U.S. Employers Pushing Women Out of Work Force

[Triana]

Run Date: 06/16/08
By Sharon Johnson
WeNews correspondent

Rigid work schedules, bias, scarce child care, unpaid caregiving leaves, little sick time. Policy analysts say these realities help explain U.S. women's sagging work-force participation. Second in "The Memo" series on the status of U.S. women.

Lisa Seftel

NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--As Lisa Seftel was planning for her first child, she thought she had struck a good deal with her boss.

After the baby came, she'd work three days managing a family-owned consultancy's Manhattan headquarters and two days at home in a New York suburb. This would give her full benefits and let her share child care with her husband. Seftel would continue to work on the most important projects at the company.

But in 2003 she discovered the "dark side" of the U.S. workplace, she said. After the baby was born, her boss reneged, saying she could either work five days a week in the office or three days at home.

"Like so many women, I was pushed out and became a full-time mother," said Seftel. "I'm now working as a Mary Kay representative, a position that enables me to meet my financial and caregiving responsibilities, which was impossible in the corporate world."

The choices her boss offered would have decimated either her earnings or her work-life balance, Seftel said. "If I worked five days, I would have had to pay thousands of dollars for child care, and been relegated to an insignificant role in my daughter's early life. If I worked three days, our family would have had no health insurance; my husband's employer didn't provide it and we couldn't afford a family policy. My career would have never recovered because I would have been deprived of the experiences necessary to acquire new skills."

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 60 percent of married mothers are now in the work force, 4 percentage points lower than in 1997. The rate of married mothers of infants who work fell 6 percentage points to 53 percent.

With mothers representing about two-thirds of adult women those figures help explain why the United States is one of only two industrialized countries--the other is Japan--out of 23 where women's work force participation rate fell between 1994 and 2006, according to data from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.


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http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3640

[knitter4democracy]

1. National child care.

I've always wondered why the GOP hasn't gotten behind that one. It's perfect for the corporations.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Because the right-wing would scream about "government indoctrination"

Meanwhile, the city of Tokyo is setting up public daycare centers because they're worried about the low birth rate in Japan.

[Love Bug]

9. You're right, Lydia

I remember Richard Nixon, of all people, wanting publically paid for daycare. The right wing screamed bloody murder saying the Goverment would use those daycare centers to indoctrinate, just like the Godless Heathen Communists in the Soviet Union.

This is why daycare remains privately financed, much to the financial hardship of many middle-class (not to mention poor) families.

[Nobody]

12. Because the neo-cons want to make all your choices for you

And then make it damn hard to live with those choices.

I just came from a thread in which the right wing was whining about too low a birth rate. They want us to make babies, they need to make it easier for parents, both Mom and Dad, to raise their families.

[Angleae]

14. The GOP today is the party of the fundamentalists

The barefoot-and-pregnant, women-belong-in-the-kitchen, etc. crowd.

[cap]

3. I think it is more than just the motherhood issue

because women who have children who need less child care or who have left the nest aren't being hired back.

[femrap]

11. IMHO, whatever a woman

does, IT'S WRONG. The boss can spin it however HE wants to.

And never mind the Office Politics that a woman has to play. Drove me insane. That's what I hated most about working in the American Corporatocracy. And might I say....Fuck Golf. Thank you for tolerating that. LOL.

[cap]

4. as families are losing their houses and moving in with their parents

american women aren't working. Something is fundamentally wrong with this.

[undeterred]

5. Its the economy.

The scarcer jobs become, the less incentive employers have to be flexible. If they can find someone to do the work who doesn't ask for any accomodation - they will choose the path of least resistance. Usually its working moms who are asking for the flexibility.

[cap]

7. Working moms ask for flexibility because the family can't jeopardize

the income of the person who makes the most money. Family men can be inflexible and work all those hours because their wife is picking up the slack.

The economy and sexism are a self-reinforcing cycle.

It is not just working moms who are penalized. It is also single women and women with grown children who are penalized under this lousy economy. Why aren't women over 40 working at demanding corporate jobs? Their kids have grown up and they don't need the flexibility?

Many men just don't want to hire these women. Women are the flex workers in this economy.

There's an interesting study showing how women over 40 in IT have left/been forced out of the economy. Half these women aren't working in the field anymore.

Another interesting study was done in the DOJ of women in Ivy League merit hires being tracked out of the career paths.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Not again...

[Iris]

8. I'm torn on this. There's a difference between being "forced out" of the workpalce b/c it disrupts

your work-life balance and being forced out of a job that you really need because you have a uterus.

[cap]

10. we passed the 8 hour work day law to cope with this...

at least we thought we did back in the 1920's. Women were behind unionization and child labor laws because the work hours were getting insane and women were getting the short end of the stick.

We need new labor laws that mandate an 8 hour day for professionals, a living wage based on an 8 hour day for all.

[Nobody]

13. Exactly. There are a lot of singles who get stuck with all the shit hours

When companies are more flexible with parents. Either way it's wrong. But the corporations need to be fair with ALL workers, quit treating us like resources and capital and start treating us like human beings.

We ALL need work-life balance. It makes us more productive, hour by hour.

Hire ALL the people you need, don't just hire the barest minimum if you can afford to fully staff up. Don't just hire the barest minimum and refuse to let them have a life.

We are people. We are not resources. We are not human capital. We are not interchangeable cogs in a machine, and most importantly, we are not tools.

[One_Life_To_Give]

16. Mandatory 8hr max could hurt startups

I think it's a young persons gamble to take a professional job at a startup. Long hours, lousy pay and lots of stock options that 80% of the time will be worthless. But for Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. it paid off handsomely.

[Breeze54]

15. Yeah they are.... male dominated tech jobs started pushing out women early...

forcing them out by changing their hours to nights or late afternoon... after daycare/after school
care closes!! Making success almost unattainable and almost impossible for some single parents and
they knew what they were doing, and so did we! :grr:

Call your reps and demand they vote YES on the The Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338 and S.766)!!

It will be coming to the floor next week for a vote. There are 230 reps supporting it and 22 Senators.

We need more!!!