I find the use of the phrase "opt-out myth" intersting. Given that I see examples of it all around me I very doubtful it is a myth.

The real problem is that the original feminist movement did not take into account either children, women's desire for children nor men's desire to work. It is not that there is a biological universal in any of this but it is a reality.

Thus after demanding not just equality for women in the workplace someone noticed women not only had children but wanted to have children. Virtually all of the work place crisis as discussed here is about either makeing a special exception for women while claiming it will help men too or a likely unworkable call for an end to the way of American workers. If anything all the "work saving" devices really make work a virtual 24 hour act at least for whitecollar workers.

I understand that women would like to have children lose no income and not lose their place in line for promostions and raises. If you ware married to such a woman you want that too. If you are behind that woman in the workplace and are asked to pick-up the slack why do you see this as fair or reasonable? If your wife wants to be a stay at home mother and you want a career where is there a great benefit?

I regret to say there seems a lot that is ignored in this debate.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Daniel, the problem is the very idea you labor under that men don't want to be involved in the lives of their children. I think most fathers very much do want to be—and so they should if they deign to help bring children into the world. The problem is that the 24/7 workday is insane. The problem is that your posting betrays a very totalistic gender essentialism. And your complaint about the woman who wants the workplace to cut her slack is also used by nonparenting workers to kvetch even about men who have family responsibilities. That way madness lies. Please check out my opening post below, which addresses most of your points preemptively (except the ones that assume men don't want to be involved in parenting).

Fertile women have a choice that is absolutely unavailable to men. That they should expect to exercise this choice without any opportunity cost, because the rest of society picks up the slack for them, holds their place, and even gives them longevity toward promotions while they are absent from the workplace strikes me as unreasonable.

Convince me this should be the rule.

But even in the best case scenario -- which happens to be the Nordic countries -- model work-life policies have not been successful in eliminating gender inequality (although by standard measures, Denmark and Finland come close.)

I agree we should learn from them, not because it's clever politics to play a feminist agenda, but because it addresses underlying issues and gives families the room they need to figure these things out.

Health care is top priority. Progressive tax policy to incentivize better wages and increase median quality of life is another top priority. Housing loans should have been made more available but in reduced sums to better control the housing bubble. Etc.

On the issue of gender disparity more fundamentally: It's an issue of specialization, biological and social, resulting in normative choices and normative pressures. Not just for women but for men as well.

Nature biases women towards childcare and men towards the workplace (especially traditional labors) in a number of marginal but significant ways. Women: nine months of bonding, some amount of time incapacitated from most types of work, breast feeding. Men: less childcare biologically, more musculature/size, and perhaps testosterone for workplace competitiveness.

Those biological biases are amplified in the workplace by social and practical factors such as fraternity and a tendency towards homogeneity. There are also the issues of long term investment for mngt trainees, the greater commitment required, etc.

The result is significant gender specialization, biological and social, resulting in normative choices and normative pressures. Specialization increases difficulty (or reduces efficiency) for women seeking to be power executives or men seeking to be child care givers, though it may make things easier (or more efficient) for those within norms.

It can be argued there should be no gender specializations, on the other hand some would argue they're human nature and somewhat unavoidable. I see valid points on both sides.

Gender specializations which are irrational should be minimized. In many careers the biological differences are trivial, and maternity can be worked around to some extent. Single payer healthcare for example could legislate greater maternity care, and disperse economic costs away from mothers and business to avoid punitive effects.

On the other hand, until men get pregnant and breast feed, women who have children will lose a significant chunk of time/energy out of prime career blazing years. There’s no legislative solution for the missed experience, bonding, etc that occurs in the office during the maternity period, especially when so many innovation/professional companies evolve rapidly.

So, I’d like to see workplace gender disparity decrease, though I doubt it will go away completely for biological reasons even if we rid ourselves of all the irrational tendencies. The limiting pressures which force people into roles should decrease over time, as we become a more technological society, have longer lifespans and more careers, the differences between genders will be ever less relevant.

In the meanwhile, social policies like those mentioned above are a good idea to mitigate the irrational side of the biases. Also, greater cultural and financial recognition should be given to child care givers, both men and women.

