Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Article: Princeton's Woman Problem

I often wonder about how intelligent society is. The people who care for our children, grow our food, supply us with water are amongst the lower earners. Yet some person who sits in an office requesting a bunch of often useless reports is paid so much.

Maybe we should take money out of the equation and go back to a trade based system. I wonder how well the report people will eat.

Bostonian, I'd still argue that such surveys and longitudinal studies are just not asking the right questions.

While it is certainly true that women are punished professionally for becoming parents (and really, for even possessing the potential, truth be told), they aren't the only ones that suffer from these cultural norms. Men who do choose to spend time with their children as caregivers are often punished MORE than if their female partners had done so.

It's an expectation for women-- but it's still virtually a taboo for men. That has distinct sequelae, all of which are evident in or at least consistent with every study I've ever seen regarding lifetime earning power, career advancement, gender disparity, and the rest:

a) women are paid less to begin with because they are seen as inherently UNRELIABLE/LESS PERMANENT than their male (and non-childbearing) colleagues,

b) when women are mothers, they are passed over for critical assignments because there is an assumption that they will not make such professional work a top priority (and the coincident assumption is that a male colleague WILL, which is equally invalid)

c) when women continue to make "male" choices even after becoming parents, they are often labeled fairly harshly by even professional colleagues, and this has a social cost that can spill over into judgements about professionalism, as well (she must be pretty heartless... might be capable of throwing ME under the bus, too, if she won't even stay home with a sick kid)

d) when MEN make "female" choices, they are branded (often permanently) as being uncompetitive or unprofessional. Not management material, maybe even not 'masculine' enough in a male-dominated field.



It's a very sad state of affairs, really.

The fact that this disproportionately impacts women at high level earning potential probably has to do with the fact that most high income women are in STEM occupations, which are male-dominated.

I'd venture to guess that the most severe impact to MEN is also in male-dominated professions-- which would include STEM, but also manual labor positions in the blue collar sector. Those are positions where masculinity is very important professionally.

Excellent way to put it, asking the wrong questions is the problem I see.

In a department consisting of 90 men and 10 women, where during the downsizing, they removed 1 man and 6 women, there just wasn't enough women left behind to find out what would have happened to the women in this case. There were no complaints from the woman as they were more than happy not to be in the environment.

I learned what it was like to be a single male parent. They allowed me to not be on call due to my situation. But it was more than clear they did not want me around after I was in this situation. I wish they would have included me in the downsizing list as at least I would have had a payout rather than leave on my own later.

The small minority of us who found the environment rather disturbing coined a name for the other group. One day my male manager said the ABCs are at it again. Found out is meant All Boys Club.

I am finding this thread very interesting! I'm trying not to say too much as it is closely related to my area of interest, but I'm reading avidly. I love your post, HowlerKarma, it is very true. All too often in this area, no-one is asking the right questions.

Unlike some other posters, I don't see women's lower earnings and slower career advancement after having children as being a problem to be solved by society but as a natural result of decisions they make. Virginia Postrel agrees in a Wall Street Journal essay published today:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216651515154140.html
'Mommy Track' Without Shame: A notorious article urging flexibility is proven right

Motherhood, it seems, is the Middle East of social controversy. Alliances may shift, new dogmas and leaders may arise, tactics may change, but the fundamental conflict resists resolution. Despite the efforts of would-be peacemakers, impassioned partisans continue battling to claim all the territory as their own. My way, they declare, is the one right way to be a good mother, a real woman, a fulfilled human being.

Fortunately, nobody dies in the mommy wars (a term popularized by Newsweek 21 years ago). And, despite the ongoing verbal assaults, American women have actually established a modus vivendi. Most continue to have and raise children and, in greater numbers than ever before, to combine motherhood not just with jobs but careers�vocations in which they make long-term investments and from which they derive not only income but personal satisfaction and identity.

Irony of ironies, they do so largely by following the advice of Felice Schwartz, who ignited the first great conflagration of the modern mommy wars with her 1989 Harvard Business Review article "Management Women and the New Facts of Life," or, as it was immediately and derisively labeled, "The Mommy Track."

Ms. Schwartz, who died in 1996, began with the idea that not all professional women are alike. Some focus primarily on careers, making "the same trade-offs traditionally made by the men who seek leadership positions." But most want children, and once they have kids, these "talented and creative" women, "are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends."

<rest of article at link>

The original 1989 Mommy Track article is at http://hbr.org/1989/01/management-women-and-the-new-facts-of-life/ar/1 and a discussion of it at Slate, "The Mommy Track Turns 21: Why it no longer deserves a bad rap from feminists." is at http://www.slate.com/id/2249312/ .

Seems like a good time to reprise this.

If this is simply about "women's choices" then where does the REAL* income disparity come from?

* real as in comparisons of apples to apples here-- meaning same age/experience/job descriptions, or close to identical.

(And this was very real. My former employer settled with its female faculty members for MILLIONS in back pay as a result-- my DH was hired three years after I was, and yet he earned ~10% more than I did in base salary. He actually had LESS classroom experience than I did. So why?? A: he was male.) Our employer actually had a rule that we could not discuss our remuneration with our colleagues... Hard to enforce in a household with a single joint bank account, however-- so we knew. We had colleagues (also married couples) that knew, too. But it was hidden from most faculty just what that "gap" looked like. But it existed.

This is NOT about "women's choices" as often (IMO) as it is about those in power structures assuming what those choices WILL be.

