potentially working longer hours and in need of someone to care for their children. But just as the need for childcare assistance is surely rising, states are cutting back. A new report from the National Women's Law Center shows that those in need of assistance were worse off this year compared to last year in 37 states when it came to income eligibility limits to qualify, waiting lists, copayments, reimbursement rates, and eligibility for assistance to parents looking for a job.

Denying women support for childcare will directly impact their ability to save and their need to take on debt. As a report from NYU Wagner, "At Rope's End," says, "The hefty costs associated with single parenthood, which include childcare, housing, food, health insurance, among others, decrease the likelihood that, even with a stable income, these mothers will be able to accrue wealth." And paying for childcare is no small cost. The average price of full-time care can range from $3,600 to $18,200 annually, according to the NWLC report, and At Rope's End estimates that this cost accounts for over three-quarters of single mothers' monthly expenditures.

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The effects can be seen in single women's wealth building and debt loads. Wealth is measured by subtracting total debt from total assets; single mothers have a median wealth of only $100. Meanwhile, over three-fourths of single mothers have some kind of debt, and the most common form is credit card debt. Almost half of single mothers -- 47 percent -- have that type of debt, and the median amount is $1,200. When childcare takes up three-quarters of your budget, the other expenses likely have to be put on plastic to make ends meet.

And of course credit card debt can quickly become an expense in and of itself. While about a quarter of single mothers have debt related to education and about 30 percent have debt to own homes, the interest rates are quite different. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is at a record low of 3.94 percent. The interest rate on federal Stafford student loans is 6.8 percent and is 7.9 percent for PLUS loans. Compare that to the average credit card interest rate, 16.75 percent. Any revolving balance left on a credit card will quickly increase the amount of money owed. Not to mention that while student and home debt is certainly a heavy burden on many right now, they at least go toward paying for a potential asset. Credit card debt gets you nothing.

Childcare assistance is not just about the need to support young children's development, or about helping unemployed single mothers get back to work, or making sure employers have female employees who are able to show up at work. Those are all issues. But it's also about keeping single mothers out of debt and helping them build the wealth they need to provide for their families.

Bryce Covert is Editor of New Deal 2.0.