Interesting article. Perhaps I have been fortunate to work for various employers over the years in the consulting engineering business who recognize that an employee's family is an important facet to their quality of life. Having worked for both conservative and liberal bosses, each have always viewed my family as something that can and does interfere with work. Attending school programs during the workday, getting to work a little late to help out my wife in the morning or leaving a little early to make a sporting event, have never been a problem. Just make up the time. These employers have also recognized the importance of women, and have accommodated them with flex schedules after the birth. I'm somewhat surprised (perhaps because of my personal experience) due to the fact that in a professional environment, you're nothing without your employees. Unfortunately, I think some of that is directly the result of the management. If they beleive it is good for business, then they will make it happen. Obviously, the leading edge baby boomers are retiring, who is going to be taking care of them in the next few years?
Well Aspazia you've sent me on another hunt. For a paper I wrote a few years ago on the effect of 'family-friendly welfare policies' on the gender wage gap (ok so don't roll your eyes yet...). I read this really interesting article:
"Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Comparing Women’s Relative Wage Progress in the United States and Denmark" (2006)
The authors find evidence that...
"over the period 1983–95 the wages of Danish women stalled or even floated downstream, while U.S. women managed to swim upstream in a country with less favorable family-friendly welfare schemes and in a labor market with a much larger and more rapidly increasing wage dispersion. "
So why are the female wages of our progressive Scandinavians slipping?
"Developments in public sector employment had a negative “boomerang” effect on female wages and careers, partly through the public/private wage twist policy [in the 1970s The Danish government restricted public sector wages in order to reduce public wages as compared to the private-sector] but also through “family-friendly” welfare schemes available in the public sector in Denmark, such as paid maternity leave, family care days, and flexible working hours, all of which were significantly expanded in this period.
Although these policies facilitated women’s entrance into the labor market, perhaps even raising their total compensation, they had the unintended consequence of facilitating frequent absences from work and thereby reducing women’s attractiveness as employees.
The falling return to public sector employment may thus indirectly reflect the high take-up of these schemes by women in this period and the human capital atrophy and productivity decline that result. For women in the United States, many of these welfare state options were not available, and U.S. women to a much larger extent had to find alternatives in the form of private childcare or housekeepers.
In this way, the Scandinavian welfare state model may have had a backlash effect on the wage progress of women that did not occur under the less liberal social welfare system in America. "
It is not that these authors (or I for that matter) disagree that family-friendly welfare policies are advantageous rather only that the consequences to such policies may have unintended consequences not always be beneficial to women.
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