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?

Far from it. A lot of people just seem to get annoyed if you attempt to discuss the difficult questions or see it from both perspectives. It's like you're not allowed to do so and need to stay in your lane.

Regarding my cocklodger comment. How far do you think a good looking man is likely to get if he decides to find a wealthy woman to marry and live off her money? If he states that he 'wants to be treated like a prince'. Likely not very far.

However, dating websites are full of women stating they want to be treated like 'a queen/a princess' and 'you better have your finances in check' (which men never state as a requirement). Feminists hate these types of women for good reason but pretending they don't exist and calling women misogynists for mentioning them is just burying their heads in the sand.

Nope. I call bullshit. You started a thread about women choosing to take on the carer role and maybe they should build careers instead. Now here you are complaining about what women write on dating sites, no children in sight. You’re just here to hit out at women. Your friend was a convenient stooge for your post but you couldn’t keep up the ‘oh me? I just thought it was interesting to discuss all angles like the one my friend brought up.’ Who knows if your friend exists, but you wouldn’t know all angles if you walked into them.

And yet many posters have managed to add insightful and nuanced perspectives to the discussion.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that some women exploit the patriarchy to their own benefit. I don't even judge them really as we work with what we're given and personal sacrifices hardly make a dent on a societal level despite having far reaching consequences for the individual in question (part of the point of the original discussion).

But please feel free to stamp your feet and cry misogyny. I'm all for free speech. 😂

While it's now obvs OP is just a bitter dude, I might as well respond to this, as it proper made me Lol..
Dare I say it's perhaps not just the effect of having a year or two out so much as the permanent shift to being less work focused in many cases.
Honestly, in years of working with both men and women who have children, it's only ever been the men who try and WFH with a two year old running around, the men who bring their kids to work for hours because they couldn't sort holiday childcare, and the men who leave work to do the school run for an hour because after school club is too expensive (this is from men at Director level).
Weirdly though, they still seem to rise to the top, nicely facilitated by armies of slightly much lower down female colleagues, who get all the office mum jobs dumped on them "Sarah can you sort a collection for Jeans retirement I'm just no good at that sort of thing" the boss will say...
The men somehow also seem to get to pick and choose their tasks, and ( this is key) are not at all shy about presenting work as their singular achievement even when it wasn't...meanwhile, most the women I have worked with are highly competent, quietly focused, and able to be mother's AND workers all at the same time, with really no fuss.

When my husband was doing his 3m of shared parental leave, I never felt jealous of him taking the baby out for some fresh air and getting a coffee. Seems very odd a parent would be jealous of this, surely you want your partner and child to be out having fun.

This isn't my experience. I was always getting done over in my office job by being asked to pick up stuff when the mums on the team (the majority) had to go and get the kids. In the end I started saying no and I got the distinct vibe that I was seen as unreasonable by a fair few.

Loads of posters have talked about this before on here, I could find multiple threads. But it's a bit of a derail, really. You're clearly one of those posters that thinks women can do no wrong as opposed them being like any other human with some good attributes and some flaws.

Am I indeed. Or have I just had years of work experience with men!

To give women more opportunities to have better jobs / work if they want to we need to campaign for

1.cheap baby/child care. (This can be done if the Government thought it was important cf the rapid provision in WW2.) + all employers over an agreed numbers of employees having to provide nursery etc.

2.equal pay for work equal value

3.blind job applications ie name /sex not seen by recruiters.

I was involved in research about women v men getting promotion. Men applied until they got it: women stopped applying if they didn't get promotion at their first 2-3 attempts.

Women are influenced by family too.
My mother was left as a single parent and 2 f children and she said to us - 'never give up your job' ( with the unspoken message - you can't rely on a man). She had been the sole family breadwinner as a newly qualified teacher in the 1920s-30s. Keeping her disabled father, blacklisted brother, unemployed sister and B in L all on 3/4 men's pay.

Both my sister and I are much better off and we can help our children more now than school friends from richer families who chose to follow husbands abroad, work PT, were left by husbands etc. etc. because their mothers told them working was not important/ right for them. Clever graduate women living on the breadline ( or below).

