From: mckenney@CIMS.NYU.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Re: gender "data-hiding" (vs. discrimination) [LONG]
Keywords: maternity benefits, discrimination, birth rate
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:34:02 GMT
Followup-To: soc.women
Organization: Courant Institute, NYU, NY, NY

In article <1992Apr10.200251.4450@alliant.com> russ@alliant.com
  (Russell McFatter) [lines marked >] responds to article
  <909@armltd.uucp>, by hwatters@armltd.uucp (Helen Watters)
  [lines marked >>]:

>>Also it stinks, if the women really is the better person for the job
>>and she does not get it because she might have kids in the future.
>
>That's a rare case.  If a woman is really the better person for the job,
>chances are that she'll get it regardless of her childbearing potential.
>Employers ultimately seek the best players they can get; and if they
>were to deny a clearly more-qualified female employee because of her
>sex, they'd be exposing themselves to a possible discrimination lawsuit--
>and, again, any H.R. person with any experience/intelligence knows that.

	Well, there are numerous reports that men are often hired even
	when a woman who "really is the better person for the job" has
	applied, enough to make me think that such discrimination
	against women is common.  And why would discrimination against
	women suddenly disappear when childbearing potential is brought
	up?

	The rest of your argument would make sense, if I or anyone I
	know had ever found that hiring and firing were done on a
	rational basis.  My own experience with H.R. (that's what they
	call the employment departments these days, isn't it?) is that
	they are brought in after the fact to provide the justification
	for a decision that has already been made.

....
>>Until the current recession, most engineers 
>>were mobile. Women have to work 2 years to gain maternity rights 
>>(ok there are severly reduced rights for those who have worked six months). 
>
>This is a good point.  But I will correct you on one item:  Anybody, male
>or female, has an equal likelihood of leaving work for a different/better
>job.  Companies ALWAYS have incentive devices to discourage turnover, since
>employee turnover is very costly.  They also have devices to prevent abuse
>of benefits, which ALWAYS include restrictions on paid/unpaid leave time
>and other benefits on new employees.

	I believe that your "equal likelihood" is oversimplified.  I
	have read that women, on the whole, are *less* likely to
	job-hop than men.  Moreover, if a woman *does* intend to take
	advantage of maternity benefits, it's a real incentive to stay.
	And if the company is one of those few companies that are
	willing to be a little flexible with employees who are also
	parents, it's even more of an incentive to stay.

	Of course, this assumes that the employee has much choice about
	whether to move on.  Helen was speaking of engineering, which,
	in this country, has had a reputation for being treated like
	auto assembly: engineers are hired and laid off en masse
	according to the immediate needs of the company, or so I have
	been told.  But in that case, incentives to discourage
	turnover are irrelevant, aren't they?


....
	[I don't know who >>> is]
>>> o  Women are permitted paid Maternity Leave for the shorter
>>>    of two weeks after the birth of a child (or longer if
...
>>I wish guys would stop looking on maternity leave as a kind of holiday. 
>>Babies are HARD work, or so everyone keeps telling me. Having a baby
>>is a very physical experience.  Some women need time off to rest before
>>having the baby. The time off is ESSENTIAL for the health of the mother 
>>and baby, not a fun time.  I am sure a medical person can expand on this.
>>2 weeks off before the baby is born is inadequate ...
>Disagreed on several points.  In many cases, babies are "hard work" for
>24 hours at most, followed by possibly 2-5 days of rest.  Obviously, the
...

	Hmm, try posting that claim on misc.kids!  *We* certainly
	didn't have any "2-5 days of rest" after our son was born.

	I notice that discussion of "two weeks after..." turned into
	"two weeks before..."   From our extensive (:-) ) experience
	(one child), my wife didn't need (and ended up not getting) the
	two weeks before, but definitely needed the *six* weeks *after*
	the birth to recover, and could have used another two weeks.
	The whole area around where the baby came out was not recovered
	at the end of the six weeks, and it took far more than six weeks
	for my wife and my son to really get the hang of breast-feeding.

> ... if Mom and
>Dad work for the same employer, and the pregnancy is typical, she's
>out of commission for less than a week, but gets four weeks off. ...

	(See my previous comment.)

   ....
>In some ways, I don't think that people should "support the average couple
>to have kids" unless society as a whole decides that this is best for our
>future.  But you raise yet another good question:  Why can only the
>very rich afford to have kids?
>
>My theory:  Competition for limited resources. We have, as a society and
>as a planetary ecology, limited water, food, housing space, educational
>capacity, and fundamental assets.  Any baby you might have will ultimately
>DISPLACE some other woman's child in competition for all of these
>resources; yours might be the one that keeps another child out of a
>particular college, or a particular job.  Not too long ago, the "average"
>family could comfortably afford to raise several (3 or more) children on
>a single income.  But as our resources are exhausted, ...
	[Biosphere scenario & ff. deleted]

	These are nice theories.  They just don't correspond to any
	reality I know.  E.g., (Russell McFatter:) "You wouldn't kick
	someone out into the street unless there was someone else
	interested in the same unit, would you?" -- they do it all the
	time here in NYC.  There are lots of homeless people and lots
	of unsold/unrented and abandoned housing.  And lots of bankers
	and landlords standing around looking stupid, but then I've
	noticed a lot of "business people" standing around looking
	stupid in the news lately.


	But, having discounted Russell's theories as to why "we" (as
	a society) are suddenly unable to afford children, I have
	to confess that I have no good answer.  I only know that if
	we *don't* fix things soon, we will be in trouble.

	For one thing, if we would leave childbearing and -rearing to
	"the rich", i.e., those who can (easily?) afford it without
	help from government, employers, and friends, which I suspect
	would mean the top 10% or less of the population, then there
	would be no way that we could produce enough babies, and thus
	later adults, to keep our society going in anything like the
	form we are accustomed to.  We are talking about a sustained
	drop in the birth rate by a factor of at least 5 (that's
	assuming that all these "rich" are willing to have *large*
	families.)

	As E.F. Schumacher points out in _Small_Is_Beautiful_, (quoted
	imperfectly from memory) "the one thing that society cannot do
	without is a steady stream of educated, socialized people."

	Imagine what would happen if the pool of employees would drop
	by a factor of, say, 5?  (Remember that getting 100 resume's
	for each job ad doesn't mean that there are 100 job seekers
	for each job, only that the job seekers are desperate.)

	And as for the present system, where children are born and
	raised by parents who can't afford to *both* put a roof over
	their family's head *and* nurture and educate their children as
	much as they need, well, we see what a mess *it* is producing.


	I also see that employers claim that they "can't afford"
	maternity leave, but they *can* afford corporate jets,
	leveraged buyouts, ridiculously expensive executive
	compensation, massive corporate blunders, etc.  Failure to
	support parents is just another way in which business people
	are penny wise, pound foolish.



--
Alan McKenney        E-mail:  mckenney@cs.nyu.edu         (INTERNET)
Courant Institute,NYU         ...!cmcl2!cs.nyu.edu!mckenney   (UUCP)
Organization: Senior, Civil Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA