Pay equality will be hard to achieve while we continue to prioritise lifestyle

[CaramacFiend]

Had an interesting discussion with a colleague last night whilst out for drinks and she made some points I've never really considered.

She pointed out that the woman often takes on the carer role as 'it made more sense due to his salary being higher'. This is no doubt true because even without the pay bias towards men there's also the fact that the husband is often a few years older and hence further along in his career. Also that men are more likely to ask for pay rises and choose high paying jobs - even more so in working class demographics where men often learn trades and women become carers etc.

So of course it makes financial sense for a family to do this. But what if the man took some of the hit and the woman continued building her career? In the long run this might even be better as the man might bounce back more easily (women may still continue to face prejudice from some for the perceived risk of them becoming pregant again).

Of course there's the issue of men not being able to give birth but the fact that only 1% women utilise shared parental leave does suggest that there's plenty of room for men to be more involved. My colleague believes that a lot of us want to have our cake and eat it.

Another colleague chipped in to say that a lot of families can't afford to take the hit on the main salary, but the original colleague said "well, that's a lifestyle choice". She said that she deliberately waited a couple of years until her salary/experience had reached the level where she wasn't reliant on her husband's salary. Obv not an option for everyone but it was an interesting point. She said that it can be a mistake to build your life on the foundation of a rich partner.

She said that she understands why people prioritise things like nice houses/areas, private schooling, nice holidays, etc, but that in many cases these choices funnel you in a direction that isn't necessarily the path to achieving true equality. She said she told her husband early on that she wouldn't be sacrificing her career and she 100% claims she would've left him had he gone back on his promise to share the leave.

I'm not sure what my thoughts are not having kids myself but I thought it was an interesting discussion. Do we end up forgoing equality for a better lifestyle?

But claiming that women are fundamentally more nurturing than men allows us to let men get away with being less hands on than women. And women can’t be expected to be the default parent AND earn more than their husbands. You can’t have it both ways.

I don't think it's mutually exclusive. Women can be more nurturing whilst men simultaneously use this as an excuse.

I would argue that we don’t have a choice. Parental leave is unfairly weighted. Men don’t have the same entitlement to paid leave that women do. Both statutory and in private companies.

Let’s say a man and a women are both working for £40k and are mid 30s. The woman has the baby and is entitled to more paid leave than the man. It makes sense financially for the woman to stay home longer. She then deals with all the baby stuff, becomes the primary carer by default. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

If both parents got the same amount of leave, they can take it together, spread it out so they don’t have to put their child in nursery earlier that they wanted, and both parents deal with the day to day running of the household and childcare. I would arrive for the ‘use it or lose it’ policy. Ideally both parents get 3m paid leave and they can take it or not.

If one of them wants more time off, then they can, but then it is a choice, not forced due to financial constraints, and you can budget accordingly.

We we’re very clear we wanted to be equal parents in terms of childcare, mental load, working outside the home etc. we had to save to afford this (my maternity leave was paid for more months that his paternity- then we used shared leave), but it has worked well for us as we both have our careers, our child asks for us equally (some days one parent is the favourite and another the other is , but think that’s standard!!).

The point is we need to have the choice, not to be pushed down these routes because of inequality in parental leave pay.

I earned more than my dh when I met him. I was earning at the top rate in my particular branch of the profession. No annual payrises, no bonus payments, no ability to wfh or do early or late finishes. My dh was in a role where he received a bonus payment every year and through several sideways moves and promotions is now well out earning what I did in my full time role. When I had our first I went part time, he immediately applied for flexible working so he could wfh two days a week to do nursery pick ups and drop offs. He paid for nursery too. My role had no flexibility unlike his which is why I made the decision to go part time, overall it made more financial sense for our family. We had our third child and I decided to drop to two days but go self employed. He facilitated it by compressing his hours to do a 4 day week meaning our toddler doesn't need to go to nursery (I work one weekday and a Saturday). It works for us because he has always been supportive of me whether I choose to work or not. He is a hands on dad because he wants to be. It benefits our children because they see both mummy and daddy work and support each other to run our household. If I went into a full time salaried role now I would be earning the same as my dh's salary but with none of the flexibility he has, nor a bonus or an annual pay increase,that ultimately wouldn't work for us as a family of 5.

I do enjoy being with them on my days off as does dh but I have no desire to be a sahm nor does he want to be a sahd so we work around each other for our family.

the fact that only 1% women utilise shared parental leave does suggest that there's plenty of room for men to be more involved
Thats because men and women aren’t paid equally for parental leave. Women get a long period of being paid 90% salary. Men don’t - they get statutory paternity pay which is about £170 a week (probably less than a quarter of his normal salary). Most couples can’t afford to take that sort of hit. If we want men to share parental leave then they also need to be entitled to 90% salary.

