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发帖数: 29846 | 1 No matter how well women are doing relative to men, it doesn’t matter. They
’re still the victims of discrimination — or so they think.
This, when women today earn more college degrees and advanced degrees than
men, and have lower rates of unemployment. How are the decks are still
stacked against them?
The new Pew Social Trends survey reports that “Millennial women . . . are
just as likely as older generations to believe that women face an uphill
climb in terms of being treated equally by society and by employers.”
Indeed, “Fully three-quarters of Millennial women compared with 57 percent
of Millennial men say the country needs to do more in order to bring about
workplace equality.”
On the other hand, Pew found that among workers between the ages of 25 and
34, women’s hourly wages are 93 percent of men’s. And Kay Hymowitz, author
of “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” says
that she suspects that gap would disappear completely were the data
disaggregated between women who had children and women who did not. In fact,
a 2010 study by Reach Advisors found that young, single, childless women
earned more than their male counterparts in most metro US areas.
Having children clearly makes all the difference. Hymowitz says the “whole
way the conversation is framed is wrong.” Feminists and policy makers, she
notes, say that they want “absolute parity and that anything less
represents real discrimination and injustice.” In fact, though, the lack of
parity is largely the result of the choices so many women make for the sake
of the next generation — working part time, taking time off to raise kids,
asking for less demanding assignments, etc.
For instance, 34 percent of Millennial women told Pew they’re not
interested in becoming a boss or a top manager, compared to only 25 percent
of men. The reason seems obvious: Some of the Millennial women may already
be parents, and many of the rest are still thinking about how to balance
these issues down the line.
Hannah Seligson, the author of “Mission Adulthood,” says that “the 20s
present a unique opportunity: For all intents and purposes women and men are
equal,” because they don’t have the demands of family yet. But women are
already thinking about these demands before they have kids. Seligson
believes that men worry too, but “it’s not keeping them up at night.”
Like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is concerned that women are “leaving
before they leave” — not putting their hands up for promotions because
they are worried about balancing family later on — Seligson fears that the
constant media drumbeat on the “mommy track” is pushing women to worry
about balancing work and family long before they really have to.
Maybe, but it’s the constant media drumbeat about supposed unfairness that
’s making women think the decks are stacked against them at all. Consider,
even though many women seem to believe the playing field isn’t level when
it comes to wages and hiring, Pew finds that “relatively few working adults
report these types of gender biases at their own workplace.”
In other words, the impression isn’t driven by what we actually experience,
but by what we’re constantly told by others.
College faculty and administrators are among the most zealous marketers of
the message that sex discrimination is alive and well in America, so it’s
no surprise that, asked whether it is easier for men to get top executive
jobs, 71 percent of college-graduate women said yes, compared to only 47
percent of women who were not college graduates.
The New York Times recently reported on the small number of women who hold
powerful positions in the world of finance and how their success has been
made possible by stay-at-home-fathers. These dads take care of everything
around the house, allowing the moms to travel frequently, work late and not
have to worry about whether a sick kid will keep them home that day.
The next time a Millennial woman demands complete parity in the workplace —
even in the corner suites — ask if she is willing to become one of those
women.
Are you OK with not being the first person school calls when your child is
sick? Are you willing to leave home before the kids are up and come home
after they are asleep? Would you travel two weeks out of every month even
when your kids are young?
Until women say yes to those questions at the same rate as men, the goal of
workplace parity is both silly and impossible. |
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