Anybody got stats for Sweden handy? Preferably someone who can read Swedish, I can’t but I know we have several Swedes on the board.
Lars: currently on a 1y paternity leave.
Alex: about to go on 2 months paternity leave. Intends to do the same for the next several years, adding those 2 months to his usual summer vacation. For his firstborn he took a year off.
Johann and Maria: they took leave in 6-month turns.
But that’s all anecdotes, actual statistical data would be nice.
No, that is just a complete logic fail. The amount of maternity leave is 100% independent from whether it is segregated by gender.
Incorrect. What I said was pretty clear, but I’ll rephrase it for you: if you perpetuate a policy despite knowledge of the disparate effects without any legitimate reason for that policy then you are discriminating. Not only do many people define discrimination that way, many laws define it that way. Indeed, some laws don’t even require the knowledge part (see, e.g., the Fair Housing Act).
I would like ANY maternity leave. My current employer offers none beyond whatever sick leave and vacation I can save up.
I would like my husband to have equal access to paternity leave-- and that would have to be real access, that he wouldn’t be penalized for taking. That would not only make us better able to share the career hit that comes with time off in the early weeks, but it would enable me to better be closer to full productivity when I get back.
Here are some recent studies on the gender pay gap, and what they have found:
82% of the differences, according to this study, can be accounted for simply by personality traits and preferences
This study argues that married women tend to also work in less skill intensive and lower paying industries that non-married women. So there’s “wage gaps” everywhere you look 
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504851.2011.607108#.VZchp_lViko
This study looks at doctors.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199604113341506
This study also looks at doctors:
Chart showing the distribution of hours worked per week and pay per hour, by gender
This study looks at individual preferences in sorting themselves out during the application process.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2011.00654.x/abstract;jsessionid=FD6B38E3AA4D84AD2D3B7458760360FB.f03t01
This is another study looking at personality traits that lead to differences in pay
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2010.500272#.VZckVPlViko
This study looks at a longitudinal panel
Here’s a PEW survey result. Basic stuff, but might be informative.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/14/on-equal-pay-day-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-gender-pay-gap/
A few things need to be kept in mind:
Difference in pay is not evidence of discrimination!
Unexplained by other variables does not mean that what’s left over is discrimination!
People’s choices to get particular educations, enter particular jobs, have families or quit jobs…isn’t discrimination!
The prevalence of more men, or more women, in a particular industry is not evidence of discrimination!
Childbearing is segregated by gender. :smack:
Read your definition again, and explain to me where the “disparate effects” and the “legitimate reason” part come in, and in which policy.
ITR champion: I consider myself a liberal. I voted for Hillary in the primaries, and then voted for Obama twice. I think Obama’s been (and is) a great president.
Having said all that, I agree with you. The 77% statistic is misleading to the point of being false. Repeating false statistics is counterproductive. I wish that liberals - including Jon Stewart and John Oliver (both of whom I otherwise love) - would not do it.
You’ve given several reasons for the pay gap. I’d like to add one more: there’s simply more social pressure brought on men to be earners, and even to be high-earners. A woman can stop working, if she wants, and rely on her husband’s income, with little or no social disapproval. That option isn’t really available for most men. In the first place, most wives simply wouldn’t put up with it. Secondly (and less importantly) there would inevitably be a certain amount of social shaming of a man who did it. What that means is that if you’re a woman in a really shitty job - including a high-paying shitty job - you can probably quit, and find another job. (Or, if you have a husband, perhaps stop working altogether.) Because for men - more so than women - your income defines who you are. That, I think, explains why the hardest, most dangerous jobs are almost exclusively done by men. Even a relatively small increase in pay is enough to get men to do really dangerous, unpleasant, unhealthy work. For women, not so much. FWIW, 89% of men are in the workforce, vs 59% of women.
I’m completely in favor of maternity leave. I’m also completely in favor of paternity leave. There should be no expectation that mom takes care of the baby, so long as somebody does. Raising the next generation is a huge, unpaid service parents provide for the economy. We, as a nation, should do what we can to help them.