Thanks for bringing up the role of the labor movement in promoting work-life reconciliation policies. The labor movement in the U.S. is definitely on the bandwagon, and one of the items on the typical "laundry list" of needed legislation is providing greater protection for workers right to organize. (see, for example, the Economic Policy Institute's Agenda for Shared Prosperity).

Unionization is seen as especially essential to lower wage workers, since collective bargaining is known to improve the flexibility and benefits (such as sick leave and health care) of low-wage jobs. The problem is that very few workers in the U.S. are organized, and those in the white collar sector who may never be organized obviously need policy support for reconciling work and family as well. There's room for activism from many different sectors in the progressive movement.

JST

Love is an outgrowth of lust, and when lust dies (seven years?), so does love (there are still husband-wife friendships and girlfriends).

Lust denied women (at least, those under 40?) have two choices: find your bliss (love) in another lustful relationship or have babies and find that bliss in the mother-child relationship. Rightly, the feminist project is Amazonian.

But why would men support their emasculation? the drift to their future irrelevancy?

Daniel, you are/were a prosperous professional - good for you.

I'm not. I rely on my wife's income to lead a lower-middle class existence.

Can't you accept that the vast majority of people in this country aren't rich lawywers?

I think you suffer from myopia.

Women and men with the same qualifications who work the same hours in the same occupations do not receive the same pay.

Off and on over the years I've looked for statistics in support of this conclusion, but with the exception of some anecdotal evidence, haven't found them.  Does anyone have a link?

Men have just as much of a stake in the benefits of fertility as women. Therefore, we should not penalize women for exercising their fertility; when we do, men suffer too. Also, status in the workplace (and in society in general) is not strongly correlated with ability to contribute. We would all be better off if we recognized that non-traditional forms of experience have value. A great example is Speaker Pelosi and her ability to multi-task, communicate, and, if necessary, use her "mom" voice.

While I do know prosperous professionals at the time my daughter was born my business was almost going bankrupt. However, I wanted to rebuild it. I also was the one who took my daughter to work with me every day. I also tended to be the one to put her to sleep at night.

My wife ultimately decided she could not bear being apart from our daughter and quit her job costing us both her paycheck and our health insurance and almost sinking my business for good.

I think it this odd desire here at the Cafe to see everything in a way that is socialistic and unAmerican (in the sense that is does not conform to the way it really is in the United States.)

I am not a rich lawyer, nor a rich anything else, however I understand that most Americans aren't working class and aren't dependent on two incomes only to be working class. To believe it is is what is myopic.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I was not attempting to "monetize" the intrinsic value of human life...

It seemed to me that you were establishing human value by looking at the wage gap. once wage becomes all that's important, the feminist voice will be lost from society.

in female dominated professions such as school teachers, men earn more than women at every level of the pay scale.

since the union sets the payscale, for k/12 teachers, I find this hard to believe. and I don't think that teaching wages are low because of gender but because it's a labor intensive business.

as costs of human labor go up, people like myself will push for cheaper methods such as online instruction. US manufacturers automated their factories because the labor costs got higher. In other countries, since hand labor is cheaper, more hand labor is used.

child care workers are paid less than garage attendants, although intuitively it seems that caring for infants and toddlers might require a more complex set of skills than parking cars...

the problem, again, is that child care is labor intensive... w/o lower wages, it would bankrupt a community and people would start watching their own kids.

Based on the median earnings of employees who work full-time, year round, women today earn .77 cents to the dollar of comparable male workers.

The reason why I say that you're monetizing the value of a woman is because I think that "the value" of the "stay at home spouse" is often worth more than the work performed outside of the house.

I've heard that the gap in life expectancy, between men and women, is closing because women are now being faced with stress and life styles that steer them away from healty diets and good amounts of exercise.

So even though the wage gap is typical presented as a woman's issue, it's also a work-life issue....

I think that women will ultimately find a very powerful economic voice and, therefore, gain direct political control over resources.

I don't know how women are penalized for giving birth. (I am saying "I don't know how", not "they are not".)

