30,000 sacked every year for having babies

[skorpionuk]

... was the headline I spotted in someone's newspaper at Reading station today, instantly raising my hackles, and causing me to utter "how can we even pretend we have equality when this sort of thing goes on?".

The headline belongs to an article published in today's Observer, and is in reference to a new report by the Fawcett Society called Sexism

Comments

[dennyd]

I read a very interesting LJ post by one of Helen's feminist friends last year, in which she theorised that the majority of women have to some extent prioritised 'quality of life' (being in charge of emotionally rewarding activites such as homebuilding, for instance) over 'maximum earnings' for some time now, and this partially explains the discrepancy in the wage numbers.

Our culture has a tendency to score achievement by money (etc) - that's not entirely accurate. If we were to score by 'personal fulfillment' (don't ask me to draw up the scale!) then we might see some interestingly different results in the male/female divide.

[arosoff]

Yes and no. Some women have prioritised 'quality of life' but it's a chicken and egg question. They know it's always women who are expected to sacrifice, and are treated accordingly.

[dennyd]

And men know that if they take six months to a year out to look after their newborn baby, they'll find it a lot harder to justify why they did it (to future employers) than the mum would. The cultural expectation works to the disadvantage of men who'd rather have quality time with their kid than have an unbroken career path, just as much as it works against women who'd rather have the unbroken career path and let the dad look after the kid.

I'm not saying we've got equality, I'm just saying there are more factors than 'who earns most', and they're not all tilted in the same direction.

[skorpionuk]

I also agree with your point about men being disadvantaged if they were to prioritise their family, and that needs fixing just as much as any other inequality.

[skorpionuk]

Agree re: the chicken and egg angle, though not so much with terms like 'sacrifice'... I think I'd see it more that, unless you are presented with the different options, it may not even occur to you that they exist. Or in other words, unless we learn that the father staying at home is just as valid as the mother doing so, then we'll have a much harder time making our lives conform to the idea. Though I can't speak for women who want kids, maybe there's an innate (or should I say, instilled?) sense that pursuing the top branches of their career probably isn't what's expected of them.

[dennyd]

There's also a cultural/societal/legal belief that women are better at looking after kids than men... see the whole 'Fathers For Justice' thing. If it comes to a court decision, primary custody almost invariably goes to the mother, regardless of how much better the father might be doing at 'being a responsible adult' (job, house, etc).

[wildeabandon]

I think that's a bogus stat. Where custody is contested' it splits about 50:50, it's just not contested that often. Will try to find source when I have a bigger internet.

[dennyd]

Hrm, okay - I'd be interested to see real numbers, but my personal experience of watching it happen has been 'borderline-insane benefit-sponge mother gets custody while responsible hard-working dad is lucky to get visiting rights for alternate weekends' on no less than four occasions. Five if we skip the requirement for the mum to be insane :) I've never known a dad to get custody unless the mum agreed to it up-front.

I do realise I'm not a statistical universe in my own right, however :)

[wildeabandon]

Alas, attempts to find numbers lead to a bunch of father-rights activist sites, which weren't citing their sources in a way I could look up, or pay-to-view academic journals.

[skorpionuk]

Our culture has a tendency to score achievement by money (etc) - that's not entirely accurate. If we were to score by 'personal fulfillment' (don't ask me to draw up the scale!) then we might see some interestingly different results in the male/female divide.

It's an interesting thought, I agree, though I can't help but wonder how many of us are brought up to see activities such as 'homebuilding' as more valuable or more expected, i.e. it may not be as open and free a choice as it may seem, even if the idea is sound.

At any rate, I was mainly using women's actual income as an argument why they're still usually expected to be the caregivers, rather than as a measure of their success as people.

[kissmedeadly]

I loathe the quality of life/job satisfaction stuff, courtesy of spending far too many years pointing out that no matter how much I enjoyed my job, this wasn't really a good justification for the fact that no matter how senior I got my wages in my female dominated industry were always massively lower to comparable positions in male dominated industries. It is really annoying when you are on 24/7 for child protection stuff, know if it all goes horribly wrong you won't work again, and are surrounded by blokes who are less senior in their sectors getting paid two or three times as much as you. Quality of life my arse

[libellum]

she theorised that the majority of women have to some extent prioritised 'quality of life' (being in charge of emotionally rewarding activites such as homebuilding, for instance) over 'maximum earnings' for some time now, and this partially explains the discrepancy in the wage numbers.That wasn't quite it. The argument was that women are strongly encouraged to choose subjects they *want* to study, choose degrees that they find interesting, without factoring in how useful or lucrative those qualifications will be in pursuing a career. Women are encouraged to not think in terms of a linear career path, but to move around between industries pursuing their passions and interests, and whatever opportunities arise