It makes my blood boil how underrated fatherhood is. There is no financial incentive to do it, the opposite. A father is financially incentivised to go out and earn the money and let the mother deal with all the childcare day to day as they get next to no paid leave.

I think I am probably the exception to this debate as my friends all have similar attitudes to parenting and childcare. Maybe because of where we live and our jobs, but despite the lack of financial benefits all of my friends have a husband who does equal childcare. Most have been fortunate to earn a decent wage to allow this. One of my friends has dropped to a 4 day week (he works director level in construction), to ensure he spends enough time with his children. It was so hard for him, as I also work in that sector and there is a massive stigma around taking time off for your family (especially as a man at that level). Another friend dropped her job as she didn’t like it, and wants to spend more time with her children and get a part time job around that. Her husband doesn’t earn a lot, but they have worked around it (moving out of london, etc).

It should be about choice, but unfortunately our choices are not really choices, but about what companies and government dictate.

Women can be more nurturing whilst men simultaneously use this as an excuse.

This with bells on. Most women ARE more nurturing in practice in most families (although I think a lot if not all of that is social conditioning as opposed to something innate). But that isn't something which should bar men from doing their fair share of childcare. Certainly not from doing equal domestic work.

People are always banging on about the importance of fathers/male role models etc. If the male role model is truly as important as it is claimed, why is it that the impetus is still on females to free up all this time for nurturing (alongside all the other jobs they have to do) and the male guidance is something which can be squeezed in in ten minutes after they get back from the office?

How is this wonderful fathering instinct to be fostered in men who spend 10+ hours a day at the office and the weekends watching football/playing golf?

But surely social choices are just the result of many individual choices, like trends. Or am I misunderstanding?

Whose individual choices? It wasn’t my choice to suddenly have buy-to-let pushing up house prices. No, a lot of ‘choice’ is government policy and imposed on the rest of us.

I also think the 'women not being taken seriously in trades' thing is overplayed. Lots of single women prefer to have a female plumber attending, for example. There's a lot of scope in this like female only taxis. My experience of working with trades day in and out is that if your work is good then you'll get on ok.

That simply is not true. Women report on male sexism all the time, so you also must be ignoring that. Men simply ignore women, speak over them, turn to other men: and women who do try to work in trades with men are told to ‘use their assets’ to sell or suffer from ridiculous levels of sexual harassment or risk.

A “long period” - lol, I got 13 weeks at 90% and then dropped down to SMP. I couldn’t top it up with holiday; instead I got my holiday pay after I returned to work.

My partner works for the same employer and got 3 weeks on 90%, then the rest at SMP, but could buy extra holidays and spread the “payments” over 12 months.

We work for the same organisation.

Good points, there’s absolutely no way I would’ve worked in trades because it’s not safe as a lone woman going in to strangers houses and very physical work is not safe when you’re pregnant so you’d have to factor in not working during pregnancy.

My DH and I basically did the same job for the same money when we got married
I made it crystal clear that was not going to change ,my career was just as important as his

But surely social choices are just the result of many individual choices

But do you actually have the choice, if government has decided that women should be SAHMs and therefore affordable childcare is not needed? If you can't afford childcare, how much of a 'choice' is it to stay home?

OP the reason it’s not a lifestyle choice is because fewer than 5% of families are in the market for things like private schooling. The other 95% are maximising the family’s income to cover the basics and don’t want to risk sliding into poverty for the sake of an abstract ideology. This is a capitalist society and financial incentives are supremely powerful. You might as well ask why more people in general don’t make the ‘lifestyle choice’ to lose money.

Yep, my male partner (the lower salary and lower number of working hours partner) gets a lot of flack when he has to leave work for childcare purposes.

It doesn’t happen often - maybe a few times a year - especially since we take turns to leave in an emergency. Yet every time it happens, he is asked why I can’t get them/leave etc.

Well, mainly because I’m an hour away and he’s 5 minutes away, and my child is sitting covered in vomit. Because if I lose my job we are fucked; if he loses his we don’t go to Florida. Because he can leave and his work will wait til tomorrow/be done by someone else; mine will simply not be done and others will be impacted.

Normally what happens on my days to leave is he’ll pick the sick kid up and go home for a few hours, he’ll get me to leave work asap and then he’ll go back and finish his shift. But no, my vagina means I should do it all and can’t possibly have an important job.

