The research on gender and income shows a very convincing gap between the genders. Women, overall, earn less money then men. Women hold the majority of minimum wage jobs in this country. However, if you compare single women and single men in the same profession, there isn’t much of a difference. The real differences come about when you compare women with children versus everybody else. That variable – the three year old in the Old Navy t-shirt – is the real income killer.
Tyler Cowen’s article about gender and economics poses an interesting question. Is the gender gap narrowing? He looks at a couple of books that look at women in the workplace. The article is very interesting, and the studies are cool. I might come back to it later on. But the article doesn’t look at the key population that explains the economic gender gap – women who are not sitting around the corporate conference room. To really get a handle on the economic gender gap, we need to look at women who have had to leave the workplace or take a lesser position or were never able to finish school because they became parents.
I do think that things are easier for parents than they were 15-years ago, when I first became a parent. Of course, I’m just relying on my snapshot impressions. Not scientific at all. I thought I would throw out my observations and see what y’all think.
When Jonah came around, there were very, very few childcare options. We couldn’t afford the very expensive place down the block that was set up for the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian. Through word of mouth, Jonah spent a couple of years with a woman who ran an unlicensed daycare out of her apartment. It wasn’t particularly safe. Ian’s childcare situation has always been more horrible, because he has special needs. I didn’t have access to after-school daycare. I can’t even write about my family’s dealings with the childcare system, because it was all such a trainwreck.
If I started my family today, we would be in a completely different situation. There are websites that help you find a babysitter, including babysitters that are experienced with children with special needs. When Ian was three, I posted an ad on the bulletin board at the local Starbucks. I accosted every working mom on the street looking for answers. I wouldn’t have to rely on the underground mom network today.
My friends who have young kids in daycare seem to be pretty happy. There are more places than there were 15 years ago. They are cheaper. Procedures are in place.
The workplaces are cooler about families. Sure, they have a long way to go, but I am starting to hear good stories about a shift in office culture. One friend told me that when she had her first kid around the time that Jonah was born, she had to pretend that her daughter didn’t exist. Now, her family pictures cover the walls of her office.
I am not sure that much has changed for low income women with children. Most of the clients at my dad’s food pantry are young women pushing strollers.
I am also not sure that much has changed for women who step out of the workforce for a while. Martha Stewart, who knows that audience very well, recently dissed Sheryl Sandberg saying that women need to be entrepreneurial, rather than dealing with corporate life.
Apt. 11d 
I do see some more flexibility, especially with technology that allows work at home. A number of the women I know with smaller children leave promptly at 5 and then you see them on line later in the evening. It’ still seems to be more women than men who have to do the “leave on time for the day care/nanny” but I do see some couples who share it.
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Among the many reasons I deeply appreciate my union card, the lack of gender gap ranks right up there—I’m paid the same as the men, and that’s not optional.
In my region, I think things are worse for parents than fifteen years ago (when my daughter was born). The contraction of the economy means fewer young workers and more retirees. There’s fewer daycares available, and only one that opens before 7:00AM. If my daughter was born today, I’d be screwed. Lack of childcare that coincides with working hours (and/or irregular schedules) is number one with a bullet why non-college-educated women have a hard time finding and keeping employment (and is compounded by the cumulative effect of multiple job losses).
Now add traditionalist attitudes about how men need jobs more than women, because they need to “support a family”, despite the fact that more women actually are supporting families with children, and yeeeaahh, the scenario looks a lot different for women who aren’t in corporate boardrooms (which is most of us).
My advice for any woman who wants equal pay is to get a union job.
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My sense, as the parent of a 4 and 6 year old, is that things have gotten better in the past 10 to 15 years, at least around here in the upper Midwest. I know many women with both young children and thriving careers. The work culture seems to have shifted to accepting that women workers often have children and if businesses want/need them as employees they’ll have to find ways to support them. I think we’ll see this trend only deepen as women continue to outpace men in educational achievement. Businesses rely heavily on educated women with children as an employee class and I think most businesses know this full well but they don’t really want women to figure our how much power they as a group really have.
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Well, that’s meaningful, as a personal impression, since you’re experiencing the world with small children now. I’d like to know how this plays out at different income and educational levels, and its sustainability.
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“Stewart also scoffed at Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling book “Lean In,” saying women should spend less energy fighting barriers in the workplace and be more entrepreneurial: “Too much time is spent . . . Isn’t ‘leaning in’ spending a lot of time? . . . I think being entrepreneurial is something women should strive for, rather than working up the corporate ladder.”
It’s intermixed in frivolous quotes, but, that’s a good quote, and, I think an alternate path.
I don’t know if things are better now. My inclination is be wary of believing things are better without good evidence, because it’s easier to imagine that there are solutions to challenges you no longer face. Is there really more affordable daycare in New York City? Have online services evolved to the point that they are reliable and provide that nebulous feeling of quality and security in childcare (my kids are younger than yours, though, and post-date the beginnings of those internet services, though they were in their infancy then).
I had a lot of resources (family, money, support), and still feel like I was muddling through (but, I also think my personality and particular skill set plays a role in that feeling, and that there are other women who balance better).
The issue as I see it is a free market/entrepreneurial system is always going to reward the person who works more. Yes, you can be talented and efficient, but on top of that, you can also work more. The move to a winner-take-all, start-up world encourages talented people to devote their entire life’s energy to work, until that day tomorrow, when they’e made it. In academics, that’s start-up with the goal of tenure (and it doesn’t end then, in science anyway, since there’s the hamster wheel of funding). In start-ups its towards the ipo or market domination (and, market domination is never complete, as the antics of Google and Microsoft show). In law firms that’s billables (though that doesn’t end when you make partner). That economy is incompatible with caregiving. And, that mentality is invading other fields, ones that were historically less demanding (teaching, say, and, I’m guessing other forms of work).
I think La Lubu’s union card, and its corollary, regulations, are the only answer. Most workers are vulnerable and need to band together for protection, or the weakest among them, the women with children and caregiving responsibilities, will be thrown to the wolves.
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Yes, as I mentioned above, there is flexibility but still the expectation of long hours. A parent who is back on line after putting children to bed is going to be pretty tired all the time, with the exception of a few super energetic types who thrive on this kind of schedule (I work with one of those – she came back to this schedule 6 weeks after the birth of her 3rd child and now has 3 children under 6). My unscientific observation is that a lot of parents (mostly mothers) just don’t do the long days due to the toll it takes. I never had children but did have some light elder care responsibility and it was tiring when I worked more than 45 hours a week.
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