Anonymously they say what we have all known for years.

[divadee]

I saw this article today and I have to say it didn't surprise me. Upset me and made me angry but it only says what women have known for years and years.

tokyo of course everything you say is right and I'm wrong because I have a different opinion to you.

If you can't survive on $2000 a month, about £1350, you are living beyond your means or earn enough that you should have some savings to cover the shortfall.

8 weeks for a c secion is dreadful

If someone had asked me, as a new mum over 20 years ago, what I’d ideally want, I would have prioritised it like this:

1. paternity leave. There was none back then. I found it really sad that my dh (teacher) had to be back at work the day after each birth. Friends’ husbands had to use annual leave if they wanted time off.

2. longer maternity leave. Not necessarily a year (because that seems a long time to be out of the workplace) but 6 - 9 months

3. some subsidy for child care (no free hours at all back then)

4. ... to be honest, I’m putting this 4th because it would have seemed the stuff of dreams back then! - transferable parental leave. This would have been bloody wonderful!

So... 20+ years later, we have all these things, yet there seems to be scant recognition of how far we’ve come.

What I had - the chance to stay in work after having children- is what generations of women before me weren’t denied. What women have now, is what my generation of women were denied. Don’t take it for granted. Use it!

That should of course be generations before me were denied

It’s not about whether you can survive on it! (Although if you have a large mortgage or are the main breadwinner you could well struggle on that.)

In my current job in France I would be entitled to 4 months on full pay (I earn nearly €4,000 a month after tax). In my last job in the UK I would have been entitled to 6 months on full pay (just under £3,000 a month after tax) and a further 3 months on half pay.

What you would be entitled to in the US is - objectively - rubbish compared to that.

And a healthy pregnancy is not a disability, for actual fuck’s sake.

If your business cannot support women, it's not financially viable. Breaking equality law is the equivalent to tax avoidance - it's engaging in dishonest business practices to gain an unfair advantage over competitors.

And yet it happens in many businesses and they get away with it...

Whilst they can get away with it, small business owners have to discriminate to stay in business, otherwise they will be undercut by competitors who can do things more cheaply because they do discriminate

Not all businesses, but enough

@NoSuchThingAsAlpha

Are you saying that women cost a business more? They're a burden or a tax or a cost a business should be able to absorb? I can't think of another interpretation of your comments.

Women are a disadvantage. Hiring men gives an unfair advantage ...

Is that what you mean? Have I misunderstood?

@PrincePhilipIsNotDeadYet

Someone else said my reply had poor style and you think you found a spelling mistake. Do you really have nothing more to add? Idiot.

Someone else said my reply had poor style and you think you found a spelling mistake. Do you really have nothing more to add? Idiot

If you go back and look at my post you’ll hopefully notice that I had a lot more to say. In fact, my post was substantively on the point.

But ignoring all that and hurling insults instead really paints an interesting picture of the sort of school culture you foster.

What is it they say about money not being able to buy class?

A healthy pregnancy is disabling though in that you can't be expected to return to work right away.

There is nothing to say you can't take longer. The state of NJ allows an additional 6 weeks of family leave, NY allows 12 weeks now in terms of paid leave. You can take up to 26 weeks, you just won't get paid unless you have short term disability insurance and are signed off from work, something which doctors are very quick to do. Most employers offer this and you get full pay while on disability leave. I was signed off an additional 3 weeks after my last because the paediatrician wasn't happy with the amount of sleep I was getting.

It's a different mindset and a different framework for providing for maternity leave. It's not as bad as Europeans make out. It also seems to be working well as I see more and more women in senior positions in the workplace who have had DC. In the Uk I continue to see women in government roles or as business owners but not that many in senior positions in for-profit companies.

At the interview in my present job I mentioned that i didn't have children, would never have children and I was far more interested in my career. I needed that job desperately because I was skint and in need of a job that paid more than just above NMW. I don't know if that had any impact on me getting the job (as I was more than qualified and experienced anyway) but I've certainly done well in that company.

A former work colleague used to lay the same story on very thick auditqueen. When she announced her pg I said to her privately over coffee “but surely you’d always said that all children were horrible brats and you’d never ever dream of having one of your own?” She was incredibly casual in responding that obviously that had been a lie for career purposes, and I was hopelessly naive not to have realised that. But I guess that she was completely within her rights to lie, because it would have been illegal for our employers to take any notice at all of her statements. They could never own up to having been misled or caring a jot one way or the other.