As the elevator climbed to the fifth-floor law offices, Alison let out an exhaustive yawn. Her managing partner, Jim, gave her a sympathetic smile. “Another sleepless night with the new baby? I remember those days. I bet you’re so tired.”
When the doors opened, Jim stepped off the elevator, turned to Alison, and said:
“Let me buy you a coffee later so we’re fresh for our meeting at four.”
As she watched Jim hustle down the hallway towards his corner office, Alison thought, Thanks for the commiserative shoulder, but you’re reading me wrong. I’m tired because I pulled an all-nighter in the office marking up client contracts!
Jim, a well-intended, good guy, made a snap assumption many people make—pregnant women and new mothers are compromised in their work in the office by childcare and their work at home. Less well-intended people have said it outright:
Mothers in the workforce have lower professional goals.
They’re not as committed.
They’re not as ambitious.
They “don’t work as hard,” is how a Plano, Texas doctor said it in the Dallas Medical Journal. He explained that generally, women tend to care more about outside obligations than their professional ones.
“There is a cultural perception that if you’re a ‘good mother,’ you’re so dedicated to your children that you couldn’t possibly be that dedicated to your career,” says Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll. And this pervasive attitude—that once you add “Mother” to your resume, you become a less competent, dependable and effective employee—is costly. CONSIDER THIS: a mother’s earning power is decreased by 5 to 10 percent for every child she brings into the world due to missed opportunities for promotions, prestigious assignments, pay increases, and bonuses. Ann Crittenden popularized the term “motherhood penalty” in The Price of Motherhood in 2002, and almost two decades later, the prejudice against mothers is still the strongest form of workplace gender discrimination on record.
Inspired by Shelley Correll’s work and sociologist Lisa Wade’s articles on the subject, I posed the following question to dozens of individuals (men and women) in managerial positions:
Two candidates come into your office. One is a man; one is a new mother. Both have the same skill set. Which one would you hire?
A few asked for more information, but in the end, all except one said they’d hire the man. A sampling of their responses:
“Why would I invest in her? She’s probably not going to stay.”
“I don’t want her using company time pumping—it’s intrusive.”
“Inevitably she will be out of the office a lot for doctors’ appointments.”
“On work time, mothers are focused elsewhere when I need their full attention.”
These answers were disappointing, but not shocking. What did surprise me is that not one of those I interviewed asked if the man in my hypothetical scenario had kids. Maybe they assumed he didn’t, but more likely, even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.
Back to Alison on the elevator…
With a three-month-old baby at home, she returned to work and often stayed late in an effort to “re-immerse myself in my career and stay competitive,” she explained. On the particular night while Alison worked well after hours marking up contracts, her husband Tony also pulled an all-nighter at home, attending to their daughter’s erratic feeding and sleep schedule. But when he arrived to his office the next morning and let out an exhaustive yawn, guess what? No one assumed his fatigue was child related. Nor did his co-workers generally perceive him as less competent, or any less ambitious than his pre-father self. In fact, men like Tony often receive a six percent wage hike after they become fathers because, among other things, working dads are considered more stable and committed to their jobs.
Shout out to partners, employers and policymakers—this is bigger than a wage gap. It’s a seismic unfairness, and closing the divide requires a cultural shift in thinking, true partnership in the domestic space, and policies to support the reality that both mothers and fathers have lives outside the office. When Alison finally came home after 2 A.M. and crawled into bed, her husband whispered, “I finally got the baby to sleep after two attempts at the bottle, three rounds of Goodnight Moon and one giant burp.”
So, Jim—how about a six percent raise instead of that afternoon coffee?
Eve Rodsky is the upcoming author of Fair Play, a life-management system to help couples rebalance the domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, time and purpose.
