Women don’t step back from work because they have rich husbands, she said. They have rich husbands because they step back from work.
I came across this article, "Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’" in the New York Times this past summer. Our discussion last Wednesday on the ERA reminded me about the piece. The author argues that overworking, or the expectation to work longer hours in more lucrative fields, has created a new kind of gender gap. The author explained that men and women out of MBA and JD programs have similar jobs but that decades later women earn less. This is not caused by a traditional pay gap but by the fact that women work less hours. Work has essentially become too demanding for "dual-earner power couples" to both dedicate the same hours. I want to highlight some interesting quotes:
“The fundamental problem all along is that someone has to take care of the children,” said Till von Wachter, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “What’s changing here is the assortative mating piece. These women have made all these skills and investments and are not fully reaping those returns.”
“Because of rising inequality, if you put in the extra hours, if you’re around for the Sunday evening discussion, you’ll get a lot more,” said Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard who is writing a book on the topic. To maximize the family’s income but still keep the children alive, it’s logical for one parent to take an intensive job and the other to take a less demanding one, she said. “It just so happens that in most couples, if there’s a woman and a man, the woman takes the back seat.”
I'm not sure what to think of this article, but I have a lot of friends who have parents that met at Ivy League universities. More often than not, their mother eventually stepped away from work to raise the children, even though both sexes were equally educated. Some returned to a less lucrative job after their children went to college. I think this gives us all a lot to think about.
Also, this is a related series. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/ambition-interview/486479/?fbclid=IwAR0GdCyR-bL9eP1w8vSjI37zTYzBud3Ve8L7yWnl8TWJPGeJ_VHAP3a4010
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how we haven't deviated that far from the "mothering" role assigned solely to women. I agree that women are usually expected to work less time to take care of the family, but even more so, I know families where the woman is expected to work part time and the man has the opportunity to devote himself full time to his career; this means that the man, for the first half of his life, progresses to a high ranking position at his workplace, and then resigns to devote his full attention to something "new," something more "risky" and experimental. Meanwhile, his wife, like you said, often has to start "fresh" from the time she had taken off.
ReplyDeleteWow- I have never heard someone voice that women don’t step back from work because they have rich husbands. Rather they have rich husbands because they step back from work. I think this notion grants women the respect they deserve when it comes to taking on traditional gender roles like motherhood. Often, people overlook the hard work that goes into taking on household responsibilities and raising a family. It is a big sacrifice, yet a lot of people, including myself for a while, look at that decision as an easy choice. I liked how this article highlighted the working mother and how intensive the role has become in modern-day society. I, like Ari, think this gives us a lot to think about, especially as technology advances and social/gender roles are continuously questioned.
ReplyDeleteEnvisioning myself in the same hypothetical (and potential) situation, I find myself naturally agreeing to a future commitment that, if necessary, I would be the one to stay at home to take care of the kids so that my partner can work. It's a strange, but compelling phenomena, as if that responsibility has been innately ingrained in my conscience. I thought very little of it and only took .2 seconds to imagine myself filling that black outline that is the single parent beside her daughter or son's side. At the same time, it frustrates me that this social patternpattern stands: that the value and longevity of women’s education is cut short by other roles expected of her.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, I would be interested to learn more about highly educated couples who instead of having one parent take an intensive job, they both take intensive jobs and either higher a nanny or have family help with the children. The family would have a significantly higher income- according to the articles almost double what the family would make with only person working an intensive job. Despite this significant economic gain, most family take structure described in the article with one parents working an intense job and the other working part time. Do these types of families simply not need the extra money? Would they rather make less but their children be raised more directly by their own parent? In the families with two parents working intensive jobs, what was their thought process when they both decided to keep working these types of jobs? And what about the families that have no choice but to have both parents work in order to bring home enough money?
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