My experience is with engineers. I would expect that if a women leaves at level x, takes off say from 3 months to 2 years, that she should expect to be able to come back to work at level x. With a market pay for level x at the time she comes back to work.

If after that, she is qualified for level x+n, that's great. If not is qualified at that level, why should she be placed there?

The men and women who were working during that interval and have experience and qualifications for level x+n should be placed there preferentially over any man or woman that doesn't have those qualifications.

Frankly, I feel I am penalized for my biological inability to give birth.

Screw my job, I would frankly have loved to have been able to take 3 months to 2 years to 7 years off and spend them with my kids.

I would be worried about going back to work, but it also would have provided me the opportunity to get excited about work again, or even the opportunity to change careers.

I was busy working so that my wife could stay home (and go to school) but I was penalized in how I missed many of the events in my kids lives.

I would have loved to have stayed home, but one of us had to work and pay the bills (and the grad school bills), and in return I got to see my kids given to my ex and allowed to move away because for some reason the courts thought as the mother it was in the kids best interest to let them move with her.

So again, I am not sure how women are penalized for giving birth. I think men are penalized for not being able to give birth.

"Men have just as much of a stake in the benefits of fertility as women."

Debatable, and in any case too general for me to know what you are saying.

"[W]e should not penalize women for exercising their fertility; when we do, men suffer too."

Some men suffer, but other men don't, and some benefit if women are made to pay excess opportunity costs because of time taken off.

Having to pay some opportunity cost for child-related time off is not a penalty; shifting the opportunity cost to others is an undeserved boon. The real issue here is, how to weigh the opportunity cost that anyone taking off should have to pay. Clearly zero is wrong. Equally clearly, being categorically relegated to the margins without regard to ability and output is wrong, and I agree that this happens more to women than to men, even if the reason for time off is the same.

Certainly men ought to be able to take child-related time off from work, and they should incur their opportunity costs for doing so on the same basis, not a less onerous one, as women.

"Also, status in the workplace (and in society in general) is not strongly correlated with ability to contribute."

Contribute what?

"We would all be better off if we recognized that non-traditional forms of experience have value."

Who could argue with that?

Pelosi is actually an excellent example of how false this argument really is. Pelosi raised 5 children and later in life became a professional politician. She could be said to "have it all" but she didn't get it ALL by the time she was 30!

I have no patience whatever with young professionals who expect everyone else to step aside or take on extra work so they can "achieve" the success of a lifetime before they are 35.

Unless you win the lottery or have a trust fund, you are going to pay dues in this life one way or the other.

Yes, it's tough having young children and starting a profession AT THE SAME TIME. So expect to either burn the candle at both ends or don't attempt them AT THE SAME TIME.

"Providing various workplace benefits for parents, particularly women, is only one way in which the proper levels of compensation can be provided. But they are not enough."

I don't think having or fathering children is, or should be, a "compensable" event. I don't argue against child-friendly workplaces, liberal leave policies, etc., but one person's "workplace benefit" should not be imposed, as a "workplace penalty" on those who are not part of someone's choice to bear, or father, a child.

You really expect someone who works 14 out of 14 years to settle for being treated the same in promotions, longevity pay, etc., other things held equal, to someone who works 11 out of 14 years?

Choices have consequences. Having or fathering a child is a choice. It's not as if the earth, or the US, is suffering from underpopulation.

Exact parity won't work, I suppose, for a variety of reasons (my understanding is that some couples in the Nordic countries stagger their childrearing leave, the father for the first year and the mother for the second, because research suggests that maternal presence better facilitates language development).  But I'd say that it remains to be seen how thick or thin the slice of functions better performed by women really is, when it comes to childrearing.

Look at it this way: suppose a certain community practiced a form of cooperative self-reliance in the maintenance of the community infrastructure. People worked in their places of business by day, and then came home at night and went to work replacing power, phone and cable lines, digging and repairing sewars and water lines, paving and cleaning roads, rebuilding the engines and transmissions on their firetrucks, strengthening levees along the river etc. The work is voluntary in a sense: nobody is leterally drafted into doing it. But there are a variety of economic benefits that are distributed by the community only to those who do a share of this work, and nobody can say that is an unjust arrangement.

