Recently, we've been reading and hearing a lot about the gender gap in the highest echelons of every professional field, be it medicine, politics, academia, or business. Statistics abound: in medical schools, only 19 percent of full professors are women.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/women-still-missing-from-medicines-top-ranks/
Women compose a meager proportion of CEOs of major companies.
The issue boils down to two major arguments, based on the fact that the gender gap, both in wage and in professional rank, is largely based on the fact that 'prime career-building time often coincides with prime family-building time'.
An argument that could be deemed (either scornfully or justly) feminist posits that professional women should not be penalized for the one biological difference - the ability to bear children - that sets them apart from men of the same profession. They argue that modern workplace culture tends to be male-centric, and needs to be restructured such that demanding professions in the highest echelons of society become accessible to women with families. This would include factoring maternity leave, child care benefits, and flexible work schedules into even the most demanding jobs in modern society. Additionally, it should be noted that women are coming to occupy the working world, in general, in a proportion that equals their prevalence on the planet, but they are conspicuously missing from the highest ranks.
I think that this argument should be extended to men with families, too. It is rather crass of us to assume that men want to spend 60 hour work weeks away from their families; and indeed, it can be argued that this is just as unhealthy for the children in the situation as their mother being away all the time. Paternity leave should be extended in addition to maternity leave. Is there even paternity leave in the U.S? Running the risk of turning us into a socialist nation full of bleeding-heart hippie, liberals, I think that paid maternity and paternity leave is one page we should take from the European book. Equity will be facilitated, if not restored, in terms of shared child-care responsibilities and shared career-advancement opportunities.
I find it hard to believe that there is any biological imperative that cannot be dealt with by creatively adapting society itself. When women wanted to join the workforce in the first place, I'm sure that the issue of who would raise the children was a loud one. Child care, maternity leave, and a larger contribution to childrearing from men were all societal adaptations that, albeit gradually, have facilitated the immense diversification of the American workforce; a diversification that has been beneficial.
And in the same vein, it is hard to believe that society will not adapt to this situation as it tends to, over sometimes surprisingly short time periods. Although in recent articles and television interviews the gender gap in the highest professional ranks has been depicted as an unsurmountable wall, the battle between family and career an irresolvable tug-of-war, I think that as societal perceptions of gender normativity and the role of the father continue to change, women will naturally begin to fill top positions in society.
The converse argument is based on the same idea hat 'prime career-building time often coincides with prime family-building time', but proposes that an innate biological difference predisposes women to want, more than men, to choose family over career when the decisive moment arises. Women want to, or are made to, predestined to in some way or form (and not suffering from the system at all but from their own internal inclinations) to want to focus on family more than career. Congruently, since this seems to be completely a matter of choice on the part of women, they are choosing not to attain the highest professional echelons in society, and society needn't be involved in adapting to remediate this perceived gap: because society is inflicting no harm upon women, it is completely their choice. Their harm, their foul.
I have a lot of trouble buying this argument, even though the logic seems simple and straightforward. Around the western, and often eastern world, centuries of gender normativity and accepted gender roles have biased societies, including their professional structures, strongly towards men.
At the risk of being called a femi-nazi, consider a similarly female-biased world where, hypothetically, only women had occupied the workforce for centuries, and men were beginning to make their mark. It seems natural that long, paid maternity leave would have been a staple in such a society, as well as top-notch child care benefits (however the hell that works, anyway) to allow women to return to work when they were ready. Perhaps there would be some sort of planning system so that productivity wouldn't be compromised by everyone getting knocked up at once; but then again, perhaps there would be more holidays in general, and more flexible schedules.
From our hypercapitalist, socially darwinist economy, it is hard for us to imagine people enjoying vacations from work and a good quality of life with their families, while also maintaining productivity. I may be a bleeding-heart liberal, but I think it's possible. Look at Sweden, for instance. Though the European economic system does not inspire awe among Americans, neither is our own productivity or respect for basic human rights quite up to par. I firmly believe that there is a happy middle ground, that we are yet to find.
As women continue to penetrate the workforce, in an increasingly diversifying variety of fields, I think that this middle ground will become a closer goal. And perhaps women themselves do need to adapt to the demands of the workforce; I can concede that many top-tier career women, like Hilary Clinton, have seen their careers shoot through the roof after their children have grown and left the home. Many women choose to wait, consciously, and it makes them happy to do so. Who are we to dictate this choice, anyway? Men and women with children are inherently both choosing to compromise the heights of their careers; my only issue with this is that womens' careers are disproportionately impacted, and not only by the meager 9-month biological difference (at least 6 months of which many women can actually spend working).
In an NPR story I heard recently, one professional woman commented that if it were actually a fair choice between advancing one's career and focusing on one's family; with child care benefits and work flexibility alloted for; then it could indeed be considered a choice. As professional systems exist now, women are not presented with a choice: if they focus on their career, as much as they may love their work and desire to do so, their family must go largely neglected. If they choose to focus on family, then the doors to the highest echelons in their careers slam shut. There is a basic philosophical construct wherein if two options are presented, but one is an utterly unresonable option, then the choice that the individual is forced to make cannot be considered volitional, or consenting. Many women seeking to advance their careers are not presented with a choice, but rather with an ultimatum.
Men and women who remain childless and yet still demonstrate a wage and career-acheivment gender gap exhibit a disparity presumably based on discrimination. The same NPR story estimated that, while discrimination does exist, perhaps now more subtly than ever in the forms of work environments that can be hostile to women, the gender gap both in wage and career-heights can be largely attributed to family responsibilities. I hope that a more equitable distribution of time and energies between fathers and mothers can close the gap. My assumption is that when women are presented with a reasonable choice between work and family, many more women will be able to occupy professional leadership positions. If the choice is entirely reasonable, then whatever disparity remains can be entirely attributed to choice itself; for indeed the family woman or man should not be criticized or penalized by society, but rather encouraged for their dedication to family and the happy side-effect of producing wholesome, future contributing citizens.
