Feminist complains about women getting workplace entitlements

[credoconsolans]

Exactly the message I got right off the bat. It's pretty explicit to me.

"We are not going to change our workplace expectations or system or atmosphere to accommodate 50% of our workforce, we'd rather just pay off those who want to have children early to wait. It's cheaper since not all women are of childbearing age."



So much for employers changing their business model when women start to dominate the workforce.

Women are nowhere near 50% (let alone 'over' 50%) of Facebook's or Apple's U.S. operations; more like a third.

[shrug] Depends on the occupation.

But you're explicitly saying women need to be 'accommodated' in the workforce; that it is women who should be taking the time off to bear and raise children.

Women are going to bear children. Men don't bear children. A woman is just as valued - or should be - employee as a man is.

It's very simple, really. If you're taking time off - often up to a year (and sometimes up to 4 months of that paid) - from your job, you are costing your employer money.

[shrug] People cost their company money if they're out sick as well. Apparently, men suffer more catastrophic illness than women do. Are you saying employers should not accomodate the sick?

 

[Rhea]

It's very simple, really. If you're taking time off - often up to a year (and sometimes up to 4 months of that paid) - from your job, you are costing your employer money.

That's not a thing in America. We do 4-8 weeks paid if you are in a good job. 1 week if you're not.

 

[Metaphor]

It's very simple, really. If you're taking time off - often up to a year (and sometimes up to 4 months of that paid) - from your job, you are costing your employer money.

That's not a thing in America. We do 4-8 weeks paid if you are in a good job. 1 week if you're not.

But that's part of my point. If accommodating people to have children is a social obligation, then society (through government) needs to fulfill the obligation.

Women in prestige organisations in prestige jobs have gold-plated maternity leave policies. Women working at Sally Housecoat's Fish and Chip shop aren't going to get the same thing, and it would be completely unreasonable to think that a small business could accommodate it anyway.

 

[Toni]

I haven't read every post in this thread, so forgive me if someone else has already raised this point:

Are they similarly offering men bonuses to delay parenthood?

I'm pretty sure that most of those guys are already pretty familiar with the harvesting techniques. Should be well received by the male workers.

Fuck, I'd be all over a company policy that encouraged misogynistic cases of arrested development to delay or forgo completely fatherhood. Let the whole damn species of Daleks die out.

Why not simply develop decent family friendly workplace policies? Or is that too scary and threatening to policy makers who have to rent their sperm receptacles and have no idea how to interact with actual people? It's almost as though the policy makers have no social skills and no understanding of human nature or human biology.

BTW: Aside from the not inconsequential medical risk of harvesting eggs, $20K doesn't come close to covering the cost of stimulating ovulation, harvesting eggs and freezing them (best done after they've been fertilized), maintaining them in frozen storage and then implanting them whenever the 'time is right' which, by Apple and/or Facebook's calendar is: never.

Here's a hint: if you want a girlfriend you don't have to bribe or pay, learn how to treat women decently. Like real people. Someday, if you are good and true and work really hard at it, you, too, might become a real boy. Or man.

 

[Metaphor]

I haven't read every post in this thread, so forgive me if someone else has already raised this point:

Are they similarly offering men bonuses to delay parenthood?

No.

BTW: Aside from the not inconsequential medical risk of harvesting eggs, $20K doesn't come close to covering the cost of stimulating ovulation, harvesting eggs and freezing them (best done after they've been fertilized), maintaining them in frozen storage and then implanting them whenever the 'time is right' which, by Apple and/or Facebook's calendar is: never.

The ongoing storage cost is covered, but whether $20,000 covers a typical egg removal and freezing or not is hardly the point. $20,000 is an extraordinary amount of money.

Here's a hint: if you want a girlfriend you don't have to bribe or pay, learn how to treat women decently. Like real people. Someday, if you are good and true and work really hard at it, you, too, might become a real boy. Or man.

Where did this come from? You realise that there were bound to be some women who worked on the business case for this policy, right?

 

[dystopian]

This is absurd. Were women not breeding during the about 100,000 years of human history where nobody had paid maternity leave? It's always been 'doable'.

I'm confused as to why you would try this argument; surely you're aware the role of women as well as that of the family has changed considerable in recent history?

So you're against the sentiment behind the egg-freezing offer, but not the egg-freezing offer itself?

If a woman decides to do it on her own, without being pressured into it by corporate policy, then who am I to argue?

The sentiment is "it's better for your career that you don't take a year off every few years to breed". Is that message morally wrong? Why?

