After the pink goat

Thanks for an interesting and insightful post!

I totally agree with you, the issue has me frothing at the mouth as well. In fact, this is exactly what I'm going to post about. Thank you so much for your inspiration! I'll link back to your post.

As long as there are some people aware of the problem (and even the fact that it IS a problem), change must occur sometime, right?

Right. That's what I'll keep telling myself, at least.

There's not much that can be done so long as women are paid the minimum rate allowable under law. A lot of it has to do with statistics. Women are more likely, on average, to take off work for extended periods of time due to parenting responsibilities or caring for an invalid parent. A lot of it might also have something to do with productivity. I don't know any of this, mind you, I'm merely speculating. There has to be some reason for it.

I know I used to hear the excuse that men tend to be breadwinners of their families, and therefore male workers on average have more people to support in terms of family responsibilities.

Where it all comes down to is fairness in promotion. If a woman does her share ofthe work and is punctual, does not take off an inordinate amount of time, be it for childbirth or other matters, then she should be treated equally in terms of raises and promotions.

If she does take off for extended periods of time, then she is not likely to receive the same consideration when it comes to raises or promotions. So it is a matter of averages.

In most cases, women who do not receive the same amount of pay and who do not receive the same percentage of raises and promotions probably tends to fall within that category of women who take off those extended periods.

When you look at the percentages, therefore, ti is probably going to look like the system is biased against women, but this is based on an innacurate view of the data.

Not all women are in childbirth age or are willing to do it or have kids at all. That's why I think that kind of statistic can't be justified.

Not to mention that even if so, employers should be encouraged to help such women decrease their leaves and get better at their work. Because women are important part of the work process. True, you can have the same result be employing men only, but this way you miss the creativity of the rest of the humankind. Because people are not the same and genders doesn't think the same.

And I don't understand why parenting women should be punished by the society, while men should be encouraged to be "professionals". Why do we keep on getting pregnant then, if obviously people consider that bad. Not to mention that now-a-days men are less less likely to be breadwinners of their families.

For me, both parents should have equal responsibility to their children and should be allowed if not even forced to take the same amount of time off to take care of the children. Otherwise it's simply not fair.

This status quo is hurting the humankind. It's simply wrong.
I'm not saying all women should be forced to work, but those that do work, should be supported to be as productive and as good earners as men. And laws should be more encouraging toward having children, because childbirth rate is a problem in developed countries just because of that. Women doesn't want to have children until it's too late from fear they will loose their jobs and the independence it implies.

What I am saying is that if you look just at the women who do not take off for extended periods of time, for whatever reason, and who are as productive as the average male worker, you will probably see that their raises and promotions come about at a comparable rate as the men.

The women who do take off for extended periods of time, however, will not do as well in the raises and promotions.

Yet, if you look at all women as the same and lump them all into one category, it will look as though the system is skewed against women, when that might not necessarily be the case.

As for how the government and/or employers can help those working women that take off to have children, there is only so much they can do.

The government provides, either directly or indirectly through the employer, mandates for health care coverage and education for the children, and in many cases the children are provided with day care, sometimes free, or at least, hopefully affordable.

Plus, in most cases, women are at least guaranteed that when they are ready to return to work, their jobs will be there waiting for them, or at least they will be given a similar position at a comparable rate of pay, in some cases perhaps a better position if one is available.

Other than that, what else can they do? When it comes time to give promotions, you can't really expect an employer to pass over a man who has worked hard every day for a woman who just came back from an extended lay-off from having a child. There are only so many promotions to go around, after all.

If they followed that formula, then it would be devastating for workplace morale, and thus productivity. To say nothing of the fact that it would probably be illegal, because you are putting women then in a higher status than men, by giving them an advantage in raises and promotions based merely on gender.

It's not all about promotions, you get a promotion probably once in a year. Or in some case once in 5 years. And that's a long period, while a maternity leave is no longer than 3 years I think. I know in USA that may differ, but the report was for EU anyway.And the average people doesn't live the corporate life. People like me would never live it.

The thing is that if what you say is true, the statistics still is horribly wrong. If there is affordable day care, but still the mother should take a leave if the kid is sick, how that helps the situation? Because children do get sick A LOT! Then that help is not enough.And we're still in sucky situation. Either the government or the employer should provide not only day care, but also nanny for sick children or simply we should stop giving births. Because if I'm a smart and ambitious woman and I have my job with perspective of promotion and I want a kid, but I know this will devastate my career /especially if I'm not rich enough to get a nanny/ , how exactly this will happen? Should I risk my shiny job and have that kid knowing that its daddy won't have the same problems like me in his job and that he'll get ahead in his career while I'll go down. Or should I wait until I get 35 and the last bell start ringing and I have no choice. And that's not healthy, even with modern health care.

Not to mention all those women that are not smart and ambitious, who have a kid very early and never get the chance to acquire qualification. You'll say it's up to them, but why should a woman have it so difficult and all the man should care is about his career?

It's not true there's not much to be done. There are many ways to deal with the problem. People simply don't. Because most of them consider that the greatest gift for a woman is to be a mother and that's enough to justify her living. While the first part is true, the second is not. Jobs are a way to express yourself, to be independent, to have security provided by YOU, to interact with people and feel useful. It is important for you. And denying a field of development of all these women, we get the whole society on a wrong leg. I believe.

And again, children are mutual responsibility. I don't think it's fair to require from a person to sacrifice his/her life, just to be a parent. The society must have a way to make sure both parents can equally well participate in that process without damaging their life.

How? Providing day care, nannies, health care /not to mention about all those without health care in USA, right?/, suitable time off that in case the person still manages his/hers responsibilities won't affect the over-all record, qualification for young mommies, subsidies to employers for keeping parents and other goodies like that.

Yup, I'm a socialist. But I don't think it's right to have uneducated women to breed the humankind and educated women-to work like crazy and never have the chance to raise a person and share what they have learned with that person.