Men can't give birth or breastfeed.

What about society valuing the caring professions more and "science" jobs not being the more high paying?!!

It's usually determined by supply and demand.

Wait, so your mum must have been born around 1900-1910 to be a newly qualified teacher in the 1920s? And she was a single parent at this time? To you? Meaning you are around 100? And you are still helping your children? Who are presumably in their 70s or even older?

SPL is a really bad way of organising things. For obvious reasons (boobs) most women have to take the majority.

I have always earned more than my partner but we did SPL. On returning to work I still went down to 4 days, while he is full time. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter, and I feel bad for my partner that he prioritises earning more money over spending time with her. We could just about get by if he dropped to 4. I can't prove it but I suspect that being male means he feels under pressure to earn, and doesn't feel comfortable asking to go part-time.

I've now changed everything about my life and work for myself so I can do something I enjoy, earn more and have the flexibility and time you need when you have a family. I know other women who have done something similar. I think the system is basically fucked and at least women, who historically have been under societal pressure to be the carers, are able to recognise and not feel pathetic about their desire to be there for their children and build a decent home life. I'm comfortable with taking on a larger share of the housework and childcare in order to make my family's lives better, even though I earn more, because I have more time and I don't really believe working full-time and splitting everything equally is possible without mental collapse for both parties. I don't know how people do it. I quickly realised I wouldn't cope and set about changing my life accordingly.

Having said all that, while it is still usually the traditional balance, I actually know several men who work part-time and share childcare, or even full-time but do most of the childcare. (Definite nervous collapse in progress for that one.) Most couples I know, the woman earns more. Times are changing!

Yes, the majority of architects(a STEM job) are paid poorly in comparison to the amount of training and fees they have to cover. Once qualified, the wages are poor, when you add up the extra hours it is barely minimum wage. You only get paid marginally well when you hit associate, and that’s the time for most when it’s common to have children. Taking time out (and if you’re not in a major practice, and even if you are!) the maternity/paternity leave is statutory.

As with engineering, the majority of the work is site based, with limited flexibility unless you are senior. It’s a vicious cycle. If one partner earns more, they are less likely to take the time off for childcare, especially if that person doesn’t get as much paid leave. The other parent is then the default carer. And then they will be the one who will continue to do that until the wages equalise. But the wages won’t equalise as that person has taken time off and missed out on promotions.

We split our parental leave. I took as much paid maternity as I could, my husband didn’t the same, then we split the rest. Yes, we had to save before we could do that, but it was important to us to be equal in both childcare and work. I think we have been fortunate to be able to do it, but we have worked for it. As a result, we both know the pressures of work and childcare and can emphasise with each other. We are a team, we prioritise family and work around it. No person’s job is more important in terms of children being sick, we work around it according to meetings etc.

Our competitors offer 6m paid leave for men and women. Use it or lose it. I wish our company did that, we could have saved a lot of money and had more quality time. But I wouldn’t change what we have done. We did a mix of time off together and time alone with the baby. I just wish everyone could have that choice

Your response was that a man would be considered a cocklodger in a role reversal. Can you give some specific examples of how a man would be a considered a cocklodger?

And can I just say how pathetic it is to come to mumsnet and frame a discussion around a discussion with colleagues that never happened because you're actually a bloke with an attitude toward what you perceive as lazy women and are in no way ready to be an equal husband and father yourself. It comes across as whining about how unfair it is that you and other men dont have the 'privilege' of existing in the dark ages when women were just grateful to have a man and a breadwinner. Or were those cocklodgers?

You seem to have a paradox. Should men be seen as the breadwinners or not? I come back to my previous point- whtlere are all the part time men?

You can't call women at home raising kids being called cocklodgers when men arent lobbying for what they perceive as better. Because truthfully many men, particularly the type to gripe about how easy women have it staying home with kids while they go out to work, dont actually want to do domestic labour.

So where were the dads in your company leaving to pick up the kids? Were 50% doing it? Or are you agreeing that the burden falls heavier on women?