In other words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. IE-- if you hire someone and say, "I'm pretty sure that because you were unemployed, you're probably lazy, so I'm only going to pay you half of what I'm paying your co-workers," then guess what? You probably will get an employee who isn't too concerned about being an especially 'hard' worker.


In two income households, decisions about who takes responsibility for life's snags is often made on the basis of whose job pays better. That's not rocket science, it's a simple financial decision. You choose to inconvenience the employer of the person whose remuneration/position is most easily replaced or omitted.


The notion that this is about the choices of individual women is deeply flawed for a second reason, too. It does NOTHING to explain why wages flatten with respect to cost-of-living and wage increases across the employment market when the field becomes a female-dominated one.

It certainly doesn't explain why women who DO NOT take the "Mommy Track" are punished in some instances almost as if they had. (This is the 'well, we knew you would eventually' argument... which often DOES result in a women leaving the position/field out of sheer disgust or anger over unfairness.)

Interesting ideas to consider? Of course. But I don't think for a moment that these can be summed up in nice little sound bites, or that a return to some mythical 'traditional' system would fix it all.

I made this decision, but it was not any more natural than any other option. Like HowlerKarma, it was due to lower earning capacity. And even if the decision WAS natural - and I'm not saying it is - then that doesn't make it natural that people should be penalized for it.

The penalization is a function of our society, NOT a natural consequence of biology. Choosing to mother (or father) your children should not be penalized.

It is a function of the way our society is so segregated, how children are marginalized in so many ways. Women and men who choose (or a required to by virtue of their children's nature) to have primary care of their children are excluded from many areas of our society. We have all had the experience, I'm sure, of dirty looks when we bring our children to something remotely intellectual. Work can be extremely difficult.

The 'natural' argument also does not address the issues raised by HowlerKarma. (Good post btw)

We could argue if this segregation is good or bad, but I do not believe the argument that it is in anyway natural can hold water.

I agree totally.

Just because society is running the way it is now or how it once ran with women staying home and only the men working, does not mean either is a natural or even a good way for a society to run.

I worked in the corporate head office as a professional. Most of the people working extra hours were not the most productive people. I think it had more to do with putting on a show than anything else. The golf they often played probably was more about putting on a show than a real interest in golf IMHO.

I think it is natural for mothers to want to spend more time with their children than fathers, and a Pew study http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=869 confirms this:

"Fully two-thirds of women with children ages 17 or younger work either full time or part time. Most have full-time jobs outside of the home (74%), but just 37% of working mothers prefer this role. A strong majority of working moms (62%) would rather work part time; a job situation enjoyed by just 26% of working mothers. Over a decade ago, just 48% of working mothers said a part-time job would be ideal. Today's working mothers look little like their male counterparts. Fully 79% of working fathers prefer to work full time, while just 21% say part-time employment would be ideal."

Now to the second assertion on sex discrimination. Studies find that all or nearly all of the income disparity between men and women is not due to discrimination but their choices of careers and how much they work. Christina Hoff Sommers debunked the 77-cent myth in

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22Sommers.html
Fair Pay Isn�t Always Equal Pay
New York Times
September 21, 2010

...

But the bill isn�t as commonsensical as it might seem. It overlooks mountains of research showing that discrimination plays little role in pay disparities between men and women, and it threatens to impose onerous requirements on employers to correct gaps over which they have little control.

The bill is based on the premise that the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, has failed; for proof, proponents point out that for every dollar men earn, women earn just 77 cents.

But that wage gap isn�t necessarily the result of discrimination. On the contrary, there are lots of other reasons men might earn more than women, including differences in education, experience and job tenure.

When these factors are taken into account the gap narrows considerably � in some studies, to the point of vanishing. A recent survey found that young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts, mostly because more of them earn college degrees.

Moreover, a 2009 analysis of wage-gap studies commissioned by the Labor Department evaluated more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the aggregate wage gap �may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.�

In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents. They also tend to value family-friendly workplace policies more than men, and will often accept lower salaries in exchange for more benefits. In fact, there were so many differences in pay-related choices that the researchers were unable to specify a residual effect due to discrimination.

<end of excerpt>

A good book on the subject is "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell . It is summarized at http://www.warrenfarrell.net/Summary/index.html .

Apart from empirical studies, Economics 101 says that in a free market, if some firms pay men substantially more than women for the same work, they will be outcompeted by firms that firms that do not discriminate.

Bostonian,

I think that it is true that American women today are more likely to prefer part-time work and to express more desire to spend time with children than their male counterparts are, but I would also point out that, far from this being a consequence of "nature", there is fairly strong social acceptance or even approval of women who express these preferences, and there are *very* strong social penalties for males who express the same desires.

In our family, around the time my son was born, my earning potential was significantly higher than my husband's, so we made the rational decision for him to be our son's primary caregiver and a SAHD (for what we thought would be the few years until my son was in school). The amount of flack that he (and I) caught (and still catch)for him being "Mr.Mom", the number of people who ask me why I "tolerate" him "sponging" off of me, the number of times groups on the playground and at the library and museum, and later, in homeschooling support groups, made it very clear that while Moms were supported, Dads who took care of kids were weird and not welcome, makes me highly suspicious that men's reluctance to sacrifice career development to take on greater family responsibilities has little to do with nature or natural roles (my husband loves being home with his boy), and quite a bit to do with the harsh social disapproval that they would encounter if they did so.