I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day on Mar. 8.
Dec. 1, 2024 "More women are the breadwinners in Canadian families — but less so if they have kids": Today I found this article by Natalie Stechyson on CBC:
More and more Canadian women are the breadwinners in their families — but there's a catch.
Women's contributions to family income have increased over the last 30 years, coinciding with their growth in the labour market, notes a recent report from the Vanier Institute of the Family.
And Statistics Canada data analyzed by the independent national think-tank shows that
women provide more than 50 per cent of total family income in a growing share of husband-wife families,
compared to one-third in 2022,
and one-quarter in 2000.
However, that's less likely to be true if those women have children.
And even worse if they have more than one,
with that proportion dropping by three to four percentage points per additional child.
Seeing the numbers in black and white starkly demonstrates what's called the "motherhood penalty," said Allison Venditti, a human resources expert in Toronto and founder of Moms at Work, Canada's largest advocacy group for working mothers.
"It's so deep and engrained, this belief that mothers belong in the home and should be caring for their children, and that's really reflected in how they're compensated at work," Venditti told CBC News.
"You're being penalized over and over and over again, every time you have another child,
and at the same time,
society is screaming, 'I wonder why women aren't having more children?'"
Moms in the workforce, and the motherhood penalty
The Vanier Institute's "Family Work" report highlighted that women earned the majority of their family's income in 32.8 per cent of gender-different couple families in 2022,
up from 25.9 per cent in 2000. (Statistics Canada refers to these as husband-wife families.)
But having children under age 18 changes the numbers.
Women earned the majority of the couple's employment income in 36.8 per cent of couples without children under age 18,
compared with 29.5 per cent of those with children.
Broken down further by the number of children,
in 2022, the woman earned the majority of a couple's employment income in 32.1 per cent of couples with one child,
29.3 per cent of those with two children,
and in 25 per cent with three or more children.
And despite the overall trend of women's contributions to family income increasing, the institute said,
"women continue to earn less than men on average,
and are more likely to live with a lower income."
This is evident in a 2024 report by TD Economics that showed the average family income was nine per cent lower in families where women were the breadwinners,
and that those families had fewer financial assets — about $30,000 less than families with male breadwinners, on average.
"Men are able to step forward because women step backward.... They are boosting their ability to do work," Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, told USA Today in October 2023.
Last year, Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for advancing the understanding of the gender gap in the labour market.
Among her many contributions from studying 200 years of labour market data, Goldin found that the
"motherhood penalty" was one of the reasons women earn less than men,
and particularly, why mothers earn less than fathers.
In contrast, she's pointed out that men enjoy a "fatherhood premium,"
where fathers make more than men who aren't parents over the course of their careers.
'A lot to ask of any woman'
Women are still the ones making more financial sacrifices to have children,
said Marina Adshade, an assistant professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia who specializes in economics and gender.
And this doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider that
women are earning more than their partners in about a third of husband-wife families,
added Adshade.
"What happens in that relationship when they have children?
Does the total household income go down because a woman starts losing out on her income?"
she said.
"That's a big hit for the family as a whole."
It's something we don't talk about enough when we ask why people aren't having more children, Adshade said.
Canada recorded its lowest-ever fertility rate for the second year in a row in 2023,
according to Statistics Canada, at 1.26 children born per woman.
When you consider the financial impact,
plus the fact that women still do the "lion's share" of household labour and child care,
it's little wonder, she said.
"Now she's a breadwinner,
and she's the principal caregiver for the family.
That is a lot to ask of any woman."
Shifting the dynamic
It's hard not to look at reports that highlight this disparity and feel like it's all really bleak given how hard women have fought, said Venditti of Moms at Work.
Society's ideal worker is still a man providing for his family, she said,
and that stereotype and bias still persist when you look at company hiring and firing decisions.
But Venditti also sees reasons for optimism.
More fathers are taking parental leave, for instance.
And while it's too early to see the true economic impacts of $10-a-day child care — introduced by the federal government in the 2021 budget with the goal of bringing down fees countrywide by 2026
— that initiative will "no doubt" help boost women's economic participation in the workforce, she said.
"Those two pieces are going to shift this dynamic fundamentally."
But the other piece that still needs to change?
We focus too much on saying women with children need workplace flexibility, Adshade said.
This mindset contributes to the wage gap because it anticipates that it's women who will work fewer hours, she said.
"Everyone with children needs flexibility.
We need to give men more flexibility to leave work when their kid has a doctor's appointment or has a sporting event.
"And we need to normalize that so that when employers are hiring and they see a man and a woman,
they don't see two different people in terms of the amount of productivity or hours that they're going to work."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/work-women-motherhood-penalty-1.7395512
Dec. 8, 2024 "Why work-life balance still isn't working for women, especially moms": Today I found this article by Natalie Stechyson
Work-life balance? What's that?