First off; "...that you don't take a year off every few years to breed"; is that really what you think of women?

Secondly; it's wrong because it's top-down pressure.

Except the senior executives, you can be assured they won't be paying, either financially or in increased workloads, so that having children becomes more 'doable' for some people.

Of course they won't, because they're the the kind of psychopathic bastards that claim it's perfectly okay to lay off half the workers and run a company into the ground so long as it produces a nice stock return, and still get a 10 million dollar bonus while their employees dig around in the dirt for scraps.

Typically, they have to train up a new employee anyway -- someone has to do the work that the person was doing before they went on leave.

Ignoring the fact that A), maternity leave doesn't have to be taken all at once, B) it is actually, typically, not necessary to train up a new employee, since most companies have enough slack in their workforce for the expressed purpose of someone being temporarily unavailable.

then someone's paying the cost. Either the organisation (if the farmed out work is to waged individuals who spend longer hours at work) or the salaried individuals (who do not get compensated on an hourly basis).

Forgive me for not feeling any sympathy for the fact that Apple, with it's 50 billion dollars cash reserve, has to pay a little overtime to the employees picking up the slack.

But you've contradicted yourself: a social obligation is a social (ie the government, which means the public) obligation, not a corporate one.

I don't think you understand what the word 'contradiction' means. Or for that matter, what the term 'social obligation' means. You DO understand that corporations are a PART of society, right? So even from just that fact, they are subject so social obligations the same as every other organization within society. But wait; cause in fact they arguably have a *greater* responsibility than any other organization. Why? Because unlike the government, which is by the people for the people; corporations are by the people, for the few. It is society that enables corporations to make profit (both by working for them, and consuming their products and services). That means they have a moral obligation to give something in return. Sure, they pay taxes; but those taxes are already ridiculously low, and in any case even if they weren't, they'd still have a debt of obligation to take care of their employees.

Also, do you think Apple is providing this benefit to the people assembling its products in China? I can assure you they are not. So, leaving it to employers means the already-privileged (people working at a Fortune 500 company with already-handsome working condiitions) get even more privileged, whilst others get something substandard or nothing at all.

What on earth gave you the impression that I'd be okay with letting employers take care of it (incidentally, I never said corporations had to foot the entire bill themselves, just that they have an obligation to their employees) "however they see fit"? Do I honestly strike you as the kind of person who, if I had the power, would let Apple fuck over its Chinese workers so that the rich white guys back at HQ can keep their christmas bonuses?

 

[Toni]

No.

BTW: Aside from the not inconsequential medical risk of harvesting eggs, $20K doesn't come close to covering the cost of stimulating ovulation, harvesting eggs and freezing them (best done after they've been fertilized), maintaining them in frozen storage and then implanting them whenever the 'time is right' which, by Apple and/or Facebook's calendar is: never.

The ongoing storage cost is covered, but whether $20,000 covers a typical egg removal and freezing or not is hardly the point. $20,000 is an extraordinary amount of money.

It is hardly the point, you are correct.

If you want to encourage women to delay parenthood, it is far more effective to encourage their education, promote them to positions of increasing responsibilities and compensation-and keep your workplace rules rigid and unaccommodating to anything remotely resembling a decent work/life balance.

It seems to me that Apple and FB are both smart enough to have figured out that the whole workforce, comprised mostly of men, still benefits greatly from providing employees the opportunities to advance their careers as well as generous compensation. They don't want to interfere with that for their boys. And honestly, that is what good employers do: they provide good compensation and a work structure that allows employees at all levels to enjoy a good work/life balance. Flexibility and lack of rigidity encourage creativity, loyalty to the brand, etc.

Modern birth control can minimize or even eliminate those nasty horrible menstrual periods that women tend to have so that's probably not a problem. Now the challenge would be to dramatically reduce the likelihood of any of those women that they need to hire to look good. They can pretend that it's just still boys, albeit some with breasts.

BTW: $20K is not an extraordinary amount of money if you are pulling down $500 K or more annually as an engineer. Or to undergo a procedure most women would prefer to avoid unless necessary.

Here's a hint: if you want a girlfriend you don't have to bribe or pay, learn how to treat women decently. Like real people. Someday, if you are good and true and work really hard at it, you, too, might become a real boy. Or man.

Where did this come from? You realise that there were bound to be some women who worked on the business case for this policy, right?

Oh, I'm aware of the power structure at Apple and FB.

