I am off to Chicago for the BlogHer conference and YearlyKos convention. Once again, I am re-packing my suitcase for what feels like the 100th time. This will be a working trip, but my last trip by airplane this summer. Yay!
Thank you all for your suggestions in regards to our MotherTalkers Caucus. I will send out a reminder shortly…
Since YearlyKos is a political convention, I thought it appropriate to mention that Equal Rights Advocates, a non-profit legal organization in San Francisco, is pushing to expand paid family leave in California to siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and in-laws. The bills are SB 727 and AB 537.
“We also encourage you to support SB 836, which proposes the addition of familial status to the list of prohibited bases for employment discrimination in the Fair Employment and Housing Act,” the group states on its website.
Good deal.
Along those lines, New York Times’s Judith Warner wrote an excellent piece on the lack of part-time work options for mothers, even though for decades, all moms have said they preferred to work part-time than any other arrangement.
(BTW, I am sure non-parents feel the same way!)
Women on a reduced schedule earn almost 18 percent less than their full-time female peers with equivalent jobs and education levels, according to research by Janet Gornick, a professor of sociology and political science at City University of New York, and the labor economist Elena Bardasi. Part-time jobs rarely come with benefits. They tend to be clustered in low-paying fields like the retail and service industries. And in better-paid professions, a reduced work schedule very often can mean cutting down from 50-plus hours a week to 40-odd — hardly a “privilege” worth paying for with a big pay cut.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In Europe, significant steps have been made to make part-time work a livable reality for those who seek it. Denying fair pay and benefits to part-time workers is now illegal. Parents in Sweden have the right to work a six-hour day at prorated pay until their children turn 8 years old. Similar legislation helps working parents in France, Austria, and Belgium and any employee in Germany and the Netherlands who wants to cut back.
Even Britain has a (comparatively tame) pro-family law that guarantees parents and other caregivers the right to request a flexible schedule from their employers. European employers have the right to refuse workers’ requests, but research shows that very few actually do. And workers have the right to appeal the denials.