A new poll provides fresh numbers to illustrate what many exhausted working women have been reporting for decades — work-life balance isn't exactly working for them.
The U.S. report from Gallup, released Wednesday, suggests that competing demands of work and home are part of the problem.
Compared to the men surveyed,
women were more likely to report having to address personal or family responsibilities at work daily, or several times a day,
and conversely, were more likely to say they needed to address job-related responsibilities outside of working hours at least daily.
"These daily disruptions
— whether it be scheduling dentist appointments for children between meetings
or answering emails after hours
— are associated with higher levels of
stress,
worry
and burnout,"
noted the report.
"For many working women, trying to find balance between work and life feels like a perpetual tug-of-war with each side demanding an increased level of presence and attention."
On top of that, working mothers are more likely than working fathers to say they have declined or delayed a promotion at work because of personal or family obligations,
and mothers are more likely than fathers to "strongly agree" that they are the default responders for unexpected child-care issues.
Gallup also found that working mothers are nearly twice as likely to say they have considered reducing their hours or leaving their jobs altogether because of child-care issues compared to working fathers.
These and similar sentiments are often expressed by working moms on the social media platform TikTok, where there are 1.2 million videos tagged #workingmom.
The mental load,
being the default parent,
and guilt
are common themes.
"We're working moms. Don't ask us if we're OK. We're not!" said TikToker "Honestly Kaitlin" in a video last year with 4.4 million views.
"We're working moms, but nobody calls my husband a working dad," one person wrote in the comments, along with an upside-down smile emoji.
The 'double burden' of paid and unpaid work
The Gallup findings are based on four separate surveys of nearly 20,000 adults ages 18 and up working full time or part time in the U.S., conducted between February 2023 and October 2024. The margin of error for each wave differs due to sample size, but is in the range of +/-1.0 to 1.5 percentage points.
The report also mirrors the data in a recent Canadian report by the Vanier Institute of the Family. Data analyzed by the independent national think-tank shows that
women still take on the bulk of domestic duties,
including child care,
and that women are more likely than men to work part-time
in order to balance family life.
As for domestic duties, the Vanier Institute noted that,
regardless of their labour force participation and changes in recent years,
women continue to do the majority of household work in Canada.
The institute analyzed Statistics Canada's time-use data from 2022, and found that, among people who worked from home,
women spent about 40 minutes more per day on unpaid housework than men.
The same trend was found for child-care duties among parents.
When parents worked from home, mothers spent an average of about 52 minutes more per day with children than fathers did.
And if both parents worked outside the home, they spent less time with their children than those who telework.
But of those parents, mothers still spent more time with their children than fathers, again by about 52 minutes per day.
"The 'double burden' of paid and unpaid work can affect the wellbeing of women,
who are left with a greater overall workload and less time to rest," noted the report, released in November.
Both the Gallup and Vanier reports are just the latest in decades of research that have highlighted the gender imbalances in work.
For instance, Statistics Canada time-use data from 1995 showed that women had to make "radical adjustments" to their workdays when they became mothers.
Part of this was increasing the length of their work day, which Stats Can defined as time spent on both paid and unpaid work.
Contrarily, the report noted, there was very little change in the work day of boomer men.
"They continued to spend virtually the same amount of time pursuing paid work."
Investing in well-being of women
Changing workplace culture
and prioritizing well-being
can improve the problem,
according to Karen Guggenheim, creator of the World Happiness Summit, an annual wellbeing conference where the Gallup data was presented.
"Why do we have to choose?
Why are we creating environments where people have to make a choice between being the most amazing
parent,
partner,
friend,
daughter,
sister,
whatever,
and also thriving at work?"
she recently told the Associated Press.
"Investing in women's well-being isn't just good business
— it's a blueprint for societal progress."
But Allison Venditti, a human resources expert in Toronto and founder of Moms at Work, Canada's largest advocacy group for working mothers,
says she's sick of surveys, as well as the common refrain that
women need more workplace support and flexibility.
As others have also noted, this mindset contributes to the gender wage gap because it anticipates that it's women who will work fewer hours.
Instead of focusing solely on creating more supportive workplaces for mothers, Venditti says she'd like to see reports on
how workplaces should deal with the fact that men do half the amount of unpaid care work as women.
"Where is the action plan that says 'We are looking at the 300 studies that show women are underpaid,' " Venditti told CBC News.
"Companies have had more than one chance to fix this
— and honestly, I am sick of even surveying women unless you plan on using it to
legislate change
or do something to help."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/work-life-balance-women-1.7403143
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