Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman writes:
Mothers are still treated as if they were a third gender in the workplace. Among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had children, women’s earnings approach 98 percent of men’s. Many women will hit the glass ceiling, but many more will crash into the maternal wall.
Here’s a Mother’s Day card from a study just published by Shelley Correll in the American Journal of Sociology. Correll performed an experiment to see if there was a motherhood penalty in the job market. She and her colleagues at Cornell University created an ideal job applicant with a successful track record, an uninterrupted work history, a boffo resume, the whole deal.
Then they tucked a little telltale factoid into some of the resumes with a tip-off about mom-ness. It described her as an officer in a parent-teacher association. And — zap — she was mommified.
Moms were seen as less competent and committed. Moms were half as likely to be hired as childless women or men with or without kids. Moms were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-moms. And, just for good measure, they were also judged more harshly for tardiness.
This trend, assuming the data is correct, demonstrates the enduring conflict between feminism and motherhood. For tens of thousands of years, women raised the children while men were provided food, water, shelter and defense. This expectation was drilled into the female — and male, it must be said — subconscious as the norm. Women were hard-wired to take care of children. Forty years of feminism cannot reverse thousands of years of human history and social expectations. Just look at the reaction of most women when they are near a newborn baby.
Now, after decades of serving in the workforce, women still face internal (from their biological makeup and subconscious motivations) and external (from society) pressure always to put their children first. This desire, in general, directly conflicts with work.
At standard, full-time jobs, companies demand that they become the first priority of employees from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, children get sick, babysitters cancel their shifts and schools call with discipline problems at any time of the day — and parents, of course, must deal with these issues. In addition, women cannot work for months after giving birth, and people who return to work after years of raising children are naturally going to be behind the curve.
In an ideal world, mothers and fathers would share the burdens of raising children equally, but we do not live in an ideal world. Women will usually choose to shoulder a greater responsibility for raising her children because of their aforementioned internal and external pressures. And all of this can interfere with productivity at work. The primary purpose of a business is to earn as much profit for stakeholders as possible. To do this, a business must operate as efficiently and productively as possible. Mothers are generally less efficient and productive because they cannot devote as much time to work as childless women and men (particularly men without children) – many of whom are ready and willing to work as much overtime as needed.
I write this post not to denigrate or discriminate against mothers. In fact, raising a child is the most important – and sacred – thing a person will do in his or her life. However, parents must understand that they will endure burdens and sacrifices when they have children. Private companies, of course, cannot — and should not — discriminate based solely on gender, but they also have the right to prefer employees who will be as productive as possible. This is a balance that is still being worked out.