The people in our society who have and raise children are building the human infrastructure, so to speak, of that society. That infrastructure has to be continuously replaced and maintained, and requires mountains of labor. The people who do this job go home from their other jobs at night, and then set to work again - just like community workers in the above example - maintaining the essential human foundations for our society.

A society should organize its compensation so that people are compensated for the amount of productive work they do for that society. One way the work of child-rearing can be compensated is for companies to be required to distribute benefits of various kinds to their employees who do other kinds of socially productive work outside of the home - including health care, longevity pay scales, etc. This is not the best and most rational system perhaps. I would prefer a more socialistic system in which communities themselves compensated productive social work by taxing those companies. But this is perhaps the best we can do.

The point about over or underpopulation is not really relevant. Even if a society were to settle on a policy of zero population growth or even gradual depopulation to a lower level, it would still be essential to its survival and prosperity that babies were born and children reared at some rate; and the people who do that hard work should be compensated for it.

"Women and men with the same qualifications who work the same hours in the same occupations do not receive the same pay."

Assuming that the output of both is equivalently valuable (which you did not address), I do not doubt that this is still true, especially in the smaller privately held workplaces. In large corporations and in government, I believe it is fast becoming a non-issue. But yes, by all means, let's take a look at the numbers and the assumptions behind them.

Of course having children is incredibly wonderful and rewarding rewarding. By the same token, some some people are fortunate enough to have jobs that they find incredibly delightful and rewarding. But they are still compensated for the job they do, because in addition to the rewards they themselves might derive from the job, they are generating value for others as well. So I don't see why they fact that parents by and large enjoy being parents is any less reason to compensate them for the work they are doing for society.

If and when we start not having enough children, some of what you say about the old needing the young would properly kick in. Until then, I think the comparison with infrastructure is strained. I will not live long enough to see this happen, and neither will anyone reading this.

My point was that, if having and rearing children is such a great thing, it should be made government policy, to pay people who do so.

Some of the arguments made here by proponents of changed policies regarding time off for having children involve conferring, on people who have children, what amounts to the power to have some of their bills paid by people who don't. BTW, I definitely agree that the wage spread needs to be narrowed, and narrowed greatly. But waiting for such a major revolution to occur first merely ensures that agreed-upon rational measures to help facilitate effective parenting by employed parents will never happen. So, back to my government payments.

You might argue, "Where does the government payment you suggest come from, if not, albeit indirectly, the taxpayer?" Ah, but there's a difference.

First, using tax monies would help avoid the grievous disparity between the $400 per hour lawyer and the $17.55 per hour transit worker. Because in a sane society, lawyers pay far more in taxes than the bus drivers, the burden of these uniform government payments would automatically tend to be applied semi-fairly.

Second, government payments to parents for having children would require a real public consensus, something that not all of the folks who are claiming that the present system is unfair to parents want to bother with. If such a consensus is ever reached, people without children would probably not object to having some of their tax money go to parents any more than they object to school (i.e. property) taxes, another agreed-upon progressive tax that is generally recognized as a public good.

Now my belief is that no government payment would or should ever exceed $5 or $10 thousand dollars, and it probably should be limited to the first two or three children. Nobody except Falwell and the Catholic Church would want people to be paid to have have 6, 7, or more kids. We already have too many kids for the jobs available in this country. Can other efforts be taken? Certainly, but also as part of a broad public consensus. These other efforts would be fashioned for people who need the relief, and not at people who think they deserve it, but don't need it. The public interest in these measures ought to be more concerned with the children than with the parents' careers. The parents made a choice, the children didn't.

I cannot see a system that allows parents to take work-affecting time off for birthing, or parenting, while at the same time preserving their entitlement, as they may see it, to an uninterrupted ascent toward the managing partner's corner office in a deep-rug firm. That's just greed in an $800 suit and Bally or Ferragamo shoes.

