Some commonly believed myths:
That the pay of women in Sweden is closer to that of men than in other societies.
In fact, their pay is lower compared to men than it is for women in other countries. The reason is that they have more rights to maternity leave and that commercial employers therefore avoid employing women, particularly in responsible positions. The pay of women in the USA, relative to that of men, is higher.
That women all wish to combine full-time careers with having children.
In fact, in the view of Catherine Hakim, the academic at the London Schools of Economics on whose research this posting is based, women can be more realistically divided into three sorts, with different attitudes: 1.Home-centred women, 2. Adaptive women (who want a mix of home life, part-time work and full-time work) and 3. Work-centred women. Women do not all want to have full-time careers. On the contrary, that sort of woman is in the minority. This is one of those 'The emperor has no clothes' observations. The moment the words are said, most of us recognise from our own experience that they are true.
That women have lower salaries because we live in a sexist country which discriminates against women.
There is certainly some discrimination. But those women who are work-centred have shown that they are well able to reach senior positions. The main reasons for the generally lower pay of women are that a) they dip in and out of the job market and/or work part time and b) that they are entitled to maternity leave which means they are less attractive to employers.
Catherine Hakim's book, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century, is a serious academic work and by no means a light read. However it has plenty of meat in it, plenty of surprising information based on solid reserach. It is important as a de-bunking of the lazy assumptions of the politically correct. Here is one excerpt:
Some scholare are now concluding that Nordic egalitarian polices have failed, that the aim of complete gender symmetry is probably unattainable, and that policies acknowledging women's greater involvement in child-rearing would be preferable (Hoem 19995: 295). Family-friendly policies certainly help adaptive women to combine employment with family work. But it appears that they cannot, as some have hoped, also produce complete equality of men and women in the labour market, and apparently not even in the family either. This second objective is feasible, but only for work-centred women, an entirely different group. In sum, the policy failed to distinguish between adaptive and work-centred women. The achievements of the two groups differ because adaptive women have divided loyalties that cannot be resolved by time flexibility alone.
One of many interesting facts in her book is that "a study of women in the top jobs of the British National Health Service found that half were childless, althought the majority had married at some point".
And again, "Virtually all women who are eligible for job-protected maternity leave in Britian tell their employer that they want to return to the their job after childbirth, but only about half do so in practice....Only a minority of mothers of small children return to full-time work."
The book can be bought by clicking on any of the Amazon links in the left column or by clicking here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General • Parenting
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Matthew,
Of course people who work receive mroe income than those who don't, but surely the point here is that the state takes a biased view of which mothers are worth supporting. On the one hand they provide a personal tax allowance for mothers who work, but do not do so for women who stay at home via allowing them to transfer their allowance to a working partner.
Likewise, state-funded childcare would represent a huge bias in favour of working mothers at the expense of women who stay at home and presumably do not need the childcare provisions.
Surely the most equitable solution would be to give all mothers the same entitlement to support in financial terms, and then allow them to choose how to use it.
Posted by: Ricky at April 5, 2005 02:35 PM
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There appears to be a conflict in your thinking. You clearly are not in favour of welfare state policies such as child benefit. But you are also in favour of mothers staying at home. I suspect scrapping the former would reduce the latter.
There was a question in a YouGov poll the other week much quoted by the Right, which showed that young people believed that 'All other things equal a woman should stay at home to look after her children not go out to work'. The result showed nothing because -- much like yourself- the question appears to ignore the question of compensation. All other things are not equal, because if you go to work you are much richer.
That is, oddly enough, why people do it.
Posted by: Matthew at March 23, 2005 01:22 PM