You may be surprised to learn that the act of birthing a child generally takes less than three months. Once you realize that fact, you will understand that maternity leave is about child care, not birth. Smack smiley indeed.
For example, we know that offering women but not men maternity leave will cause even more women to take leave than men than nature would dictate. We know this has disparate effects on their careers. And there is no legitimate reason to segregate parental leave by gender.
Part of where you are confused is that you think people complaining about the wage gap are necessarily complaining about employers. But as many of the examples offered in this thread made clear, the discriminating party isn’t necessarily the employer.
Child care also discriminates by gender. Naturally
Fine, lets remove maternity leave for women then. 
Other than biology?
Right. It’s people’s choices.
Here is an interesting video from Norway on gender differences that lead to different preferences, and thus different outcomes
Nature is cruel.
It does. But not so absolutely as childbearing, which was your original bad argument.
This new bad argument is bad because whatever influences biology might have on who stays home, there are also additional cultural and social influences. One of those is bad workplace policies. Observing that more women might take leave regardless of the policies is irrelevant to whether we should set up the policies to discriminate on the basis of gender.
You implicitly reason that if someone makes a choice that is not under formal duress or otherwise coerced that we can ignore any social or cultural influences that played a role in that choice. So you would say, for example, that gay people who choose to remain closeted are just making a personal choice, right?
I don’t see how mine was a “bad argument”, but whatever.
Yes of course there are social and cultural influences. So what?
It’s called life.
Fine, Lets remove maternity leave then. That would solve your problem, wouldn’t it?
No, I’m saying that’s not discrimination. If you want to change cultural and societal norms, go for it. No one is stopping you.
You’re not considering the reverse causality in the development of these social and cultural norms. These are developed by people, organically, and for a reason. Maybe they have evolved that way because women preferred it that way? And maybe some of those norms have endured, because women prefer them too?
Unfortunately for your argument, however, the evidence from other countries just doesn’t support your argument. http://s15.postimg.org/x9xqu1qkr/OECD_Gender_Pay_Gap_001.png
There is no country in the WORLD where an “equal” average pay has been ever observed or achieved (Hungary in the above graph is not actually 0. Hungary is at about 20% difference in fact), regardless of workplace policies. In fact, the countries that come closest are dirt-poor countries like Ethiopia, where “equality” is easier to achieve due to the fact that no one makes anything there in the first place.
You don’t see how reasoning that only women can give birth so only women should be given months of paid leave is a bad argument? If that’s true, I suggest you give it more thought.
So, some of those influences are the result of sexism. We should get rid of those, so people are free to make choices without artificial barriers that result from discrimination. It’s a pretty basic observation.
It would solve the problem of discriminatory maternity leave policies. It would not solve the underlying problem, for reasons that I hope are obvious at this point.
Then we’re just left with your idiosyncratic definition of sexism. That’s fine. I don’t really care to debate the finer points of the English language with you.
No, I don’t. Firms are free to give paternity leave if they want. No one is stopping them. They certainly get pressure to give maternity leave a lot more than to give paternity leave. And there’s a reason for that. Biology.
That’s not an observation. That’s your opinion.
Alas, it is not obvious.
You’re equating social norms with sexism, and the saying that it’s sexism because you think its sexism. This isn’t about the finer points of the English language. It’s about what social norms are, how they are developed, how they persist, why they persist etc.
By your definition EVERY social norm is discriminatory, since by definition, every social norm seeks to impose a societal cost for deviating from those norms.
Which is the fundamental flaw in the “liberal” logic on this topic. It is in essence saying that people shouldn’t be free to express and act on their preferences, if those preferences contradict your vision of “equality”.
Watch the video from Norway I linked to above in post #89.
No. I’m saying part of the cause of wage gap is sexist social norms. These include, for example, the way people will label the same behaviors in men and women differently, calling one assertive and the other bitchy. I hadn’t identified particular norms and explained how they were sexist before this post because it hadn’t yet become evident that you deny that they exist. Indeed, I’m still not clear on whether you think some of the social norms that effect the relevant choices are the result of sexism. Do you deny that or not?
