Researchers note that the pay gap between men and women M.B.A.’s has not narrowed as anticipated now that women are just as likely to get graduate degrees and comparable training. The New York Times reports that the culprit is not “a glass ceiling molded from a male prejudice”.
No, the reason M.B.A. women don’t go as far or succeed as much is because….women have children!!
Now you just give me a minute here to catch my breath.
Men’s and women’s paths diverge at the point of maternity leave. Once interrupted, the lost ground is quite simply never recovered. Then, when women do return to work, they work less. As a result, their earnings drop as compared to men. Time passes, children grow, and their employed mothers lose out on raises, promotions, and declines in earnings and professional advancement accelerate.
Two comments to note: A man’s worklife is virtually unaffected by fatherhood. And the worklives of men and women are virtually identical up until the point where …a woman becomes a mother. “Call a woman without a child a man.”
I suggest that a society in which women perform a disproportionate amount of family caregiving, and the primary factor in professional success is the absence of a competing family obligation, is in fact a society prejudiced against women with children. Women with children, also known as “mothers”, have assumed greater, and sometimes devastating, economic risk.
Women with children don’t work less – they just aren’t getting paid for all the work they do. The economic insecurity that motherhood brings is bad for mothers and their children. When motherhood limits a woman’s earning power and professional potential, the national economy takes a hit.
There are more unmarried women now that at any time in our nation’s history, because women can financially sustain themselves and can control their fertility. As long as motherhood negatively impacts a woman’s autonomy and independence, some will find it an unattractive option. Is it really in our long-term interests, as individuals, as communities, and as a country, to punish those upon whom our future is wholly reliant?
“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family.” (George Bernard Shaw) When women refuse to do that at their own exclusive cost, the discrimination will end.
“If women want rights more than they got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it?” (Sojourner Truth)
