On prostitution:
I only date men in a certain tax bracket and I rarely put out. In order for me to consider marrying you, though, you have to have some wealth.
There’s something to be said for sanctioned prostitution. 
I thought it was an unwritten rule that women can’t break the man-woman libido equality myth. Not that blatantly, anyway.
F—. I just set the feminist movement back 50 years. :smack:
Seriously, think of all the aircraft carriers they could buy with that money.
So, there must not be an earning differential as a consequence of someone taking time off to have children, is this accurate? What would a system that actually accomplishes this look like?
Say, I take 2 years off to have children. During those two years, there is experience and skills I will not have acquired at work that I would have acquired if I hadn’t taken two years off.
If I come back and my employer is making a decision about who to promote, should my employer take into account the experience and skills I have or the experience and skills I would have had if I’d worked instead?
Anything but the latter will result in an earnings differential.
During those two years, should I be paid the same and get the same seniority as if I worked? If not, earnings differential. If so, what incentive will people have to come back to work before the maximum alloted time?
In what way would you like to take 2 years out of someone’s career and have zero impact on their career? Anything less and there’s still an earnings differential.
My problem is not that there’s an earnings differential, per se, but how large it actually is. This Indiana study indicates that men who go into business administration, sales and marketing make about 30% more over the course of their lifetime than women in the same field. Do you think that two years off for childbearing during the span of an entire career should really make such a difference in lifetime earnings? Why?
I don’t think a two year difference would make that much of a difference. I was adressing Gibbler’s desire to make it so that there is no earnings differential, what it would require and what its implications would be. Giblbler was saying that taking time off to have children shouldn’t result in an earnings differential, that seemed like asking a lot and the policies required to bring about the state of affairs Gibbler desires would have pretty bad adverse effects.
Gibbler split the choice as one between 1)you want to take time off to have children, your income will be lesser than if you didn’t and 2) you want to take time off to have children, you income will not be lesser than if you didn’t.
I’m saying the first option is the reasonable one.
As to your specific question, I can certainly believe that there is still discrimination against women.
However, I do think that today, factors such as the number of hours worked, the willingness to see one’s children less*, the industries entered and other non-discriminatory factors matter more, as can be seen by study alluded to in the OP.
I see the same thing in law. Men tend to outearn women. A big part of that is that women tend to go into family law and criminal defense whereas men are more interested in corporate and commercial law. Not surprisingly, the latter pays better. I imagine it’s much the same for people who go into admin, sales and marketing.
There are also psychological factors which are due to the messed up ways men and women are raised. Men are encouraged to take more risks and actively pursue opportunities (all men have to learn this while teenagers if they want to date) whereas women aren’t. If that’s the main problem, the solution is to raise children differently, not have government mandate that all fathers take time off, hiring/promotion quotas/goals, wage controls etc.
*Earlier it was said that men can have it all. No, they can’t. Men who choose to concentrate on their careers can also have children but they don’t see them anywhere near as much as mothers who take time off work. That’s a sacrifice and it’s one more men than women are willing to make.
I see this too, and I think it’s rooted in the same gender binary trap that women get caught up in. Men have always been expected to be the breadwinners and women have always been expected to be the caretakers. Now society is a little different. Men are still expected to be the breadwinners but women usually have to work too, because it’s become increasingly difficult to make a living on a single income. Many of us are also career-driven because we were raised to believe we could do whatever we wanted with our lives. But women are still considered the default caretakers, and often are - and frankly, they often want to be. No matter which way you slice it, in those cases the woman ends up taking on unhealthy levels of work, and of course her career is going to suffer for it.
I have always been a highly career-driven person but in the last few years something has changed in me physically that makes me want to have children and raise them. Before I experienced it myself I would have dismissed it entirely as social pressure, but no, the biological clock is a real actual thing that exists for many women. I don’t know if guys go through something like it as well but I guess my point is, the result is a special kind of anguish and terror of having to sacrifice one for the other. For me it’s a complete paralysis. I don’t know what to do.
I respect that is a choice men never got to make, and I don’t think that’s fair either. I also respect that it’s the classic definition example a first-world problem, as many women throughout history have been working (without hope of advancement) and raising children out of necessity. In today’s business world, I believe discrimination against women exists, but I think it has way more to do with who is doing the child-rearing than whether one is male or female. Some guys really do want to share in the caretaking role and are penalized for that as well. It only looks like rampant discrimination against women because women are the ones most often doing the caretaking.
It’s interesting, though, one of the biggest things holding my husband back from having children is the feeling of being torn between family and career. He described to me feelings that I have often felt, fears I have often had. I don’t think it has to be this way. I don’t think either men or women have to feel trapped in their roles or torn between the love of family and the love of productivity. I think we view this issue through far too narrow a lens, and we demand too little from the society in which we live. There is no reason we can’t have egalitarian relationships and demand equal respect for both men and women caretakers in the workplace.
And I don’t see anything in that study that even factors in childbearing.
A lot of professional women don’t have kids. Most who do have kids take six to eight weeks off per kid - not two years. And professional women aren’t likely to have a dozen kids.
The data I’ve seen is that even when women do not have kids, they still - by the time they reach their mid-30s - get paid less than men in the same professions.
I don’t think its fair that someone who takes five years off to raise children, climb mountains, or bike across the U.S. early in their career would have the same lifetime earnings as someone who doesn’t. I’ve seen little evidence that THAT is the reason there is an income disparity over time.
That’s certainly the case where I intern. Women are popping out babies left and right (I mean like crazy, ya’ll), but they’re back after three months, returning to the exact same position, doing the exact same amount of work. I hardly see how that would have any significant impact on lifetime earnings.