Note that the unintended consequences are not limited to the working women who have children. Even women who intend to forgo motherhood and put all their effort into work are still going to look like potential mothers.
The article ends with an effort at the upbeat:
Perhaps the most successful way to devise policies that help working families but avoid unintended consequences, people who study the issue say, is to make them gender neutral. In places like Sweden and Quebec, for instance, parental leave policies encourage both men and women to take time off for a new baby.Yeah, well, but perhaps not. Who takes this encouragement to spend more time with babies? Who passes up this benefit because they feel they must press on in their career (and because they're not as interested in babies or because they're not the ones who can breastfeed)? I don't see how gender-neutral policies are going to avoid these unintended consequences.
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78 comments:
The fact that "generous maternity leave . . . can make it harder for women to be promoted -- or even hired" is as predictable as the fact that if you release a stone from your hand it will fall to the ground.
There is no way to avoid unequal treatment. Until women are killed on the job in numbers that approach male fatalities, there is no equality in work.
None of the aggrieved want equality of opportunity. Only equality in outcomes.
It seems not a day goes by that I don't see yet another lesbian with that haircut and the men's-tailored clothes who's doing a pretty good job of not looking like a potential mother.
Well, you might do as in Norway.
Where the 12 months paid child leave is split in one selectable 8 month part where the parents can chose who is home with the child, and the remaing four months MUST be taken by the other parent...
I don't see how gender-neutral policies are going to avoid these unintended consequences.
They can't and they won't. Kudos to you, Althouse, for recognizing that ahead of time.
"It turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted — or even hired at all."
Shocking. Next thing will be that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will do the same thing.
As they say, the future belongs to those who show up. It does not belong to those who make it difficult to raise the generation that will pay for our pensions.
Don't worry. If you screw with the incentives, the results won't change, - lefties' honor.
Where the 12 months paid child leave is split in one selectable 8 month part where the parents can chose who is home with the child, and the remaing four months MUST be taken by the other parent...
That sounds like an incentive for career-minded men not to get married as they will probably be seen as less likely to take four months (or more) away from the job than women or married men.
Thank God that isn't the case with Affirmative Action!!
Gender-neutral policies don't work because the childfree, who are already taxed to support the breeders, aren't dumb enough to take yet another benefits hit, especially one that favors both males and females among their breeding colleagues.
This news is useful, however, for women who are determined to stay childfree and have had themselves spayed. They could get the job or even a man's pay by presenting documentation to the employer.
Lots of unproved assumptions about cause and effect in that article. Plus one statistical study. Count 'em, one.
Does having children, or even being of child bearing age, have an effect on the careers of women? Of course it does. Law and policy aside, having children takes a tremendous amount of energy, and in the earlier years of child rearing the demands that require the energy fall disproportionately on the female. Just how disproportionately depends a lot on the person and family, and whether there are other resources available, but the disparity is undeniable. In some cases, bur certainly not all, this has a important negative career impact.
But are family friendly laws or lack thereof the primary reason? The supposed similarity of results between the USA and Europe says they are not. Also, European women have less children overall. How do you adjust for that?
There are aspects of this conundrum that can be addressed with legislation and private policies, but the root is the biology of the species. All the effects of that can't be legislated away, and any expectation that they can will end in disappointment.
The Maternity Ward has a Glass Ceiling.
That's a good one.
I am Laslo.
damn. Who'd a thunk that govt policies turn out to have unintended consequences?
This is liberal groundhog day. Refusing to learn the obvious lessons of their stupidity -- every day in every way.
When it comes to the laws of unintended consequences, lefties remain clueless. The list of examples is endless.
Gee, who could've possibly predicted that policies that make it more difficult and expensive to employ women in their childbearing years would cause companies to avoid hiring them? Who could imagine that women taking extended time off from work and wanting to work part time would harm their promotion prospects? It's just so unpredictable! How do such things happen?
/sarc
Thorley, isn't law enough of a disincentive to marriage?
You can pretend the negative externalities don't exist, chase your tail searching for the psychological trick that will make people accept them or you could devise polices that eliminate or mitigate them.
