this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I'm well aware of biology, thank you.
It's an undeniable fact that there are more single mothers who look after their children than single fathers. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.
Women working fewer hours in their working lives is by far and away the biggest reason for the gap between the total lifetime earnings of men and total lifetime earnings of women. The biggest reason women take fewer hours is because of pregnancy and childcare. That's why I brought it up. I thought that was obvious, but apparently not.
Prove to me that women earn less for doing the same work. Find me a job listing that advertises a lower wage for women. You won't find one. Because that's not the issue here.
That would be asking for trouble, duh.
It's illegal in my country to specify gender too, so all ads say "(m/f)", do you really think there won't be a hiring bias when hiring for a role where one gender is predominant?
Of course there sometimes is. Where did I say otherwise? What does that have to do with anything I said?
All I said was that by far far and away the biggest cause of the lifetime earnings gap between men and women being the way that it is is because women work fewer hours in their lives, mainly due to pregnancy and childcare.
In the UK at least, younger women actually earn more than their male counterparts due to higher university attendance, typically better grades, and ending up in better jobs.
It's when they reach an age where it's typical to take time off to have kids when they fall behind.
Put simply, work fewer hours = get fewer monies.
If governments want to close the gap, and I think they should, they need to make childcare more accessible. It helps both men and women, but moreso women, because they're the ones who take time off for pregnancy, and they're typically the ones who take more time off for looking after children after that.
It feels a but ridiculous that you are using "less work hours due to pregnancy and childcare" as your primary explanation for why women make less over multi-decades long career.
Women go on pregnancy leave for months. How can this explain less pay for years of working?
Women can be gone for just months (in most countries it's 1-2 years actually), but even beyond that many don't return to work or only return part time. Looking after children is hard and time consuming.
The Office for National Statistics (UK) found that 15% of men and 42% of women work part time (defined as fewer than 30 hours per week), data as of 2018.
Women demonstrably work fewer hours in their lives than men. We have extensive data on this.
I'm of the opinion that if we want to reverse that, more aid needs to be given to new parents especially in the form of free or discounted childcare - because pregnancy and looking after children is the single largest reason for women staying out of work/reducing their hours.
I genuinely don't see what's controversial in what I'm saying? The data backs me up.
I'm sure even anecdotally you know more women taking a greater duration of maternity leave than their partners take paternity leave, I'm sure anecdotally you know of more full-time single mothers than single fathers, and anecdotally you know more mothers who went part time after having kids than fathers.