I am a mom. When I open my Google calendar, my screen lights up like Christmas with colorful little blocks representing healthcare appointments, school conferences or events, volunteer commitments, playdates, etc. Overlay that with the Outlook calendar that reminds me of my classes, meetings, office hours, and research deadlines, and you’ve really got a work of art.
In this busy season of life, I am grateful to be working in a career that allows schedule flexibility. I hold regular class times and office hours. But, there are days when I also spend hours of daylight attending school events or meetings for my child or taking him to and from appointments. On those days, I spend the early evenings making sure everyone is fed both physically (meal time) and emotionally (family time), and I am finally able to sit down to catch up on my work after his bedtime.
It’s a routine that works for my family and me, and it is a characteristic of my job that I value almost above all else.
According to Claudia Goldin, this year’s Nobel Laureate in Economics, I am not alone in this. Goldin, whose life work has been devoted to studying women in the labor market, writes that women’s labor force participation has been tied to the ability to work flexible hours and/or to work from home since before the beginning of the industrial era, when women’s labor force participation dropped with the shift to factory and office work.
Economists call this a preference – women prefer work flexibility. But, as one who lives this truth, I think a better word might be need. It is not often my preference to write articles at midnight because I left work early to take my son to the dentist, but out of necessity, it is often where I find myself.
In my case, a single mother, it is obvious on whom the dentist burden will fall. But, data show the burden of childcare falls disproportionately on mothers, regardless of their marital status.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, on weekdays, women spend an average of 2.13 hours engaged in household activities and 0.92 hours caring for others, while men spend only an average of 1.32 hours on household activities and 0.42 hours caregiving.
Among parents, fathers spend an average of .94 hours per day and mothers 1.69 hours per day caring for and helping children in their household. Where the youngest child is under age 6, average daily hours spent caring for household children are 1.47 for fathers and 2.59 for mothers.
It stands to reason, then, that women sort into jobs allowing more flexibility. Goldin finds that this sorting, along with women’s tendency to exit the labor force for extended periods when they cannot find the flexibility they need to work and care for children, are largely responsible for the gender pay gap, around 20 cents per dollar.
Economist Steven Dubner said in a recent Freakonomics podcast on Goldin’s work, “In some ways it’s a self-inflicted wound — women make choices that lead to smaller monetary returns. On the other hand, society is set up in such a way that those choices are often not really very optional. So, what’s to be done about it?”
And Goldin provides some guidance here, too. First, she advocates for government provision of childcare for school aged children and younger. Then, employers, if a job can be done anytime and anywhere, then let it be so. But if not, Goldin says most firms could use technology to make even high-level employees substitutable for one another, reducing the need for a single worker to be always available. For example, if an electronic database contains all the information needed to make most company decisions, then one executive mom can go home in the evening to be with her kids while another tucks her kids in and takes over the work. Goldin calls this eliminating the “part-time penalty,” or the devaluing of workers just because they work fewer or more flexible hours.
Or we could work on changing the workplace and family values of a whole nation, but that’s too big a lift for a midnight article. I’m going to bed.
———–
Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
Reg Murphy Center