By continuing with the WLB example from Quebec, there is another side to consider. Quebec has mandated various affordable childcare options ($7 a day, no matter your income level, though there has been news of this changing to a sliding scale in the future), which has had the effect of Quebec having the highest number of working mothers in all of Canada in 2007 by a margin of 6%. This supports the idea that unaffordable child care trends tends to lead to an increase in the number of stay at home moms:
Low-income mothers are far less likely to be employed than are upper-income mothers (45% vs. 77%), a finding that is repeated with fathers. These patterns may highlight the economic constraints that childcare costs put on women and families. Unless a mother can obtain a good job, likely depending on whether she has advanced education, there may be little or no financial benefit to her working. And, as a result, the household's overall income is lower than in households where the mother does work.
We would be remiss if we did not mention the role education can play in alleviating these issues. While people may quibble over the extent to which biology or upbringing affects how we as individuals end up, the reality is that it is very hard to deny that social influences play a non-negligible role. For example example, consider this riddle: “A young boy and his father are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene. The boy is transported to the hospital, taken immediately into surgery... but the surgeon steps out of the operating room and says, ‘I can't operate on this boy - he is my son!’ Who is the surgeon?” If you guessed “The mother”, then you are correct, unlike the majority of adults]. However, children - who have had less exposure to cultural preconceptions about what gender should do what job - tend to do much better at solving the riddle. Considering these cultural effects, it is crucial that children be exposed to a wide array of the life options that are presented to those of us lucky enough to have been born in the developed world, but without pushing them into pursuing a field they may well not wish to (whether that decision be in line with traditional gender roles or not).
To address the death gap, there needs to be a serious conversation regarding the goals of a solution. For example, some may be perfectly satisfied with a quota-like death gap whereby women and men die on the job at the same rate. In contrast, we argue that it is far more important to decrease the overall number of deaths that occur while working than it is to “spread out” the death rate. A death is a death, equally tragic regardless of gender. Five dead men and five dead women is no better than nine dead men and one dead women, although both are much to be prefered over nine dead men and nine dead women. This is consistent with our views on the pay gap: it is not sufficient to have women making the exact same amount as men, but rather we should aim for people to be paid what they are worth independent of their gender and unbiased by societal influence as much as possible. If this results in a 1:1 ratio of female:male earnings and/or a 1:1 ratio of female:male deaths on the job, then so be it, but it is not required for things to be fair.
With this in mind, there are various ways to reduce the death and injury rate. It has been shown that rotation work and long working hours can cause an increase in accidents. The solution to these issues seems obvious: get rid of rotation work and long work hours when unneeded.
A speculative way to address the death and injury rate that is worth mentioning is to create a worker’s union. While we were unable to find studies that supported or rejected this notion, it is a tenable solution that warrants investigation.
There are more radical solutions which, though extreme, may help solve the issues we have highlighted. One of these solutions may be to replace the current corporate method of near “continuous” promotions and raises with one modeled after the military’s system of “discrete” promotions and pay. By standardizing the decision to promote or give a raise to an employee, and minimizing the number of times it has to be made, the decision could be delegated to parties who aren’t familiar with the employees in question, and the gender of said employee could be hidden from the aforementioned decision makers. This would render gender discrimination difficult, if not impossible.
Where it is possible, it may be helpful for businesses and employees to move away from a traditional 9-5 work schedule. Such jobs tend to put value in face time as opposed to work time or productivity, which is not what a job should be about9. Additionally, many businesses (excluding obvious exceptions such as retail, service, or stock trading jobs) simply do not require inflexible start and end times. In fact, employers having a choice in their working times (amongst other things) is linked to reduced stress, improved WLB, better physical and mental well-being, higher innovation, better job performance, and higher job and workplace satisfaction.
As some of you may be aware, there was a recent change in law in the US that allowed employees to discuss their salaries with other employees. While it is likely too early to look into the effects this has had on wage differences between the genders, it is something to keep an eye out for in the future.
Another alternative to the traditional work system is to do away with schedules entirely, and replace it with a system of “contracted” work, wherein employees are paid based based on services rendered, not based on the amount of time they worked. This would allow those with the capability and desire to do so to finish their work quickly, thus allowing them to spend more time with their families, or simply avoid unneeded stress.
In summary, there are a myriad of ways in which work issues and suboptimal WLB can harm men and women, and in turn, society in general. These issues typically pertain to discrimination based on gender in terms of pay, judgements of competence, family time, on the job death rates, happiness, and health impacts. While this issue is divisive amongst some given the partisan nature of some of the solutions (affirmative action vs. blind hiring vs. neither, strong unions vs. no unions, etc.), it is maybe the most wide-reaching issue in terms of the number of people affected. While we don’t claim to have all the answers or that our own personal political leanings are necessarily correct, we believe it is important to acknowledge how men and women can be affected by workplace biases and seek to rectify the issues caused by this. As always, it’s not about who has it worse, but rather about helping those who are in need.
This is largely deliberate on our part. We want to intersperse more contentious issues with more relaxed issues
We do not endorse the politics/slant within the article.
The BLS has recorded workplace injuries in terms of sex of the victim. While we recognize that sex and gender are not the same thing, given the low prevalence (less than 0.02, or 2%) of gender identity disorder, the two can be treated as approximately equivalent for the sake of cursory investigations such as this.
These fields are agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting; transportation and warehousing; mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; and construction.
Which is perhaps to be expected, given that all of those jobs tend to require physical strength, which tends to make men more qualified, but tends to be associated with more dangerous work.
In this case, “rational” is meant in the context of game theory, rather than in the more colloquial sense as a synonym for “reasonable”.
It involves treating some groups differently than others based only on their demographics. That’s discrimination. You can argue it’s justified, but you can’t deny what it is.
A personal anecdote: I (/u/femmecheng) did a co-op at a manufacturing engineering company. One day I was out on the shop floor with my boss to do some data collection. As we were walking, my boss stopped to talk to one of the tradesmen because they were friendly with each other. The tradesman informed my boss that his wife had just received an ovarian cancer diagnosis and nearly started crying out on the shop floor. It seems within the realm of the imagination to think that the man was simply not in the mindset to do his job (welding) well, and the safety of both himself, his coworkers, and those who would later go on to use the equipment he was building, was potentially compromised. I believe my boss later talked to the tradesman’s boss and managed to get him paid time off, as my boss later expressed to me a concern for the wellbeing of the man. However, I fully realize that my boss was truly a fantastic person, and that the outcome of that experience is perhaps not likely to occur in other companies or industries.
This is a shared opinion between us and should not be taken as anything but.