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Are Mother’s Punished in the Workforce?

August 5, 2010 by Lance Somerfeld

According to David Leonhardt of the New York Times, the Labor Market is Punishing to Mothers.  Ruth, Thanks for sharing! My philosophy on this blog is that in order to offer quality content for fathers, we certainly need to understand what the moms are facing as well.  Leonhardt supports his position that full-time female workers make 23% less than full-time male workers with lots of facts.

Men and women are not identical, of course. Many more women take time off from work. Many more women work part time at some point in their careers. Many more women can’t get to work early or stay late.  And our economy exacts a terribly steep price for any time away from work — in both pay and promotions. People often cannot just pick up where they have left off. Entire career paths are closed off. The hit to earnings is permanent.

The significant wage differential between male and female employees has been included in hundreds of business articles since the economic downturn. It’s nice to read an article where I am able to grasp some of the reasoning behind the statistic.  The explanation sounds plausible, and demonstrates that there is a steep road ahead on gender equality – one that will take a significant amount of time, require policy changes, as well as a cultural shift.  No being savvy in politics or economics, I tend to agree with the article’s closing remarks, “With both government and corporate budgets tight, it’s easy to be pessimistic, but I think history argues for optimism. This country doesn’t always move quickly or evenly toward equality. Yet it does tend to move in one broad direction.  For almost 200 years, the Supreme Court did not have a single woman on its bench. Sometime later this week, it is likely to have three.”
 
I leave you with this to statement to mull over: In regards to the U.S being the only “rich” country without a PAID parental leave policy…”Giving parents here a full year of leave for each child would cost about $25 billion a year, or less than 0.2 percent of gross domestic product.”

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Filed Under: NYC, work-life balance Tagged With: family leave, moms, work-life balance, working parents

About Lance Somerfeld

Lance Somerfeld, co-founder of City Dads Group, lives with his wife and two children in New York City. He frequently contributes to the conversation about modern fatherhood, work-life balance, shifting gender roles, and brand’s marketing to dads. He has appeared on local and national television, including CNN, Today and Katie. He has been quoted by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, GQ, Parenting and The Atlantic.

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