4 ms·

Yes exactly. The only way to close gender gaps is to force men to do less work outside the home, not women more. (Men doing more work inside the home and women

Yes exactly. The only way to close gender gaps is to force men to do less work outside the home, not women more. (Men doing more work inside the home and women less follows from that more easily than in the other direction.) Better childcare / pre-k can help too, but there musn't be a gap between when at least partial leave ends and childcare begins. Good thing we all work to much already, so reducing total "public sphere" labor hours is not a huge issue.

belorn 5y ago
We can follow the tactic used in other gender equality initiatives and creates targeted incentives to raise participation levels. As an example, they could add extra parental leave days that are earmarked for father classes.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
They attempted that in Sweden and it backfired massively. The more you try to force people into what they don't naturally gravitate towards (eg. women in STEM and engineering, men in nursing / teaching roles) the more the difference grows. I can vouch from personal experience that I did not enjoy my paternity leave at all and I'd much rather work. Also, the gender gap is not a thing. There are so many variables that go into salaries that any argument around the topic is just an attempt at making a political statement. There are tons of possible explanations to explain a delta in salary between men and women. Men generally tend to negotiate better and women tend to take more time off when a son is born. You can also slice subsets of data, to show whatever you want. For example, if you look at women in their 20s, they are outperforming men on both salary and education.
- danShumway 5y ago
  There might be a middle ground here between forcing men to spend less time at work and offering them the opportunity to spend more time at home if they want to. Everyone is unique, but I know a number of fathers who would have liked to take more time off for their kids and would have chosen to if they had the opportunity, I suspect the ratio here may be higher than you expect. > Also, the gender gap is not a thing. There are so many variables that go into salaries that any argument around the topic is just an attempt at making a political statement. The gender gap was the explanation mbesto gave for why paid family leave for women might be opposed even by women. If the gender gap doesn't exist, and unbalanced paid time off between genders won't drive increased wage differences, then it seems like it might be fine to ignore mbesto's worry and just offer women that time off regardless of what paternal leave policies are.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    > forcing men to spend less time at work I generally agree, keep in mind the idea is to force everyone to work less, distributing the non-domestic labor more evenly across the board. The idea is very materialist, in that domestic labor needs to be done, and it's not even that "all men" don't want to do it, but that bosses have more power than husbands and ultimately we need to stop the work hours/effort rat race to free up the free time to re-figure out what families and domestic labor ought to look like. The current trend is capitalism reaches deeper into the family. Restaraunts are displacing cooking for more social strata, Pre-K is less controversial than paid family leave which brings intensified economies of scale to child rearing. I'm not against either of those things --- at least there will be a villages (of wage-workers) to raise kids again and more social time --- but I don't want them to happen for the wrong reason of employers sucking up more and more of our time for no good reason.

belorn 5y ago

We can follow the tactic used in other gender equality initiatives and creates targeted incentives to raise participation levels. As an example, they could add extra parental leave days that are earmarked for father classes.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

They attempted that in Sweden and it backfired massively. The more you try to force people into what they don't naturally gravitate towards (eg. women in STEM and engineering, men in nursing / teaching roles) the more the difference grows. I can vouch from personal experience that I did not enjoy my paternity leave at all and I'd much rather work. Also, the gender gap is not a thing. There are so many variables that go into salaries that any argument around the topic is just an attempt at making a political statement. There are tons of possible explanations to explain a delta in salary between men and women. Men generally tend to negotiate better and women tend to take more time off when a son is born. You can also slice subsets of data, to show whatever you want. For example, if you look at women in their 20s, they are outperforming men on both salary and education.

danShumway 5y ago
There might be a middle ground here between forcing men to spend less time at work and offering them the opportunity to spend more time at home if they want to. Everyone is unique, but I know a number of fathers who would have liked to take more time off for their kids and would have chosen to if they had the opportunity, I suspect the ratio here may be higher than you expect. > Also, the gender gap is not a thing. There are so many variables that go into salaries that any argument around the topic is just an attempt at making a political statement. The gender gap was the explanation mbesto gave for why paid family leave for women might be opposed even by women. If the gender gap doesn't exist, and unbalanced paid time off between genders won't drive increased wage differences, then it seems like it might be fine to ignore mbesto's worry and just offer women that time off regardless of what paternal leave policies are.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  > forcing men to spend less time at work I generally agree, keep in mind the idea is to force everyone to work less, distributing the non-domestic labor more evenly across the board. The idea is very materialist, in that domestic labor needs to be done, and it's not even that "all men" don't want to do it, but that bosses have more power than husbands and ultimately we need to stop the work hours/effort rat race to free up the free time to re-figure out what families and domestic labor ought to look like. The current trend is capitalism reaches deeper into the family. Restaraunts are displacing cooking for more social strata, Pre-K is less controversial than paid family leave which brings intensified economies of scale to child rearing. I'm not against either of those things --- at least there will be a villages (of wage-workers) to raise kids again and more social time --- but I don't want them to happen for the wrong reason of employers sucking up more and more of our time for no good reason.