Unequal treatment/expectations of the genders in society

glennmagusharvey

I just ran across two articles (courtesy of social networking contacts) this morning:

Slate: "Female academics pay a heavy baby penalty"

Salon: "To my daughter on Father's Day: Sorry I used to be a sexist"

Feel free to make this a general gender-related thread.

fourteenwings

To be totally unemotional and somewhat unethical/completely unhumanitarian: The optimal employee is the kind who can work for as long as you want them to without the likelihood of unforeseen mishaps (Being bedridden or suddenly deciding to become a Buddhist monk or whatever). Pregnancy/Children kind of mess with that. And entering the career field, a woman who gets pregnant at some point will obviously fall behind her male counterparts in general (Children or not) and her female companions who haven't.

as Sheryl Sandberg argues in Lean In

I've read this book, it sucks at everything that's not recommending other books. Also it's not really an innovative book and doesn't fit in with the message of the article as it has a very "Second-tier is A-Okay!" message.

We all know what structural changes would help to level the playing field in all of these careers and they are quite similar

Continuing with my emotionless stuff: Structural changes that don't benefit the employer in any way and actually cost them much more than they intent to spend on employees aren't exactly the most desirable.

I mean, Happy Employee=Good Employee holds true, but they've already found a lot of happy employees in the form of Women without Children.

Note: fourteenwings is merely presenting counterpoints, in fact, he's very much in support of structural changes to better employees. It's just that he sees no way in which that'll happen in a capitalist profit-mongering world.'

The second article is pretty great though, but I'm surprised that women in America still don't get equal pay...

Nyktos

To be totally unemotional and somewhat unethical/completely unhumanitarian: The optimal employee is the kind who can work for as long as you want them to without the likelihood of unforeseen mishaps (Being bedridden or suddenly deciding to become a Buddhist monk or whatever). Pregnancy/Children kind of mess with that. And entering the career field, a woman who gets pregnant at some point will obviously fall behind her male counterparts in general (Children or not) and her female companions who haven't.

It's not like women can't work while pregnant. Probably they'll have to take some time off right at the end to actually give birth, but that's fairly short. Once the child is born, it's the responsibility of both parents to take care of them.

fourteenwings

But social attitudes/ingrained work ethics are very negative towards paternity leave in any case though. So why should businesses/organizations not exploit that?

glennmagusharvey

Because it's WRONG.  Because fathers ought to be expected to take the time to care for their kids just as mothers are expected to take.

Nyktos

But social attitudes/ingrained work ethics are very negative towards paternity leave in any case though. So why should businesses/organizations not exploit that?

Is this not the kind of thing we want to change?

Bastion

fourteenwings: do you really think "social attitudes/ingrained work ethics are very negative towards paternity leave" counts as "emotionless"?

GLaDOS

In terms of childbirth and the effects it has on female workers, perhaps it would be the next logical step to establishing reproduction in a more efficient way.

Oh wait, no, you're humans, you don't have active processing logic systems in your data center now do you.

fourteenwings

do you really think "social attitudes/ingrained work ethics are very negative towards paternity leave" counts as "emotionless"?

Sort of? Society is pretty unfeeling when it comes to "This should be done this way because we always did it this way".

Is this not the kind of thing we want to change?

It is, as I said, I don't agree with this type of stuff, but I think the points should be presented

Because it's WRONG.

It is! But corporations don't care. It's not something that affects their overall public image (like that thing with women somehow still not having equal pay, though to be honest I feel like some pretty huge media lobbying is going into that because come on.)

Bastion

Sort of? Society is pretty unfeeling when it comes to "This should be done this way because we always did it this way".

"Attitudes [...] are very negative" is an emotional response to this idea any way you slice it. More importantly, so is starting with a discussion about "the optimal employee", because that also comes from an emotional place: the employer, who evidently feels very strongly about profit. (If emotion was somehow dispensed with, there's absolutely no reason why maximizing profit would be the chief aim; profit and utility are not synonymous. Actually, if there's one thing I've learned from Mitt Romney it's that they're frequently complete opposites.)

I understand you're just trying to play devil's advocate, but I still don't like the idea that the viewpoint that punishes women in favor of profit is somehow unemotional or logical. (For that matter, if it was just about profit I'm sure the fact that women are better at multitasking would greatly outweigh the complication of pregnancy.)

fourteenwings

or logical

At no point did I claim it was logical though.