Are you a member of the so-called "third gender"? If you're a mom in
the workplace, you are.
And since 80% of women in the workplace have
children, if you are a working woman who's also a parent it's also a
good bet that you've been discriminated against. A blurblet heard on
CNN recently claims that working moms earn 73% of what men do for
comparable jobs. And single moms? Only 60%! Shameful.
There's
still a stigma attached to being a mom in the workplace, a perception
that moms are more likely to underperform because of sick kids, missed
buses, or school plays. When my daughter had chicken pox in the 5th
grade I lugged all sorts of work home and did it there, then went to
the office for a few hours anyway while leaving my sick latchkey kid at
home, plus came in on the weekend to do more stuff, and still I was
forced to take those days as sick days while I'm pretty sure that the
golfing men in the office still got paid for taking off at lunchtime to
hit the links. Not to mention the fact that the guy they hired a few
years after me came in at more than $10K more than what I was making.
This continued stigma probably prevents many women from staying
home with their babies as long as they might like to, for fear they
will lose ground in the work hierarchy they are navigating. And what
about dads? How hard is it for them to be as hands-on with their
children as they'd like to be, since the prevailing thought is that its
the moms who deal with the kids (often while working too) while the
dads work? How many dads would like changes to the system too? Any
ideas as to how we can revamp things?
