The Women's March

[civilspouse]

I agree with all of this. I worked in a very male dominated field (engineering). Once we had kids I really had to pull back because DH couldn't help out. I quit staying late and had to take days off when the kids were sick. One of my male coworkers really wanted to take time off with his third kid after his wife's maternity leave was done. It would have worked out so that they would have had someone home with their kids all summer and he had done it under another employer with his second and really liked the bonding time. He didn't end up doing it because three of the four women in our office including me were pregnant and taking leave back to back right around the same time. I think he was pressured by the company not to do it. I never felt under paid in comparison to my male counterparts but I also worked very hard while I was there. I really struggled though with trying to balance being a good employee and good mom. The president of our company was a very sexist guy who made jokes like he was going to stop hiring women because they keep getting pregnant and taking time off (unpaid). Funnily enough though after my second maternity leave they gave me a sizable raise when I came back because they said they realized how much I did. That felt nice, but sadly it was right before we matched and moved across the country and I gave up my career because it was what was best for our family.


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[JDAZ11]

The Women's March

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[JDAZ11]

The whole equal pay for equal work is kind of a misnomer. Most recent research shows that when you control for things like hours/week (more are more likely to be PT), the wage gap for identical jobs is <10% (still unacceptable obviously). The way more important issue is actually that women have many fewer opportunities to get to the higher/highest paying jobs because of social pressures on them to also be a wife, mother, etc. I would have liked to keep working FT, there was NO possible way for me to do that at this stage in my life and I have a job where I can afford a good nanny (which is the exception, not the rule) while my husband has an equally time consuming job. I cannot tell you how many times coworkers would say "I don't know how you're doing it" and that's when I only had two children and DH was at his away rotation. I simply couldn't keep traveling while he was away, it was a safety issue for my children having no parent/family within a 150 miles if something went wrong.

We need to work for work flexibility regardless of sex. That would make everyone's lives better. Most dads I know would love to be more involved but there's tremendous pressure on men too to NOT slow down when they have kids.

Yes! SO TRUE!


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