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Working Moms See Red Over Less Green
Quick, hide the kids! If your boss knows you’re a working mom, you’re likely to be making less than your non-mom counterparts. A LOT less.
A new study found the wage disparity between mothers and non-breeders could be as much as $11,000 for the same position (per year). Providing fake resumes to employers for two women – one with kids, one without – the researchers working on a study since dubbed “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” found moms were ranked as both “less competent” and “less committed.”
Considering even the better-paid childless women are still earning seventy-seven percent of what a working man earns in America, working moms are truly getting shafted.
But before you start cursing those kid haters in the office, researchers found the exact opposite held for fathers vying for jobs. Dads were considered a better catch for employers – perhaps because they’re seen to “need” and “want” the job more in order to provide for their kids.
So it isn’t about the kids. It’s about that age-old assumption that women just want to be home changing diapers and watching Oprah while they nap and Dads want to be the big, strong providin’ man.
Yawn. When are they going to get the picture that women who are working are doing it because they “want” and “need” to be there too? That we like putting food in our kids’ tummies as much as the next GUY? And that we have this little thing called a mortgage/rent that we are pretty sure we’d like to see paid this month . . . just like the guy?
Image: BabySigns
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5 Comments
Grace commented on Jun 11 09 at 2:50 pmIn the first article you linked the researcher discusses reasons why women make less, notably that we aren’t as likely to negotiate for higher pay. I’d imagine this would play into women with children getting less. If you’d just taken maternity leave, would you be as likely to push for a better raise? I certainly wouldn’t.
Not saying paying a mom less is justified in any way. I’m saying that there might be other factors involved with the pay rates than just prejudice. Research is tricky, and a good sociologist or psychologists will always emphasize that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
Shana commented on Jun 11 09 at 2:53 pmHonestly I think that it has nothing to do with “that age-old assumption that women just want to be home changing diapers and watching Oprah while they nap and Dads want to be the big, strong providin’ man.” As someone that previously worked in the fashion industry where many of the bosses are women (a lot with children of their own) I have seen a lot of this discrimination taken to the extreme. One of my old co-workers a single mom that needed the work actually worked from home during her maternity leave and returned to work a month and a half early. Upon her return to work, the ten year veteran in the business work was greatly reduced and she was subsequently fired. I know another woman that had a baby and worked for the company for years. She worked the usual nine to six everyone else did, and would continue to work from home after work, clocking in tweleve hour days and her boss (a woman) complained that it was not enough, despite the fact that she was getting doing the same amount of work as she was before if not sometimes more. Obviously these women with children of their own know what it is like to be a working mother, but it still does not stop them from making the lives of other mothers hard. But maybe in the fashion industry it has more to do with the cruel competitve nature of a lot of the women in the industry that see all women as a threat.
Shana commented on Jun 11 09 at 2:57 pmThat is an extremely great point Grace.
I must add that a former boss of mine looking for an Associate Designer had the nerve to offer a woman with six years of experience entry level pay because the woman had previously taken a year off work to raise her kid. This female boss of mine ustified it by saying that this woman would be desperate to take work so she was going to offer her as little as possible (less than I was making with three years experience). To say the least that woman walked out fuming about how her time had been wasted (rightfully so).
Patricia commented on Jun 11 09 at 4:00 pmGrace,
This particular research was not on actual incomes, but on what women would have been offered if they had been hired. Fake resumes were created that were identical, except for a line that said they were an officer in the PTA (which indicated motherhood). When two identical resumes (except the PTA line) were sent out, the moms were not offered the job, while the woman without children was. When the mom was offered a job, the salary was lower. Plus, when people were given nearly identical resumes to review (with some info included that indicated motherhood), the moms were rated very poorly, even though the resume indicated they were stellar candidates.So this research has nothing to do with negotiating power and everything to do with how mothers are perceived.
PlumbLucky commented on Jun 12 09 at 8:43 amAnd hence why my resume has no indication of the fact that I’m even female (I have one of those names that could be either), much less married and a mother. I work in a male-dominated field. Let them figure it out on their own; they aren’t supposed to ask me during an interview, therefore, I’m not going to volunteer the information. (Thankfully, I now have a fairly stable career with a stable company that is extremely family friendly!)
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