
Why U.S. Women Are Leaving Jobs Behind - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/upshot/us-employment-women-not-working.html
======
pmorici
Something I don't quite get is why we seem to think that two income households
should be the goal. Seems to me that the net effect of multi-income households
is to make housing more expensive which in turn forces families to have two
incomes and in the end everyone is just working a lot more for the same thing
and a lesser quality of life.

~~~
mytochar
Two income households is a goal for my family because it 1) reduces the cost
of living so that money can be used for other things; and,

I would encourage my life partner to pursue their dreams, especially if that
includes having a career because, as my mother has put it, being at home all
the time for some people is boooring

~~~
jassinpain
What are you going to do if your life partner wanted to stay home with the
kids and found value in that? Sorry but you have just insulted any stay at
home mom, which is shameful.

~~~
cesarbs
I don't see the insult. It seems to me they would support the decision to stay
home, but their partner clearly prefers to work.

I'm in a situation right now in which only I am working and my wife's at home
with the kid. This is for visa reasons (H-4). My wife's self-esteem has
plummeted because of this situation. She indeed complains it is extremely
boring to stay home all the time. I completely support her desire to get back
to the workforce, and I really look forward to the added benefit of our
combined income.

------
lotharbot
I identify with a lot of the issues this article brings up -- I might work a
part-time position with flexible hours that allowed me to be there for my son
both before and after school, but full time work would take me away from my
family more, and the cost of daycare (and potentially housecleaning help)
would offset a lot of the financial benefits of extra hours. So I choose to be
a full-time stay-at-home dad instead.

I also find it interesting that this article uses the terms "ahead" and
"behind" to describe much of Europe compared to the US, but the details show a
much more ambiguous picture. European women are more likely to be in the
workforce, but European women in the workforce are much more likely to be
working in low-level positions with low wages, limited hours, and reduced
opportunity for advancement. So it might be better to say that Europe and the
US have chosen differently on the tradeoff between number of women working and
the quality of jobs women hold.

------
facepalm
"taxation of individuals instead of families, which encourages women’s
employment."

They mean "enforces" women's employment because the family has less money and
needs the additional income. Yay for women's liberation. Yay for "careers" as
waitresses and Walmart cashiers. Yay for not recognising time spent with
children as worthwhile.

------
LogicX
I'm in favor of remote work as a partial solution. I work remotely from Myrtle
Beach, SC, and my wife is currently unemployed and seeking remote employment
leveraging her nursing degree and background along with her interest in
technology. It's hard. Even tech companies who have remote positions which are
a great fit, which she qualifies for, and they want to interview her... End up
not working out for one reason or another. Example: twice now Flatiron Health
decided they didn't actually want the position remote after they screened her
and began the interview process.

------
lkrubner
The opening paragraph of this article is a stunning victory for anecdote in
its long war against data. Reading this, you are left with an impression
exactly opposite reality:

"Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has
noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where
she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United
States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their
children were in school. Yet, she says, she can’t think of a friend in Europe
who left work after her children were born."

First of all, let's remember that men are also leaving the workforce, and the
decline of men in the workforce is a much older trend than women leaving the
workforce:

[https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/wlfp1.j...](https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/wlfp1.jpg)

As to Europe, please see here:

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS)

Let's start with overall female participation rates in the workforce:

France: 51%

Germany: 54%

United Kingdom: 56%

USA:57%

By this measure, the USA rate seems a little elevated, but not dramatically
so.

Europe is catching up, but has not yet caught up:

[http://www.thefinancialist.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/fe...](http://www.thefinancialist.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/female-europe-participation2.jpg)

A few Scandinavian countries exceed the USA rate, but most of Europe lags
behind:

[https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/images/women/Gene...](https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/images/women/General/Women_in_Australia/2009/fig3_1.gif)

But what about mothers with kids? There the reality is the opposite of the one
suggested by the quoted paragraph. Women with kids are more likely to work in
the USA than in Europe. Look at the high rates of women with kids in the USA
in this graph:

[http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/meetings/archive/4-17-07/boushey.h...](http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/meetings/archive/4-17-07/boushey.html)

It is true the peak of the trend was many years ago, but the numbers are still
high. The USA has a very high level of single moms, much more so than in
Europe, and most of these women need to work, so the number of women with kids
working will probably remain elevated in the USA.

Figure 1 shows that in Germany the rate remains below the USA level until the
children are 10 years old:

[http://www.public.asu.edu/~abick/bick_childcare.pdf](http://www.public.asu.edu/~abick/bick_childcare.pdf)

This is the pattern in most of Europe: as children get older, the percent of
mothers who work approaches USA rates, but if we talk about mothers of young
children, the USA has the highest participation rates in the world. Again,
this is driven by single moms, and the lack of welfare benefits in the USA,
compared to the richer social safety nets in Europe.

This article offers some insights about the USA:

[http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-working-
mot...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-working-mothers-with-
children.aspx)

"In recent years, more mothers of young children have entered the paid labor
force. While the share of mothers with children under age 6 in the labor force
has risen sharply, the rate for all working-age adults has remained relatively
flat. The recent economic recession, the steady decline in men's real
earnings, the growth in single-mother families, and the increase in women's
educational levels are some of the factors likely contributing to the growth
in the proportion of mothers of young children in the workforce."

Also here, scroll way down to the graphs:

[http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/paper_delboca.pdf](http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/paper_delboca.pdf)

Again, you can see that the Scandinavian countries are ahead of the USA with
both fertility and women working, thanks to more supportive policies for
women, but most European countries are behind the USA rates.

