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Parental Leave

Jan 24th, 2008 at 4:47 pm by Susie

Ever get the feeling we’ve been screwed?

“Family friendly,’ my ass.

Posted in Corporate Statism, Politics As Usual

2 Responses to “Parental Leave”

on 24 Jan 2008 at 10:09 pm1Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog

NPR had an unintentionally hilarious segment on their Business News one morning a couple of months ago. Of course, their Business News segment is funny on its own, with the newsreaders suddenly
slow ing
d o w n
their
or din ar eeeee
ENNN PEEEEEEEE ARRRRRRRRRRRRR
dic tion
presumably to accommodate the listening skill level of their business audience … I guess they’d know … and gently explaining the Hard Ideas (like the time they carefully touched on the consequence of reduced supply: Prices Rise! or pointed out as a concluding snapper, in a story about the housing bust which focused on Phoenix, that Phoenix isn’t about to turn into a ghost town … because even though five or ten percent of the homes in Phoenix now are empty — wait for it — ninety-five percent are Not.)

(Yes, in a story from NPR’s world, explaining that 95% + 5% = 100% is what passes for a hard-hitting last line — maybe because they think that 95% + 10% does too. Amazing people.)

Anyway, this particular segment had to do with the gender wage gap. The talker said that women in the US have made some big gains (something like, from 77 cents on the male dollar to 79 cents), but family leave was still pretty edgy stuff, controversial, gets women “mommy-tracked.” At this point she In ter viewed a Big Researcher from a University, who happened to mention that in Sweden working parents get 18 months parental leave — but this generous parental leave comes with some Awfully Big Costs To Swedish Women.
What costs?
Ah, they have a Big Gender Wage Gap.

Oddly, the gender wage gap wasn’t further specified (or talked about at all); the NPR talker brightly went off in a different direction. So when I got to work I looked it up.

Swedish women’s wages turned out to be about 85% of Swedish men’s wages. That Big Cost to Swedish Women Compared To Wonderful Us … is that they’re doing a whole lot better.

NPR. Professional Journalism™ — gotta love it!

With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
sear ching forrrrrr ho o o mmmmmme
on 24 Jan 2008 at 11:29 pm2John

I’m not surprised we get screwed on this it’s just like every other measure of a true quality of family life and work life balance. Here we consider ourselves lucky to get 2 weeks vacation a year. Most other major industrialized countries average something like 5 weeks vacation a year, and that includes the Japanese who have a word for working to death. It’s probably the same one as American worker.