Inequality of women at work

Maybe this will help:

[url=http://www.vancourier.com/Labour+council+elects+first+female+president/4... and District Labour Council elects first female president[/color][/url]

It 's both. This can get complicated. There are situations where women in men in the same job are paid differently (sometimes not even for reasons that are someone's fault in particular - for example, from men being socialized to be more assertive and ask for larger raises) and then there are situations where men and women in a particular job are paid equally but the job has a history of being female-dominated and may be undepaid relative to jobs with a similar leve of skill and responsibility.

so a hypothetical might be if you're a "secretary" you'd get paid less since it's a traditionally female position, whereas if you're a "personal assistant" you'd get paid more even if it's essentially the same tasks? that kind of thing?

i'm wondering if anyone knows of a link to some of the stuff in this particular case or something similar i could read up on?

Ghislaine wrote:

Agreed, however I would add the caveat...more support for parents, men and women alike. Workplaces should respect that parents need to raise their children, ie if a child is sick and one parent needs to stay home, special events, etc.  The attitude in a lot of workplaces seems to be "don't take your personal issues to work!", as if your child was just another personal issue.

So true!  Though I would add that the involvement of fathers in parenting is entirely voluntary.  I agree that the dads should get lots of support, but whether or not dads are involved with their kids remains entirely their choice, and therein lies the root of inequality.

In my circle of friends/acquaintances, the difference between a life of upper middle class comfort (like my Facebook friends whose status updates consist of bragging about how great their lives are, flying all over the place on expensive vacations, pics of their latest home renovations - maybe I should block these people), and a life of poverty, is the involvement of a man with a stable job.

So one friend, we'll call her a yoga instructor, who to be fair is an excellent mum to her kids, and lives in a 5-bedroom house in a matured-treed, large-lawned, Rob-Ford-voting area of Toronto, and is hugely self-satisfied, secure because she married an emotionally stable nice guy who works in government.

Another yoga instructor friend lives with her daughters in a leaky basement apartment in south Parkdale, having fled the alcoholic abusive spouse.  No smugness there - the apartment is a step up from the women's shelter where she initially landed.

Dad involvement is awesome and should be supported.  But many women continue to be one man away from poverty.  (There I go, overstating the obvious again.)  And in some cases, saying that "Men are parents too" de-emphasizes the necessity for supporting women.  And women need to be supported more than men for reasons of their biological role in reproduction.

Equality of support for men and women as parents will in fact bureaucratically solidify the inequality of men and women.

Ghislaine wrote:

One female-dominated profession that I think is extremely undervalued is nursing. Any woman that has had a baby knows that the nurses do EVERYTHING. The doctor is basically the "catcher" and is there for the last 5-10 mins. (I know they are trained for abnormal situations). during my experience, I could not get over the fact that the doctor was watching TV in a little room with a bed until the nurse summoned him at the last moment. Partly due to the shortage of doctors, our provincial health system is offloading some doctor responsibilities to nurses, with no corresponding pay raise.

True true.  My mum was a maternity nurse.  Nurses get more money/respect than they used to, and my mum feels that's because more men are choosing nursing as a profession.

In general, nurses have all the responsibility of health care, and none of the power (but societal disrespect for front-line health care workers is a topic for another thread).

I hear what you're saying, Agent Smith, and I don't downplay the contribution dads make.  My point is about how the biological impact of being a mother results in economic discrepancies.  For instance, my ability to work after having my 1st baby was impacted by post-natal depression and breast-feeding.

Sometimes men take over all the parenting when a mother abandons her child.  But sometimes this abandonment occurs because the woman is depressed.  Post-natal depression is recognized better than it used to be.  But it's still under-recognized, IMV.

Bit of drift: one of the frequent complaints of my female friends is how fatherhood is so lauded.  When our girls were small, my husband would sometimes go about the neighbourhood towing both of them in the wagon.  I heard about this constantly, about what an awesome dad he was, dragging these kids all over while he went about his day (the way we did childcare, I worked days, he worked evenings).  But when a woman is a good mum, there's still all of the nit-picking.  ("you buy Kinder Eggs for your kids all the time?")

Being a good mum is a minimum standard in our culture.  But a good dad is a hero.

But back to the quesiton of work, it would be much better if the parental leave system we have were not tied in with EI. When both our children were born I was able to take parental leave because at the time I had a wage. My partner, who is self employed was unable to, so we essentially lived off my benefits. Good thing, because circumstances made it necessary for us to both stop working, but it was not adequate, and I could see how someone with less support would have had a much harder time of it.

A colleague of mine was once in the position where she was wondering whether to lie about her intentions to come back to work, because part of her benefits depended on it (she didn't eventually). I don't think anyone should be put in that position. And really I think the only reason it is connected to EI is because it is a cash cow. But the fact is there are enough mothers who fall outside of that system but still need support that it should be separate.

Plus there are certainly women who get passed over for work because the possibility of maternity benefits is in the back of the prospective employer's head. I am sure the question doesn't even enter their minds when it is a man, even though a new child could mean a similar disruption and cost.

One of the biggest causes of the inequality is the fact that even for a married couple, if one parent has to have their career suffer to look after the children, it is almost always the woman.

This is because in a couple, the woman is usually younger, and usually earns less, which means that it is to the economic benefit of the couple for the woman to take time off rather than the man.

I don't know how you legislate this away or if we need to.

I would really like to see some comparitive studies between childless single men and childless single women, to see what sort of wage gaps exist there.