Let's get real. It's not just family leave policies that affect women's careers. Anecdotal, I know, but I suspect this is typical: in my workplace experience, in a workforce of about 2,000, where vacation and sick time was automatically accrued at the rate of roughly 8 hours per working month, the great majority of females had zero time balances in both categories. The would use the time as soon as it registered in the computerized records, on the first of every month. Probably half of the males also followed this same pattern. But a significant minority of males -nearly half - had time balances into the thousands of hours, never used sick time or unscheduled vacation time, reliably arrived on holidays or in emergencies and the like (unlike the two previous described groups).
Promotions and raises, important, desirable and responsible assignments went to those within the 3rd category.
EEOC and discrimination complaints, on the other hand, were almost completely contained within the groups who had no time balances, and could be accurately described as unreliable.
We had a generous family leave policy. It could work against females who were planning on children, when selecting for some critical positions, but how could it not? How effective could any employee be, when a manager knew they would be MIA for months and the position unfilled for that time?
Funny how all that worked.
Unintened but widely predicted consequences are consequences of stupidity.
Where those paying for labor are in competition with one another for that labor, it makes sense that laborers will be paid in accordance with the value of the labor they provide--if that means more money goes to those taking on more dangerous work, or providing more scarce skills, or able to work longer hours, all that matters is how much value they provide the consumer of labor (i.e., the employer). If a woman produces as much value as her male counterpart on the job, and she is still being paid less, then this presents an opportunity for a competing employer to scoop her up.
Now, if the case was that the vast majority of employers are chronically underpaying women despite those women providing the same value as their male counterparts due to say sexist attitudes, then let's see the evidence of this--a glitch in the rule of supply and demand that would be worth addressing with antidiscrimination laws. But if the gender gap instead is the result of more women than men choosing lower pay in exchange for safer jobs or more flexible schedules, then there really isn't a problem at the workplace. (If women are "forced" to make such choices because their husbands won't stay home with the kids, then this is a family problem, not an employer problem)
It's almost like there is a so-called "reality" that can't be legislated away.
It is a logical result of taking such leave in a time when change is so rapid that leave-takers fall behind as to technology in most jobs.
Tim McGuire repeats the old canard that we need the breeders to produce the next generation in order to pay for our pensions.
Look around the world: you will see a surplus of future workers, all of whom are contributing to shortages of energy and clean water and killing off of our plant and animal species.
What we need is birth control in the world's water supply.
No kidding. This is so painfully obvious I'm embarrassed for people who need to be told it.
is to make them gender neutral. In places like Sweden and Quebec, for instance, parental leave policies encourage both men and women to take time off for a new baby.
Notably lacking from the article: Any data from Sweden or Quebec asking whether this actually helps the problem or not. (My guess is that it's not going to unless you force men to take equal leave. Which is an ugly thing to do all around.)
Damikesc:
isn't law enough of a disincentive to marriage?
No, individualism and common sense are disincentives to marriage, while tax, inheritance, insurance, immigration and SS laws are big incentives to marriage. Two sets of my friends, both unmarried couples in their 60s, are newly contemplating marriage merely in order to game Social Security for more than $100,000 over their remaining retirement years.
So, if the government wants to enact policies that will discourage hiring, the best approach is to discourage hiring anyone.
Why do bad things always happen to them when they mean so well?
jimbino said...Tim McGuire repeats the old canard that we need the breeders to produce the next generation in order to pay for our pensions.
Look around the world: you will see a surplus of future workers, all of whom are contributing to shortages of energy and clean water and killing off of our plant and animal species.
What we need is birth control in the world's water supply.
Right--all we need to do is bring them here and they will do our bidding as we die off. That's some serious thinking you got going on there.
Breaking news: TANSTAAFL.
And in related news, everyone who could have benefited from affirmative action will have to deal with doubts that they're as good as those who couldn't have, even if they didn't actually receive any benefit from it.
The thing to do, is to sterilize a segment of society, so that they become bred to work until they die. These people will be housed in separate quarters, or sections of town.
Then pay non-sterilized people more, and give them fine homes and furnishings, so they can enjoy all the benefits of a socialist society.
Seems fair and balanced.
On the other hand, you find out exactly how important a woman's contribution on the job is when she is gone for an extended period of time.