 

[Emily Lake]

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/02/apple-overhauls-employee-benefits-with-longer-parental-leave-improved-education-reimbursements
Dated October 2, 2014

And under the new parental leave policy, expectant mothers can take off up to four weeks before delivery and 14 weeks after, while expectant fathers and other non-birth parents can take a six-week leave. The changes were announced to employees in a company-wide memo sent out on Thursday.

Parents of either sex receive reasonable leave for births, and presumably for adoptions as well, which is fairly standard. I'm somewhat surprised that the time off isn't equal.

I have a different perspective on the egg-freezing offer. As a female mid-career, I see it as an option, and a valuable one. I don't see it as a nefarious game being played by Apple. Kids take a lot of time, and when you're in your late 20s and early 30s in a career, your career takes a lot of time as well. Much as we might wish it, most women don't have husbands who are willing to stay home and raise the kids, or who have jobs that they're willing to step back from so they can focus on the children first. And at least one of the parents really does need to focus on the kids first - they need to be the priority. So in many cases, a woman in the growth phase of her career finds herself facing a choice: children or career.

And the choice is NOT as simple as having decent maternity leave. That certainly helps guarantee that you'll have a job to come back to, and that you get some bonding time with your new baby, but it doesn't help at all when you're facing a choice between needing to stay late to finish a project or picking the kid up from day care, or helping with a school project, or going to the school play, or staying home with a child who has the flu, or any number of other childcare-related issues that conflict with work. The sad truth is that these parental duties do NOT fall evenly on both men and women - then still fall far more on women than they do on men.

So when a woman makes a decision to have a child during that growth phase of her career, she's making a conscious decision to put her career second, and her child first. Employers are aware of this. There's no way NOT to be aware of this.

This option - the option to freeze your eggs on the company's dime no less - gives women an additional choice. Now we can choose to have children during natural childbearing age and place our careers second, we can choose not to have children at all... or we can choose to have our cake and eat it too (albeit not without some risk of failure).

 

[laughing dog]

I wonder about the effects on women's health and the baby's genetic integrity from postponing childbirth using frozen embryos. I believe older women have a higher probability of more serious health risks with later pregnancies. I believe that children born to women later in life have higher frequencies of physical abnormalities and health problems. But I don't know if that is true with in vitro fertilization as well.

 

[Shadowy Man]

BTW: Aside from the not inconsequential medical risk of harvesting eggs, $20K doesn't come close to covering the cost of stimulating ovulation, harvesting eggs and freezing them (best done after they've been fertilized), maintaining them in frozen storage and then implanting them whenever the 'time is right' which, by Apple and/or Facebook's calendar is: never.

Furthermore, pregnancy when a woman is older has increased risks not just due to the age of the eggs so simply freezing eggs won't reduce all the risk.

But you are wrong about the "time is right": I'm sure that Apple and/or Facebook consider the right time to be when they've replaced you with someone younger.

I guess someone in the company decided that since it's difficult legally to simply not hire any women that they'd come up with some kind of plan that they can claim looks "progressive" and "accommodating". And since they have no expectation that men take any time off or put in any effort into childrearing that their male employees won't need this benefit for their wives.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

BTW: Aside from the not inconsequential medical risk of harvesting eggs, $20K doesn't come close to covering the cost of stimulating ovulation, harvesting eggs and freezing them (best done after they've been fertilized), maintaining them in frozen storage and then implanting them whenever the 'time is right' which, by Apple and/or Facebook's calendar is: never.

Furthermore, pregnancy when a woman is older has increased risks not just due to the age of the eggs so simply freezing eggs won't reduce all the risk.

But you are wrong about the "time is right": I'm sure that Apple and/or Facebook consider the right time to be when they've replaced you with someone younger.

I guess someone in the company decided that since it's difficult legally to simply not hire any women that they'd come up with some kind of plan that they can claim looks "progressive" and "accommodating". And since they have no expectation that men take any time off or put in any effort into childrearing that their male employees won't need this benefit for their wives.

I like how they're evil in an overly complex and machiavellian way. They're like a supervillian in a movie with a bad screen writer. It's too bad for them how they'll be thwarted in their plans to get rid of all the female employees because they spend too much time monologuing and accidentally reveal all the details of their plan instead of just firing them right off the bat.

 

[Emily Lake]

I wonder about the effects on women's health and the baby's genetic integrity from postponing childbirth using frozen embryos. I believe older women have a higher probability of more serious health risks with later pregnancies. I believe that children born to women later in life have higher frequencies of physical abnormalities and health problems. But I don't know if that is true with in vitro fertilization as well.

