Sunday, July 17, 2016
A Field Where Working Moms Aren’t Punished
The Atlantic: There’s a question that still, however unfairly, haunts many working women: whether marriage and children are bad career moves. While the size of the gender pay gap is often disputed, there is one gulf that appears to be pretty indisputable: Gender pay disparities are the most dire for married women.
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3 comments:
Honestly, this information is not really something that surprises me. I have watched at my mother, who is a doctor, takes extra time during the week working, to make up for the fact that she has two children that she would like to spend her weekends with. Many of my friends have told me that they would rather not have children on the grounds that having children would make it difficult for them to work, and make all the hard work that they put in for education worthless. I personally would like a family and kids. The arts I feel are probably the best place to be if you would like to have kids. The arts are such a free and open space, especially visually artist. Theater might be a bit more difficult, simply because if an actress is pregnant it may limit the roles that she can have. There has always been a struggle in women between working or having a family, and I think that there will always be that struggle.
As someone with a working mother, I’ve always had strong feelings about the challenges mothers face in the workplace. My mother is an accountant, and whether it is because she is a woman or a mother, possibly even both, she does not share the same benefits as some of her colleagues do. My mother sacrifices a lot so I can get a great education and enjoy life without having to worry about financial problems and it bothers me, like it does for many people who see or experience it every day, that a woman who works harder than her fellow colleagues and is penalized for wanting to do what’s best for her children. I am proud that the industry I hope to enter is more accepting of women and is able to be more flexible to fit their scheduling needs. I understand that there is a reason why many white collar jobs cannot be very flexible, but it is still unfair to penalize women and reward me for having families, and hope that I do not have to face the same problems when I eventually join the workforce.
I find it ridiculous that women still are getting pay docks for having children. If the fatherhood bonus did not exist, I could understand the pay being lower due to time missed during pregnancy leave and likely missed hours so the parent could go home and take care of the child or miss days; however, not only are the fathers unpenalized, but rewarded for being parents? That's unbelievable given that fathers have equal responsibility to a child, given both paternity leave and paid days off for caring for the family. It is great that artists can makeup up for the gender gap in flexible hours due to the job type, but the issue shouldn't exist in the first place. Trading out lost pay for absurd hours or having to work while watching children isn't a good compromise when men in the same industry don't have the worry about the same problem. I believe this comes from the outdated gender stereotypes that women get "mother hen syndrome" with a kid and don't work as hard while working fathers are for some reason determined more loyal. There are problem we shouldn't have to face.
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