No punch-line.
I am Laslo.
Blogger Peter said...
Breaking news: TANSTAAFL.
Exactly. I mean, the work that the mother doesn't do still needs to be done, right?
These were never "family friendly" laws at the outset. These were "forced favoritism for women, because women are special" laws. They tried to market them as "family friendly" to get the men on board.
How many empty chairs is an employer expected to accommodate at any one time?
I'm assuming one past bankruptcy.
I am Laslo.
It comes down to the fact we don't want choices, we want cheat codes so that we can have it all. And it's someone else's fault if we don't have it all. Even when that "all" isn't ultimately "all" because there's always something else someone else has or something we're missing along the way.
All men are potential rapists -- be careful!
All women are potential mothers -- be careful!
I'm male and catch untold grief when I take the leave I am entitled to, never mind the meetings I miss, opportunities to take on new projects, etc. I try to take that leave because I value my family. and I've grown comfortable with the fact that it likely means my upward career movement is over. 24-7 connectivity - and the American assumption that more hours equals better work, causes this. The career problems stemming from time out of the office don't have much to do with being a woman or having babies, they to do with being unplugged from the endless stream of drivel coming out of the smart phone, tablet and laptop, to which workers are expected to respond.
Many employers consider any time out of the office or any time an employee is unavailable, ever, as a sort of black mark. It doesn't seem like it would be fair - we're talking about fundamental fairness here, correct - to give women who choose to have babies an advantage that nobody else in the workforce enjoys. (That includes the women who choose to be corporate warriors and to not have children).
I'm grateful to have a decent job but the upper tier of the white collar work force - and that is what we're talking about, upper income white collar women's interests - but life in this segment of the workforce really blows. Maternity leave isn't going to fix that.
Actually, I thought the latest solution was to acknowledge that the pay gap was due to men's greater willingness to work overtime, and to demand that jobs cease to require, or even reward, overtime work.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/janetheactuary/2014/04/is-women-earn-77-cents-for-each-dollar-men-earn-explainable-by-factors-other-than-discrimination-or-is-that-kind-of-missing-the-point.html
I just don't understand why things aren't perfect yet. Oh yeah, it's because we haven't spent enough money yet.
What unintended consequences? The intended consequences are for Progs to get credit for passing laws favoring women, for the laws to fall short, for women to have something else to bitch about, and for Progs to clamor for more power to pass more rules to get more credit. The point is not to achieve "social justice" but rather "never enough."
To everyone concerned with unintended consequences: let's just pass a law abolishing them and be done with it.
The "upbeat" at the end of the article is belied by reporting earlier in the article:
Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than 7 the right to ask for reduced hours without fear of being laid off. Those who took advantage of it were nearly all women.
Althouse wins.
Gee, what I am getting from all these comments is that gender neutral policies don't always result in gender neutral outcomes. I never thought of that.
As a small business owner, I can tell you that all rules and regulations impact hiring. If anyone thinks minimum wage laws, Obamacare, various workplace discrimination rules don't impact the work force selection, then they either have their heads in the sand (ignoring the laws of economics) or they just don't care.
Fortunately for us, having children, my wife's role as primary caregiver and mine as primary breadwinner had nothing to do with "incentives" or the attitudes of people we didn't know.
Feelings are more important than consequences. Feelings are very profitable.
tim maguire said...
jimbino said...Tim McGuire repeats the old canard that we need the breeders to produce the next generation in order to pay for our pensions.
Look around the world: you will see a surplus of future workers, all of whom are contributing to shortages of energy and clean water and killing off of our plant and animal species.
What we need is birth control in the world's water supply.
Right--all we need to do is bring them here and they will do our bidding as we die off. That's some serious thinking you got going on there.
The Romans made it work for a few centuries. Conquer the land to the north, and enslave the inhabitants.
"As a small business owner, I can tell you that all rules and regulations impact hiring. If anyone thinks minimum wage laws, Obamacare, various workplace discrimination rules don't impact the work force selection, then they either have their heads in the sand (ignoring the laws of economics) or they just don't care."