Several readers requested hard data on disparities in men's and women's earnings. This report from the U.S. Census Bureau looks at men's and women's detailed earnings in 256 occupations:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-15.pdf

The analysis finds that both in occupations with the highest and lowest median earnings for women, men in the same occupations earn more at all levels of earning distribution in every occupation except one (among the lowest-paid occupations, both male and female "Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers" had median earnings of $15,000 a year).

When earnings distributions were analyzed to factor in the effects of age and educational attainment on women’s earnings, the study found that women age 35 to 54 with some college education had higher median earnings than other women in the same age group, but not by much (72.1 percent versus 71.4 percent). The starkest inequity occurred at the high end of the earning spectrum for women age 35 to 54 with a bachelor’s or advanced degree, who earned just 55 percent of comparable men’s earnings. The report's author found “education alone contributes little toward equality between men’s and women’s median earnings.”

The report concludes “there is a substantial gap in median earnings between men and women that is unexplained, even after controlling for work experience (to the extent it can be represented by age and the presence of children), education and occupation.”

JST

But another legitimate method is to require employers to provide various kinds of benefits for parents in the workplace.

It isn't fair to either the employer or to the other workers nor to their extended families.  Particularly now that people live so much longer many of those people you expect to be kicking in to pay more and work more for the "parents" are taking care of their own parents!  If they aren't taking care of their parents, as they age they may have a chronically ill spouse.  They may be a sibling helping to support and care for a disabled brother or sister.  They may be a young person trying to save enough time and money to have their first child!  

Plus, you need to consider that having children also confers benefits on their parents not just costs and  the extended nature of the family provides benefits primarily to the extended family itself and only secondarily to society.  It's the single childless adult ineligible for almost any kind of benefit that winds up homeless or aging in poverty.

Page 6

EARNINGS BY OCCUPATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTIC

The familiar relationship between female and male earnings is illustrated in Figure 5, where it is clear that women at every percentile level of their earnings distribution earn less than men at the same percentile level. But these comparisons do not control for other differences — differences in age, education, and occupation. In other words, do women of comparable experience (as measured by age and education) earn the same as men in the same occupation? If differences do exist, they are not necessarily due to discrimination in hiring or promotion, though that may well be a contributing factor. Other underlying processes, such as free choice, geographic location, educational opportunities, industrial growth, culture, marriage and employment practices, genderbased preferences, the presence of unions, work history and experience, and many other factors may contribute to differences in remuneration.16
The General Accounting Office has recently studied the gender gap in earnings using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and concluded: Of the many factors that account for difference in earnings between men and women, our model indicated that work patterns are key. Specifically, women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men. Other factors that account for earnings differences include industry, occupation, race, marital status, and job tenure. When we account for difference between male and female work patterns as well as other key factors, women earned, on average, 80 percent of what men earned in 2000....Even after accounting for key factors that affect earnings, our model could not explain all of the differences in earnings between men and women.17

...

Median Earnings by Sex
According to the Current Population Survey, the female-to-male earnings ratio at the median for year-round, full-time workers was 77 percent in 2002, an increase of 5 percentage points since 1999, the vintage of data used in this report. This report focuses on 1999 since the detail from the decennial census long form is needed to analyze earnings by detailed occupation, age, education, and sex.

Table 5 shows the 20 occupations (and ties) with the highest median earnings for men and for women. The highest-paid occupation for men and for women is Physicians and surgeons, but the female median ($88,000) is only 63 percent of the male median ($140,000). Different degrees of specialization within an occupation and different choices of industry or business organization may affect the ratio. For example, women might choose more frequently than men to practice in lower-paid medical specialties (such as pediatrics) or in lower-paid institutional settings (such as health maintenance organizations).
Fifteen of the 20 listed occupations for men appear on the list for women, and in all cases, the female median is less than that for men. In fact, the occupation third on the list for women makes the same as the occupation last on the list for men ($67,000). A similar pattern is shown for the lowest-paid occupations (Table 6). Sixteen occupations appear on both lists, and in all cases but one (Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers), women make less than men in the same occupation. In only five occupations are female median earnings at least 100 percent of male median earnings (see Table 7), but the ratios for an additional six occupations — Highway maintenance workers (0.986), Dieticians and nutritionists (0.943), Engineering managers (0.938), Other transportation workers (0.936), Electronic home entertainment equipment installers and repairers (0.926), and Tire builders (0.925) — are not statistically different from 1.000. Perhaps surprisingly, women are a majority of the workforce in only two of those eleven — Meeting and convention planners and Dieticians and nutritionists. Only four more occupations fall in the range 95-99 percent. 21 Interestingly, five of the nine occupations listed in Table 7 are in the same major occupation groups as those with the lowest percent female — Construction and extraction occupations, and Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations. On the other hand, in only four occupations (the first four listed in Table 8) do women earn statistically less than 60 percent of men, and the nine occupations listed in the table with point estimates 0.60 or lower are spread across six different major occupational groups.