I know quite a few school mums where the female out earns the man
In our marriage my husband earns a lot more than I do and he works full time and I work part time. He admits quite openly that I work much harder day to day in my paid role than he does. He just happens to work in a well paid industry (IT) where he can earn well without having any management responsibilities and works normal hours
In my role to earn more means moving into people management in a role which has lots of stress and no paid overtime
I just wouldn't be willing to give so much of my personal time over for the extra pay
It doesn't really matter to us who puts the most in it is all goes into the pot and everything is joint
We've been together since ours teens and at one point I was earning in the £20k's which was great for the time and he was earning less than £50 a week on a YTS scheme! Other times in our lives he has been earning loads doing day rate contracting and I've been on min wage
I've always known that I can earn more and get the bigger job but even as my children get older I don't know if I want it. I just can't be arsed with putting in the hours and having to deal with some of the senior managers where I work

Well, I've not experienced this myself if I'm honest, although I will say that I do hear a lot more jokes/banter that would no doubt offend some people.

There seems to be a real inclusivitiy push at a lot of the big companies. Plant I was at the other day had a big 'Network of Women' poster in the canteen and our other big aggregate supplier has a similar initiative. At Cemex there's actually a median pay gap of 2.1% in favour of women, which is likely explained by them occupying management rather than plant roles. I also notice that almost half of the tipper drivers who deliver our gravel are female - they've 100% been on a recruitment drive which may be partly explained by the MDs daughter being one of their drivers too.

Nearly 40% of new starters that enter the construction industry through higher education are female nowadays so things are definitely changing. You still don't see many women in technical/plant roles though and I'd wager it's the dirty nature of the job. I never met a single female waste operative in four years of working for one of the UKs largest waste companies.

yet every time it happens, he is asked why I can’t get them/leave etc.

DH had the same, told his company that the day he earns multiples of my salary and not vice versa, we will indeed consider prioritising his career for a while.

I honestly think perpetuated stereotypes are one of the biggest things putting girls off tbh. All of the big contractors I've dealt with are extremely professional but the general public seem to default to thinking of hairy arsed blokes in white vans doing house extensions, which isn't really the type of route you'd go as a construction graduate.

👏

I'm Finnish and the system here is far from perfect but in my social circle in the past 10ish years when couples have been having babies most the men have stayed 6-12 months at home. I also don't know anyone taking reduced hours cause the daycare fees are determined by the family income but the max is 300€/mo.

My bf hadn't even really thought about staying home until he saw how excited my brother was to spend a year with his son. And now my bf is all for staying at home. He needed the example. It's a slow institutional change that is needed. We're still far from equality and the workforce is slowly following.

I don't think this is as simple as choice. Of course there are some aspects that are a choice but culture and society is a big factor. And it is not as simple as a choice to change it.

Ironically, I feel like a lot of the jobs that women favour are the types that suffer the most from time out. In an office job you miss out on valuable promotions but as a tradesperson you can just start taking jobs on again.

A truck driver can leave a job and be in another one within days, earning a decent salary. I actually spoke to a friend earlier today who is doing her first shift for one of the big hauliers (DPD/Amazon type company) on £25 p/h. With bonuses and overtime she reckons she'll be on about £65k. You could easily take a year out and probably return on a higher salary as there's such demand for Class 1 drivers. 4on/4off also allows much more free time if you can be flexible with a rolling shift pattern. Her hubby wfh so does the school run for four days then she does them on her four days off. She said she could never go back to a two day weekend.

I'm currently on maternity leave and plan to go back part time, despite being the higher earner. Frankly, I've fallen out of love with teaching and I'm hoping that doing less of it will help me enjoy it a bit more. We're lucky in that we have family help for childcare. If that hasn't been an option, we had discussed my husband going pt as that would have made more sense financially. He is just about to start a new job though which is better paid so takes some of the pressure off me. I feel like things are falling into place, and I certainly don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything career wise. We'll see how it goes.

I’d recommend doing the part time thing temporarily if I was you.

Teaching part time is just doing full time hours for less pay.

@PlantMum23 I've been part time before (0.8) and I agree with you. I'm hoping this time around I'll be able to hold firm on boundaries! That remains to be seen 🤞🏻

It’s not feminists undervaluing caring work! Feminists have been pointing out for years that traditionally female activities are not valued by society.

I also think that many women go part time because it’s socially acceptable to do so - if you have a bullshit job, why would you stay in it if you didn’t have to? Men don’t get that option to the same degree.