True, true, lgv. Not to mention the great number of work hours spent in compliance efforts. My DIL heads up the HR department at a regional bank. For several years she said her greatest effort was hiring folk to comply with the new banking requirements. It is what I like to term the largest, hidden tax burden in history.
@Fritz:
The Romans made it work for a few centuries. Conquer the land to the north, and enslave the inhabitants.
I think the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, ancient Hebrews, Nazis, Saudis, Bahrainies and others have also shown mastery of the art.
Henry said...
The "upbeat" at the end of the article is belied by reporting earlier in the article:
Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than 7 the right to ask for reduced hours without fear of being laid off. Those who took advantage of it were nearly all women."
Left unsaid is Spain's perpetually high unemployment rate even when times are good. Even in the Franco era the labor laws were such as to discourage hiring.
I thought the FMLA already was gender neutral.
Who knew there was correlation between showing up for work and getting a promotion?
Sweet sassy mo-lassy, "it turns out?!" Our best and brightest, ladies and gentlemen, look upon them and despair (for our future).
Increasing the cost of hiring someone makes that person less likely to be hired given a lower-cost alternative with the same expected productivity. Risk is a cost. The risk of long leave is a cost. The risk of a lawsuit (from someone in a protected category, say) is a cost. Costs must be borne, and those who will or might bear those costs will react accordingly (to minimize or avoid the cost whenever possible). Turns out? Geez.
Gender equivalence is a fantasy for all but a minority of humanity. We live long enough that women and men can and should set priorities. Our biology establishes that ideally we will place procreation first, and personal development and ambitions second. It is both a woman and man's responsibility to understand and organize their lives accordingly. It is for a society to normalize or promote this balance and reconciliation of individual and intrinsic value.
This is exactly tied into the whole "women earn only .77 cents on the dollar" statistic, and shows its not based on sexism and patriarchy. That number is an aggragate of everyones salaries. Its not sayhing that in a given company women will earn less than their male counterpart. Its saying that on average women earn less.
But it doesn't take into account that men and women work differently. Men generally arent' taking a year off to raise kids. If a woman does though, it will impact both her salary and ability to be promoted, especially in comparison to the male who DIDN"T take the time off and is there every day working. And getting the promotion.
So of COURSE there is a discrepancy.
But that's the consequence of being both in the work force and also wanting to become pregnant. You can't expect parity when you are not as fully invested in the company as those not taking that time off.
TCR James wrote:
I try to take that leave because I value my family. and I've grown comfortable with the fact that it likely means my upward career movement is over. 24-7 connectivity - and the American assumption that more hours equals better work, causes this
Yes, this exactly. If you don't put in the extra work, you may not climb as high on the corporate ladder. Think about that concept, they have two people who are up for the promotion, one who is there the whole time, and someone else who took a year off. All things being equal, why SHOULDN"T the guy who didn't take a year off get the promotion over the one who was out.
You seem ok with this fact> feminists seem to think you should have all these perks, but it wwont impact on your job history. Of course it will.
Speaking of gender parity, I saw a statistic about how the sanitation department has like 93% men and 6% women. (maybe it was in England, still trying to relocate the stat). Whoah, there's a discrepancy there. Sexism sexism.
Well no. There are two possible reasons why men might be more represented in that field. One. There are women clamoring to get into sanitation and theres an evil cabal of men preventing them. OR, women don't really want to work in sanitation. How then would you get women to adequately be represented in a field where they are only 7% of the population? FORCE them to not take jobs they want and instead take jobs cleaning out the sewers? You'll never get parity because the natural inclination of people is to do the jobs they want to do. And women dont' want sanitation jobs.
Steve Hayward has a few things to say worth reading on this subject on PowerLine
I could have quoted the article at length, but it seems more fair just to link to it.
Has anyone bothered to discover whether "family-friendly" policies and regulations actually produce family-friendly outcomes? And just how is an outcome determined to be family-friendly, as opposed to family-neutral? And if these regulations and policies actually work to the detriment of women's earnings, are they not in fact family-hostile?
the problem with the theory that we need to put contraceptives in the global water supply, etc, is that we are nearing, or even dropping below ZPG throughout much of the world. Even China and India, the two most populous countries. It is a combination of education and economic success. There is a short time when countries benefit from semi-modern medicine and their birth rates plummet, and that gap is why we have so many billions on the planet. There are fewer and fewer countries on the other side of that gap.