...

On the other hand, there are only 17 of 623 education-occupation combinations where women earn 60 percent or less that of comparable men.28 Among the lowest ratios of female-to-male earnings were 52.8 percent for Farmers and ranchers with some college, 53.8 percent for Elementary and secondary school teachers with some college, and 54.5 percent for Farmers and ranchers who are high school graduates.29 The occupations with a 60 percent or lower ratio for multiple education levels are Farmers and ranchers (all four education levels) and Other teachers and instructors.30

What this report seems to be saying is that there are legitimate differences like length of time worked but that even after controlling for those differences there is still a discrepancy.

And that would tend to support a conclusion that there is gender based discrimination.

What the report didn't look at that I am interested in were the differences across size of company. I am surprised to find (if I read the report correctly) that there is a big gender based difference in pay for elementary school teachers.

My suspicions, based solely on my personal experience of about three data points, is that the large overly corporate overly lawyered overly HR'd firms will have the least discrepancy, and the discrepancies will show up mostly in the small and medium sized firms that don't have so much lawyer crap to detail everything in the company from hiring to taking a crap. (And in that sense, I think this lawyerization and HRification is a good thing.)

But such knowledge also points to where good targets are and are not. For instance, from this report, I would say it is extremely important to make sure that elementary and secondary education pay differentials are eliminated amongst comparably qualified and experienced workers.

I would very much support study of this issue further, I think it would help people forced to opt-out ways to opt-back in, and I think it may help to place some reality on who is "opting out" and what their real reasons for doing so are.

One final point, it seems this data is from 1999, but there is some data from 2002 that is already significantly (5%?) better.

Don't take my word for it, my reading reports not in my area on a Saturday morning is probably not a good way for anyone else to get a good idea of the report.

I am surprised to find (if I read the report correctly) that there is a big gender based difference in pay for elementary school teachers....

It would be interesting to learn if rural elementary teachers are typically both female and low paid.

Specifically, I was told that I would never get a job in rural america, as a teacher, because I had too much experience and they'd hire the person that costs the least...

In general, data summaries never catch the reasons...

I agree there would be some unfairness in the employer mandate system. The same is true of our current system of supplying health care through employer mandates. I would prefer that both the economic support for child-rearing and the provision of health care be more socialized.

So I don't see why they fact that parents by and large enjoy being parents is any less reason to compensate them for the work they are doing for society.

A major reason might be that single folks, like myself, will have to pay for things that your children would do for you for free...

Many elderly are cared for by their kids and the care is either free or much cheaper than if it was bought...

Sure, but I am going further than you and saying we cannot allow just anyone to have children. They are too important for that.

No you're not. You're being satirical.

I didn't say we have to pay people to have children, but that we should pay people who have children. It's a question of justice, not need.

As for the issue of vetting people or licensing people to have children, the purely economic interest in seeing to it that our society replaces each passing generation with the best possible people has to be balanced against our democratic commitment to equality.

right, but then, what rights do the people have who put money into your kid?

for example, will your kid come over and shovel my snow because of my sponsorship?

I think that's why we don't pay mothers because then there's no expectations either way.

what society does do, collectively, is to look for new ways to increase the food and water supplies. in "first world countries," I think we do pretty good at that.

the problem, as always is: where do we draw the line?