~~~
santacluster
There is no "Europe", especially not in these matters that are so strongly, if
not almost exclusively, determined by cultural and economic factors in
_sovereign_ nations.

Please stop doing that, comparing the USA to some fictional country called
Europe to prove a point. I agree with many of your arguments, but where the
author of this piece is generalizing based on anecdotes, you're generalizing
based on stats. And opportunistically picking and mixing stats from different
countries on top of that.

For someone who likes to throw around stats and pretend to make a
scientifically based argument, what does a conclusion like " _most European
countries are behind the USA_ " even mean? Europe has countries the size of a
few football fields. It has large, thinly populated countries, small, densely
populated countries and everything in between.

I would really appreciate it of people would stop using this fictional Europe
for their ideological political arguments about the USA.

Full disclosure: I happen to be from a country in Europe that has higher
participation rates for women than the US, is not Scandinavian, doesn't have
particularly strong supportive policies (better than the US, but that isn't
saying much) and on top of that: despite these stats women in this country are
leaving the labor force in large numbers when they get kids, which
particularly shows up in a lack of women in senior leadership positions. These
things vary wildly _per country and culture_.

~~~
coldtea
> _Please stop doing that, comparing the USA to some fictional country called
> Europe to prove a point._

There IS a place called the European Union, which tries to unify things in
those regards though. Sure, the European Union is not Europe, but that's like
saying "America is not the US, it's the whole continent" (that is, correct,
but nobody cares, people will still use the name).

> _Europe has countries the size of a few football fields. It has large,
> thinly populated countries, small, densely populated countries and
> everything in between._

So, sort of like the states? New Hampshire is not really the size or
population of Texas or California. And not all of them have the same rates and
policies.

Besides, he did gave listings and talked individually about different european
countries.

It's not that big of a stretch to then check the aggregate, and speak of how
"Europe" is doing. The European Comission does exactly this all the time.

~~~
Dewie
> Sure, the European Union is not Europe, but that's like saying "America is
> not the US, it's the whole continent" (that is, correct, but nobody cares,
> people will still use the name).

I think that is a bad comparison. When anyone says "America", they almost
always mean "USA". There are also a lot fewer cases in which most people want
to talk about _the Americas_ as a whole, and each continent tends to be
denoted by South- and North-. "Europe", on the other hand, seems to always
refer to the whole continent (people can disagree about where the Easternmost
point is, but other than that the usage of the word is very crisp). I don't
see how conflating the EU and Europe is appropriate at all, and I haven't seen
much of it.

~~~
coldtea
> _I think that is a bad comparison. When anyone says "America", they almost
> always mean "USA". There are also a lot fewer cases in which most people
> want to talk about the Americas as a whole_

Perhaps that's a bias from being in the USA? In Latin America it's far more
often to want to talk about Americas as a whole (or about North/South America
as a whole).

~~~
Dewie
> Perhaps that's a bias from being in the USA?

That can't be the case for me.

------
arasmussen
> Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been
> living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a
> year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for part-time
> workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed.

If the US had better policies for maternity leave and part-time workers, then
it seems likely to me that we'd have many more women workers because
employment would "avoid upending their family life".

If the US had better immigration policy, then we wouldn't be turning away
thousands (tens of thousands?) of diverse, highly talented, tax paying tech
workers from pushing forward innovation in our country.

I'm sure you could make similar statements about our healthcare policy,
education system, political system, the grand jury system, etc. Why isn't
every single police officer wearing a camera while on duty yet? Why does
changing (fixing) these things take so damn long? The worst part is that the
people who are in control of really fixing these things and the entire system
itself don't seem motivated enough to do so (to me at least, please correct me
if I'm wrong).

~~~
olefoo
> Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long?

Because:

a. Established interests profit from the current arrangement or worry that
their interests will be compromised if things chang.

b. Our system is set up to resist rapid precipitous radical change.

c. Changing institutions takes a long time and requires much political will,
or at least alignment with social forces in play.

d. Change has costs; even if the existing system is wasteful, dysfunctional
and cruelly indifferent to the pain it causes to some subset of the people in
contact with an institution. The costs of changing that institution are
unknown and unknowable and the argument against from fear of the unknown will
always have weight with decisionmakers.

e. Institutional change always has winners and losers, and often the ones with
the most to lose are close to but not at; the top of the hierarchy.

That's the short version. The long version involves quantitative social
science and figuring out which nodes of the power network have the capability
to drive change and which must be routed around to effect change and which
ones are likely to be obstacles to change. Modeling the political economy of
even a small institution is a considerable effort; and since it's hard to get
people to precisely quantify their biases and predilections even if they are
cooperative; a large amount of it is guesswork or inference from extremely
thin sources ( like trying to divine someones political allegiances based on
the corpus of emails that are sent to internal mailing lists ).

And since Psychohistory is bunk, there is no plausible way to predict second
or third order effects ( the response to the response to the change you are
trying to achieve if it were successful ).

There are only a few organizations that have the mathematical ability,
computational power and access to significant communications between decision
makers to even attempt to do this at scale. In fact I can only think of one
that could attempt to do so at a global scale; and it's a TLA whose initials
start with N, end with A, and have an S in the middle. But they wouldn't try
to manipulate their host society like that; or would they?