In our country, both social security and Medicare are essentially pay-as-you-go. Which means that it will be our children and grand-children who will be supporting us in our old age. What about those of you who didn't provide for those children and grandchildren by not breeding? Do you want the children of those of us who sacrificed to raise them to support you too? Sounds a bit like the grasshopper and the ants. And it isn't just Medicare and SS. It also includes all those health care workers and the like who support us as we enter, then leave our golden years. Etc.
It is interesting that here these policies are positioned as being pro-working women, while in Europe and Quebec they are intended to stimulate the birth rate. I wonder if a policy whose logic was "women should be having more babies, especially those in two-earner households" would go over here.
"That sounds like an incentive for career-minded men not to get married "
Feminists are working on this with no help needed.
This is certainly the case in Canada, where law firms, especially mid-sized ones that can't absorb additional costs like the big national ones, are very careful about hiring and promoting women of child-bearing age.
On the flip side, several of my friends were able to demonstrate their dedication and commitment to the firm by voluntarily taking less than half of their government-mandated maternity leave.
My personal advice to women, as a male and junior member of management (so take it for what it's worth) - have kids while you're young and fungible (i.e. personally less critical to the organization). Be upfront with your boss as to what you want to do, and what your plans are for both career and family. Take a decent amount of time off - a year if you can afford to go unpaid for most of it - enjoy your time with the baby, and get your family set up so that when you come back to work you are really there, and not just half-assing it. Yes, you may lose a year of seniority compared to colleagues who were at the office, but so what? We're all going to be living and working for a very long time. The time you got to spend with your baby was way more important.
"Take a decent amount of time off - a year if you can afford to go unpaid for most of it - enjoy your time with the baby, and get your family set up so that when you come back to work you are really there, and not just half-assing it. Yes, you may lose a year of seniority compared to colleagues who were at the office, but so what? We're all going to be living and working for a very long time. The time you got to spend with your baby was way more important."
And also, stop bitchign about bogus statistics about how women earn less then men, if you're taking a year off to raise kids. You're not going to get the raise while you're out.
" I saw a statistic about how the sanitation department has like 93% men and 6% women ... There are two possible reasons why men might be more represented in that field.
Sanitation work tends to be dirty, dangerous, and physically demanding. Not surprisingly, it also pays quite well as compared with other jobs requiring little specialized training. Because, so long as there are alternatives, you just have to pay people more to take jobs that are dirty, dangerous, and physically hard.
Perhaps someday automation will reduce the dirt, danger, and physicality of these jobs. If so, more women are likely to seek them. BUT if that day comes, then they won't pay so well anymore, will they?
The Gender Wage Gap Lie:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gender_pay_gap_the_familiar_line_that_women_make_77_cents_to_every_man_s.html
"The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case. “Full time” officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That’s the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35."
SO right off the bat, what is being argued by feminists is not what the stats even say. It's not get paid less for doing the same work. It's getting paid less on average.
And she highlights that men do more work. Men work on average 40 hours a week, and women on average 35 hours a week. So right off the bat, men work more per week. Therefore they probably earn more than women.
"Goldin and Lawrence Katz have done about as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of men’s and women’s wages as exists. (They talk about it here in a Freakonomics discussion.) They tracked male and female MBAs graduating from the University of Chicago from 1990 to 2006. First they controlled for previous job experience, GPA, chosen profession, business-school course and job title. Right out of school, they found only a tiny differential in salary between men and women, which might be because of a little bit of lingering discrimination or because women are worse at negotiating starting salaries. But 10 to 15 years later, the gap widens to 40 percent, almost all of which is due to career interruptions and fewer hours.
Those are choices women largely make, and its reflective in their salaries. No sexism required.
Peter wrote:
Sanitation work tends to be dirty, dangerous, and physically demanding. Not surprisingly, it also pays quite well as compared with other jobs requiring little specialized training. Because, so long as there are alternatives, you just have to pay people more to take jobs that are dirty, dangerous, and physically hard.
Perhaps someday automation will reduce the dirt, danger, and physicality of these jobs. If so, more women are likely to seek them. BUT if that day comes, then they won't pay so well anymore, will they?
Exactly, girls don't want to do dirty jobs. Or dangerous jobs. if we really want parity lets have women die on the job as the same rate as men.
Another area where you see this is STEM degrees. For whatever reason, women do not go into STEM at any large numbers. Well ok then, but STEM pasy really well. And would you find sexism in the fact that most engineers are not women? Only feminists would come to that conclusion.
People with a modicum of common sense would argue, if women don't go into certain fields by choice, they wont be adequately represented in those fields. Who's telling them what fields they can go in? THey are making a choice. So then, the problem is women choosing badly.
Or, maybe there is no real problem and its unrealistic to assume that industries have to have gender parity.
Gosh! Who'da thunk it?
There is a prayer that Democrats and Progressives learn as children to help them overcome the mental blockage that happens once their policies are proven destructive, or counter intuitive, as the article says.
It goes like this, "Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation."
They chant that their whole lives. Then, when they say, "We're going to raise the minimum wage and taxes!" and Conservatives say, "If you do that, you'll hurt the economy and the employment rate." the Democrats and Progressives say, "No we won't!"
So they do it, then the economy and jobs are hurt and they repeat the mantra, "Correlation is not causation."
Works every time.
Can't blame the companies.
I mean,this is the 21st century and all. If all men are rapists because we have penises (penii?) then all woman are mothers because they have uteruses (uteri?).
JR565 : They're finding a way around the STEM problem. Can't hack STEM, take an advanced degree in something like "Scientific Ethics." Can't do the work but you can get appointed over the people who can. We've got people in charge of university science departments now who've never washed a test-tube.
Reynolds has posted some old Paglia pieces, the best of which notes that when a feminist's car breaks down it is a man who opens the hood and looks in and a man who drives up in the tow truck and a man who fixes it in the shop that is supplied with parts delivered by a man.
This is "ouch" stuff. It made feminists wince in 1995. Imagine that it makes their heads explode today.
Exactly, girls don't want to do dirty jobs. Or dangerous jobs.
Or jobs involving "flat tires" or "spiders".
Even women who intend to forgo motherhood and put all their effort into work are still going to look like potential mothers.
Because they are. They can change their minds without warning. Not to mention unplanned pregnancies.
TCR James,
In contrast, I just had the most refreshing report from some good college friends of mine.
Their newest daughter-in-law (both she and their son are in their early 30's) works as a social-media specialist for [I forget who.] While fairly new on the job, she texted one of her colleagues early one Saturday morning, and was a bit surprised to get no response until the next Monday morning. Meeting her correspondent in the office, she expressed her surprise, only to be responded to with the awesome statement, "Yeah, we're actually expected to work only during working hours!"
Oy. The stupid in that article runs deep.
In the classic meme of James Taranto's "Fox Butterfield, is that you?", the author notes that women's starting salaries in Chile went down 9 to 20 percent AFTER a law went into effect requiring employers to pay for nearby childcare. Newsflash to this economically-challenged author: "free" childcare isn't really free. And if women are only losing about 10-15% of their salaries to childcare, they should feel lucky. In the US, most or all of one working spouse's salary can go towards childcare.
One thing in these discussions that is bandied about by the academics is this supposed bias against people who take long leaves and want part-time flexibility. But if they actually talked to the people doing those sorts of things, they'd realize that flexible schedules and long leaves are benefits unto themselves. Many workers, men and women, are happy to trade higher pay or potential advancement for these unpaid types of benefits. Most workers know the tradeoffs.
Of course, anyone who pointed out these "unintended consequences" before the laws were passed was immediately denounced as ignorant and sexist and, no doubt, was run out of town.
Michael said...
Reynolds has posted some old Paglia pieces, the best of which notes that when a feminist's car breaks down it is a man who opens the hood and looks in and a man who drives up in the tow truck and a man who fixes it in the shop that is supplied with parts delivered by a man.
This is "ouch" stuff. It made feminists wince in 1995. Imagine that it makes their heads explode today.
Yep.
They're so cute when they get all worked up.
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