.
Feminist groups like to pretend that women can have it all — work full-time and become leaders of industries, without sacrificing time with families. It’s politically incorrect to suggest that one of these areas of life has to come at the expense of, or have an impact on, another.
Yet life involves trade-offs. A gangbuster career typically requires long hours and other consequences, like travel and relocation — sacrifices many women don’t want to make. That’s not a problem that needs solving. So long as women are making choices based on their own preferences, their choices deserve respect.
Feminists sometimes resent that people have the choice (and are rewarded for devoting) significant extra hours to their jobs. Yet women are fortunate to live in a time when the choice between working and staying at home has become much less mutually exclusive. Technology is making working from home efficient and effective. Companies are increasingly offering employees more flexible schedules through programs like comp-time and flex-time. Both make the choice between working and staying at home less difficult.
Still, there will be tradeoffs forever in balancing career with other interests, including family. It will be always hard for someone opting for a flexible arrangement or reduced work week to compete with someone willing to devote all their waking hours to the job. The man or woman who wants to give the extra effort deserves the additional rewards that come with additional work — just as the person who opts to spend more time on outside interests will be rewarded with the fulfillment that these bring.
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Many feminists refuse to recognize that women and men make different choices when it comes to work and family. These choices lead to different outcomes. It’s politically correct to blame these different outcomes on discrimination.
Consider the feminists’ concern over the so-called wage gap… Typically, the government finds that the average working woman makes about three-quarters of that of the working man…
The Department of Labor statistic ignores the many relevant factors that affect a worker’s take-home pay. For starters, it doesn’t adjust for the number of years worked. On average, women spend about a decade out of the workforce caring for their families. It should come as no surprise that a thirty-five-year-old woman reentering the workforce after ten years off earns less than a man or woman who worked continuously during that time.
The wage-gap statistic also fails to consider educational attainment. Today, women earn more than half of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but it wasn’t always that way. Older women in the workforce tend to have less education than their male peers, which affected their career path, their salaries, and ultimately Department of Labor data.
Women and men in general also have different priorities when assessing employment opportunities. One survey of working women found that for nearly three-quarters a flexible schedule was “very important” when considering a job [3]. This means that many women are willing to trade more money for more flexibility or time off.
Gender warriors at the Feminist Majority and NOW lament that women still sacrifice their careers to take on a disproportionate share of childcare responsibilities. But as surveys indicate, many women sincerely want to spend more time with their families. And regardless of whether it’s out of duty or desire, full-time working women tend to spend less time in the office than full-time working men. The Department of Labor time-use study revealed that a full-time working woman spends a half-hour, or 7 percent, less time in the office on an average work day than the typical full-time working man [4].
[3] “Motherhood Today — A Tough Job, Less Ably Done: As American Women See It”.
[4] “Time-Use Survey,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, September 14, 2004. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf .
Carrie L. Lukas
“Chapter Twelve: The Myth of Having It All”
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism
