Looking at economic growth through a gender lens, the immediate impression is that women incur penalties in the job market because of their gender. Many in this class have discussed this problem in some facet. Personally, I wrote about this being a culture issue, resulting from the way that people are raised and holdovers from less progressive decades. I think that the only way to truly combat the issue of women being mistreated in the work force is change perceptions over time. This is not a quick fix but will be much more effective than forced equality through some sort of legislation. In some ways this strategy is already being implemented as society’s expectations for women have become more progressive in the last few years. However, this process can be sped up if an emphasis on equality between genders is taught to young children in environments such as their home and school. In these places, children look to adults for indicators on how they should behave. Although we cannot force a change inside peoples’ homes, changing the public school curriculum remains a strong possibility. Even in my elementary school, which promoted conservation, equality, and fairness, gender roles were evident in teachers’ unconsciousness assignments of classroom chores: girls were asked to clean and boys to put chairs on tables at the end of the day. By making a conscious effort to promote gender equality in classrooms society’s progressive shift can be accelerated.
Previously, I stated that forcing equality through legislation is not a real fix. However, it can still be an effective plan while we wait for societal norms to change. For example, a law dictating employers to provide employees in the same position equal pay would help regulate gender bias. Unfortunately, this is not really a feasible idea due to pushback from companies and employees who often negotiate starting salaries. A better idea is to require corporate transparency, forcing companies to release the salaries and bonuses of employees at least within their organization. This would give employees the ability to check their earnings in comparison to comparable peers. If enacted, this would allow employees to take advantage of laws against sexual discrimination in employment that have already been ratified.
One controversial idea on this subject is the implementation of Scandinavian maternity/paternity leave laws in the United States. In countries like Norway and Denmark, companies are required by law to give new parents extensive leave when compared to the United States. In this country maternity leave often does not exceed a few weeks and paternity leave is often nonexistent. However, Scandinavian parents receive much more than that. For example, Sweden allows parents to receive 90% of their wages during paid leave for a total of 480 days between them per child. Currently, 90% Swedish fathers take paternity leave for an average of seven weeks and mothers take more. In 2013, 12 million days of paid paternity leave were given to fathers in Sweden. Although this is not a plausible idea to be implemented in the United States due to f this country’s much more capitalistic nature, it should be noted that Sweden rates as one of the top nations in terms of gender equality.
References:
1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/07/economist-explains-15
2. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity-in-education.pdf
3. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/gender-and-education/
I find your solution on changing culture a very interesting and encompassing answer to the problem at hand. The first part of your solution works at the opposite end of the spectrum of mine, as mine focused on small legislation to ensure equality in the work force. Your solution however, to ensure gender equality in schools, would be able to hit the developing generations at their early stages, hopefully implementing a sense of equality in them. However, there is a difficulty there. The inequality and gender roles are not always apparent, but sometimes express themselves in subtle ways. The teacher is enforcing gender roles simply by asking the girls to put away the pencils and asking the boys to put away the chairs. Gender roles are very hard to target, so these educators must be very aware of the situation at hand. However, I also feel that with enough emphasis on this, this social idea can bleed into the media. Take Sesame Street for example. They recently had a skit where one of the muppets had to deal with his father being in prison, one would assume for a low level drug offense. This is almost unheard of in the media, but is a common occurrence in real life, leading to the media to adopts its ways to become more relatable. If society starts focusing on that more and more, keeps issues like gender equality center stage, it may eventually bleed into the media, giving a double whammy if you will of gender equality education: at school and at home.
Your idea of slow cultural change seems to be the solution that will most likely happen. I agree that forced legislation will be difficult to implement without opposition since culture is deeply rooted and an important part of people’s lives. Cultural shifts seem to happen more often in the younger generation and evoking small changes will definitely contribute to the reformation of gender roles in society. I also agree that the changes must happen at schools because home is where the deeply rooted culture is strongly upheld. Parents who oppose cultural changes will be very unlikely to conform to the new social norms that may include important aspects such as gender equality. I also agree that paid leave for both parents is necessary not only for the healthy growth of the child but also contributes to gender equality. In the workforce, the bias of having to essentially pay for no work during maternity leave is certainly a factor that inhibits women. If companies have to consider paying both genders a period of absence, the discrimination will be greatly reduced. However, the problem will be getting companies to conform to these new maternity and paternity leave policies as they are losing money. In this case, your idea of forced legislation, which might not have worked in the previous case, can be very effective with companies.
Max, I agree with your view that we cannot evoke change in the workforce until we realign century’s worth of social norms. I like your suggestion for how we should go about changing these stereotypes. As mentioned, we cannot impose views onto individual households. Starting with the public school system is a very reasonable suggestion, although I feel that does not reach enough of the population. I think the best way to reach the largest and most varied group of people would be through social media. The media is a much wider net to cast and will reach beyond the small population of solely children who are enrolled in the public school system.
I also liked your point about maternity leave. I wrote about a very similar solution in my own blog post. I would like to add that many women feel guilty leaving their children behind to work long hours in the office. It is biologically engrained in women to feel attached and responsible for their children. Currently, many women have no choice but to leave their jobs to take care of their new borns. Many jobs do not provide the means necessary for women to sustain a family and continue to work. Elongating maternity leave, for both women and men, would provide a great incentive for women to remain in the workforce.
I could not agree more that the issues facing women in the workplace stem from much more deeply rooted biases. There is no reason that women should be paid or promoted less, but unfortunately, these (not always) subtle biases have been around for centuries and will take time to eradicate. Just as we discussed with policing issues, legislation is often overlooked, so I agree that that would not be the way to resolve this. Moreover, one can not be legislated to let go of their biases nor to teach their children the same, it has to be slowly woven into societal norms, just as the biases were in the first place.
One thing I would consider about your solution would be the possible side effects of company transparency. This could potentially raise a lot of privacy issues with individiuals, as well as tension both between employees and with the employer. In addition, just like any other legislation, this could be manipulated or avoided especially by more powerful companies. I think, however, that the Scandanavian idea of maternity/paternity leave could be a really powerful legislative tool. Incentivizing both men and women to take on childcare duties creates a neutral environment for children, where they do not associate gender with childcare or professional careers.
I definitely agree with you when you say that we have to remove gender bias from the minds of children to completely get rid of gender issues, and this will, as you said, take a really long time. This was a very similar solution to the one I proposed, however I found that the addition of government laws would help expedite the process. The transparency of employee wage may not give a holistic look at the contributions that an employee makes. This is due to the fact that they may end up doing more than their job description implies. An employee could claim that they are not being paid as much as they should be while they are not doing as much as the other person is. I think the idea of adding paternal leave could be done in America if it were done through a law rather than just through a company. If the government supplied the cost for paternal leave then there is no reason that a company would have not to give a person paternal leave after a child is born. This is shown to work as you said in both Denmark and Norway where there is very little gender bias in the work place.