Gender Pay Gap due to women's choices

Yes but snowflake, children don't always know what's best for the family or for themselves. If they chose everything we ate, I suspect we'd all be less healthy than we are now!

I think this myth that senior women can't have families is a myth propagated by those who don't want senior women to succeed. It is just as much a problem for those at the other end of the payscale.

If 90% of the men in the UK decided tomorrow that employees should be automatically entitled to part time flexible work if they wanted it, and that it should not affect prospects, it would happen in a month.

If 90% of women decided that tomorrow, it wouldn't happen at all.

And that's the crux of the "choice" stuff, really.

Lady - I quite agree. I'm not suggesting let's wring our hands for our poor oppressed brothers who go out to work 5 days a week. But we don't split maternity/paternity leave between parents, and it is still much more 'acceptable' for a woman to go part-time than a man. However, I'm not sure that actually it's more possible for a part-time worker, of either sex, to then go on to promotion? And clearly that is going to be more of a priority as the primary breadwinner than the secondary.

So, I guess two distinct threads: first ensuring part-time workers have the right opportunities and then making it possible for men to share in those.

Could they change it if they immediately wanted to? Probably, compared to us. But they still have an upward struggle to challenge the accepted norms.

The problem with the What about the menz argument is that they are the ones who have the freedom to get the power and economic independence with the 'choices' they are presented. It is a women's issue. At the moment......it may be aided by the measures you talk of with flexible working for men too, but that doesn't mean it is a men's issue

LadyBlaBlah - and equally how many men have 'chosen' to work full-time because there are no more flexible options to allow them to meet the needs of their family and career. These are not free choices.

It's vital we move this past being a women's issue (which is not to say it is not a feminist issue, an entirely other thing). Childcare and earning are joint responsibilities to enable a family to live. As I said in my previous post, if the gender pay gap is caused by more flexible working arrangements for women, clearly the answer is more flexible working arrangements for men? Bish bosh - no measurable gender pay gap surely?

anastaisia - didn't know that about home ed, will make some inquiries. Sweden definitely isn't utopia, they don't even have Cadbury's chocolate for starters (well, they didn't where I lived before every Stockholmer weighs in and states it's available in every cornershop in their neighbourhood). But their parental leave policies are bang on in my view.

Yeah no great thinking to put it here, I love being proved right :)

msrisotto wrote - "I read Scallops comment about how many male CEOs had children to illustrate how having children doesn't hamper the success of male business people but it does female. I don't have stats to back this up but i reckon it's be a reliable bet that more males in senior positions had children compared to the women."

Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) said on the video linked to in the TED talk "Why we have too few women leaders?" thread:

"A recent study in the US showed that of senior managers, of married senior managers, two thirds of the married men had children and only one third of the married women had children."

(msrisotto, I know you have already found the video and responded on that other thread but I thought it was worth mentioning here too.)

It is the 'free choice' bit that gets me everytime about this topic.

There is an assumption that if a woman has 'given up' work on having a family then she has made a 'free choice'

What she has made is a choice based on the very few choices she has..............due to the lack of suitable childcare, lack of shared parental responsibility, discrimination in the workplace etc.

It infuriates me to the point of combustion, and even more so when women agree with the viewpoint - like at the beginning of this thread.

I don't, they have good things - but they have their bad points too - like home education was made illegal not long ago :(

I want to live in sweden!

Doesn't the Swedish system also allow the leave to be spread over time? So you don't have to take it all in a lump with the baby, but could return to work at (eg) 6 months, but with each parent only working 3 day weeks?

That would have a huge impact on everyone finding a better work/family balance IMO; very different thing to do that than to take a full chunk of time out of work. And here you 'loose' your mat leave if you do more than keeping in touch days.

Far better for employers too.

Trib, I know single parents get all the leave/pay. Maybe carers do to?

If you're writing to any MPs then its worth remembering that they've already started to look into how to share parental leave differently.

Cameron wants companies to only have to publish pay scales if the company is found guilty of discrimination rather than as standard - so maybe letters to your own MPs asking that they raise this?

Commander, 'choose' is a big word. And I think that is my theme - did I 'choose' a partner who will probably never work again? Yes, I did! I'm not sure I really understood that point at the time, but I actually did. Now I work full time because I have to. When I use the word choice I don't mean from a menu of everything, I mean to signify that from the things I can do, I do this.

Oh when did we get to choose a lifestyle? Maybe I was sick that day , or perhaps couldn't get childcare.

DH would have given his right arm for 3 months at home with each of the girls when they were babies. As it is he does quite nice shifts so is here most days either in the morning or the afternoon - so has had a lot of time with them in their teeny stage - more time than most. It is a real shame that men who would really like to have this opportunity are denied it, basically because our society can't get it's head around any arrangement other than the "usual" one (as tribpot says).

In our personal situation the 4 days each thing or something like it would be great - he would love more time with the children and I would love less to be honest! I love working and he is great with the kids but whichever way we cut it, it was me who was going to take the time out, even though I earned substantially more when I got pg with DD1. To be honest maybe we made some bad choices - but there didn't actually seem to be that much choice in reality, IYSWIM.

I think her point in the article - women can have a career or have kids - is a fair one - but it goes to prove the opposite of what she is saying.

Truckluent, I'm glad, I thought that's what you meant.

To me it's a no-brainer, except for wondering quite how it would flex in my case, where DH is not well enough to work - I assume there are provisions for that of course!

Right, Mumsnetters, we do something next, whether it's a letter to the appropriate minister or whatever. The thread is about the pay gap: is that our theme?

The Swedish example of sharing maternity/paternity leave. Therefore making it less gendered so employers less able to discriminate solely on gender.

Truckulent, what were you saying the good idea was? Just to be clear.

Sure, but as has been noted, conversely with seniority can come more flexibility over individual hours, for example. If I get my work done no-one cares if some of them are first thing, last thing and at the weekend (extreme example).

It is a balance, I don't think anyone questions that. But it should be a better balance. To stereotype: it should be far easier for two working parents to do 4 days a week each than it is. I know virtually no-one who achieves this. And it mostly is cultural barriers about part-time work, its value and the level of commitment of those who do it, which is simply stupid.

There still seem to be some battles to be won. Imagine my surprise ...

As a nursery nurse, who has seen 100s of children go through nursery, I think being full time in nursery is too much for most children.

I do think from what you hear of most children that they would prefer it if one parent was with them at home for some of that time.

I think it's a great idea, and I'd have taken off as long as possible.
Surely this is the way to beat the pay inequality and the glass-ceiling?

snowflake, I don't see what seniority has to do with it; surely it is about the hours worked, rather then seniority; plenty of people have to work long hours, whether senior or not.

I take DD into the nursery for 9am, and am home from work by 6.30pm on 90% of week days, and work in the evening after DD is in bed if necessary. I seldom have to work at the weekend. I worked much longer and more unsociable hours as a junior, and I am not unusual in this.

I think if a man is in a senior position it is very unklikely he will have a very close relationship with his kids or spend enough time with them. The same goes for women. Something has got to give.

The total amount of leave is about 18 months to two years, the mum's not being forced back to work at 3 months to give the dad his chance :) They share the leave between them, with this 3m minimum period for the dad. From what I recall, my friends tended to take over at about the six month mark, when the exclusive breastfeeding was either done or expressing was well established.

I'm not sure the idea of the dad not wanting to do it really factors in - I assume there must be provisions for exceptions like "I'm on the international space station" or "I am the only heart transplant surgeon in Sweden".

I'm curious. What would happen if the dad didn't want the 3m leave? What would happen if the mum wanted more than her allotted 3m?

sweden ahead of the game as usual.