Law firms and public accounting firms have lost a LOT of pay discrimination lawsuits over this over the years. I haven’t kept up recently (personally, it doesn’t seem too smart for a law firm to set a woman up to sue them over not making partner, its not like she doesn’t have the tools to sue you - maybe they’ve caught on since I paid attention to such things).
My own experience is dated - its from the mid 90s. Over the course of four years three women and three men did the same job. I was the only one with a degree AND the only one certified in the field. We had similar levels of experience for the job - were all about the same age. No one had kids. The women were paid 60% of what the men were on average - none of the women made what the lowest paid man did. I got it fixed. (We found out because of bonus checks that were based off salary and when you start talking about what you are going to do with your bonus check, it becomes pretty easy to discover someone’s is twice what someone else’s is - and from there, we got numbers).
Also, regarding women in tech doing different jobs - women in tech often get pushed into doing different jobs. We don’t have a BA, so the female programmer ends up doing BA functions because someone needs to do it and she pitches in. PMs often happen that way as well. Suddenly you turn around and you are no longer a developer, you are a BA or a PM. But if you don’t pitch in, well, women get dinged for being non-cooperative in that situation where men often don’t. I know a LOT of female developers who move companies a lot to avoid that.
You can call it whatever you want. All I’m saying is that you’re ignoring why people think that way, and if that eventual social norm which is created is one which is preferred by “society”.
I have no reason or desire to claim that people are making the wrong choices, and holding the wrong opinions, simply because they don’t match with mine. Nor is this something you can legislate.
You go tell women that they shouldn’t expect their husbands to work hard and make money, and that they should stop caring for their children and instead go work 60 hours weeks. See how far that’ll get you.
I’m perfectly happy to let people do whatever they want to do. Full stop.
That means, however, that eventually a “social norm” will develop around what most people find “desirable”. I have no reason to assign negative emotionally charged words to whatever this “consensus” is.
Nor is this something that has anything to do with the debate at hand: pay discrimination.
PMs also are more likely to have better career prospects than developers. And end up getting paid more.
Maybe firms figure that women are indeed better PMs then men, especially developer men who have a one-track mind and have no ability to do PM work. But then again, career and pay trajectories for developers are flat. It’s an up or out world. Seems to this is a great way for women to move up in the tech world, precisely because so many of the men there have no clue or desire for money or career upward mobility.
By the same token - time spent “birthing” a child is not zero -
And the immediate post birth (say first month) period it is “better” for the mother to take care.
Speaking purely anecdotally -
None is to say that companies shouldn’t make accomodations, nor that this applies to everybody, or that there aren’t solutions to all of these problems -
Simply that in a normal run of the mill way - it makes “sense” for mothers to take more of the parental leave -
Is this really sexist?
bengangmo, that shows it’s likely to be better for the mother to take some of her leave immediately following the birth. But it doesn’t show it’s better for her to take more total leave than her partner.
The 6 weeks (or 8 weeks for a C-section) of physical recovery time after giving birth really isn’t that long-- definitely not so long that it should permanently hamper a career.
The rest should be shared. My husband got zero paternity leave and zero toleration for him being a new father, leaving me to cope nearly entirely with the sleeplessness, etc. That’s the stuff that can have a long term impact on a career.
Nor would I like to suggest otherwise -
Round here, father’s get 3 days of Paternity Leave,
Mother’s are either 3 or 4 months (I’d need to check and verify to be sure)
I wish it were 4 months shared according to the whims of the parents.
For us - I was the one getting up at night to feed baby, while simultaneously working.
Also not particularly good for your job performance.
I’m firmly in the camp here that we need to investigate “societal factors” when it comes to seeing why women take more time out for child raising, and also investigate to see why men get promoted at a faster rate - whether there are factors such as “willingness (ability?) to work overtime” that affect pay.
At the same time however I don’t automatically agree that if women tend to have the greater “burden” (in respect to careers) of child raising it is due to sexism - or that it’s necessarily “wrong” or “bad” - there are differences between men and women - and we’re still finding out which are societal and which are hard wired.