I don't know. I think it would be something that any woman giving this serious consideration should investigate and think about very seriously.

- - - Updated - - -

And since they have no expectation that men take any time off or put in any effort into childrearing that their male employees won't need this benefit for their wives.

It's not the company's place to have expectations about how you act toward your spouse.

 

[Shadowy Man]

And since they have no expectation that men take any time off or put in any effort into childrearing that their male employees won't need this benefit for their wives.

It's not the company's place to have expectations about how you act toward your spouse.

I don't really understand your point here. My comment isn't about how one acts towards one spouse, my comment is about how having a child affects workplace performance. Presumably the company is offering women the benefit of paying for some fraction of delaying their pregnancy in order to have it not affect their work performance in the present. The assumption here is that if a woman has a child, it will impact the time, energy, and dedication they have for the work they are doing. And this is a reasonable assumption. However, the fact that they are not offering the same benefit to their male employees suggests that they do not believe that when a man has a child it will impact their work performance.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's not the company's place to have expectations about how you act toward your spouse.

I don't really understand your point here. My comment isn't about how one acts towards one spouse, my comment is about how having a child affects workplace performance. Presumably the company is offering women the benefit of paying for some fraction of delaying their pregnancy in order to have it not affect their work performance in the present. The assumption here is that if a woman has a child, it will impact the time, energy, and dedication they have for the work they are doing. And this is a reasonable assumption. However, the fact that they are not offering the same benefit to their male employees suggests that they do not believe that when a man has a child it will impact their work performance.

I understand.

No, generally speaking I don't think they do believe it will impact a man's performance in that same way. The truth is that it doesn't affect a man's performance in the same way. This is a cultural and societal gender role that hasn't shifted yet... if it ever does. Women are still the primary caregivers for children. When both parents work, it still ends up being the female that puts the children's needs before the needs of her career, while the man puts the needs of the career first. If the child is sick, it nearly always ends up being the mother who stays home. If there's a project that needs to be completed, and a kid that needs to be picked up, the mother will usually end up choosing the child where the father will choose the project. Perhaps some day that will change, but right now that's how it is.

This policy reduces the need for women to make that choice. Instead of having to choose between children or career... they can add a third choice: career now with children later.

 

[laughing dog]

This policy reduces the need for women to make that choice. Instead of having to choose between children or career... they can add a third choice: career now with children later.

Except that 3rd choice is laden with potential serious health risks for the mother and health problems for the child.

 

[Emily Lake]

This policy reduces the need for women to make that choice. Instead of having to choose between children or career... they can add a third choice: career now with children later.

Except that 3rd choice is laden with potential serious health risks for the mother and health problems for the child.

Maybe, maybe not. You've already said that you don't know if that's a risk with frozen eggs.

Do you think it should be only a choice between child or career?
Do you think that an option to have career now and child later, even if there may be additional risks involved, should be denied to women?

 

[laughing dog]

Except that 3rd choice is laden with potential serious health risks for the mother and health problems for the child.

Maybe, maybe not. You've already said that you don't know if that's a risk with frozen eggs.

There are health risks to older women. So there is no maybe not.

Do you think it should be only a choice between child or career?
Do you think that an option to have career now and child later, even if there may be additional risks involved, should be denied to women?

I think those questions are irrelevant. I am not sure that it is a good policy to give incentives to people to increase the risks to their and their child's health by postponing childbirth.

 

[Toni]

I don't really understand your point here. My comment isn't about how one acts towards one spouse, my comment is about how having a child affects workplace performance. Presumably the company is offering women the benefit of paying for some fraction of delaying their pregnancy in order to have it not affect their work performance in the present. The assumption here is that if a woman has a child, it will impact the time, energy, and dedication they have for the work they are doing. And this is a reasonable assumption. However, the fact that they are not offering the same benefit to their male employees suggests that they do not believe that when a man has a child it will impact their work performance.

I understand.

No, generally speaking I don't think they do believe it will impact a man's performance in that same way. The truth is that it doesn't affect a man's performance in the same way. This is a cultural and societal gender role that hasn't shifted yet... if it ever does. Women are still the primary caregivers for children. When both parents work, it still ends up being the female that puts the children's needs before the needs of her career, while the man puts the needs of the career first. If the child is sick, it nearly always ends up being the mother who stays home. If there's a project that needs to be completed, and a kid that needs to be picked up, the mother will usually end up choosing the child where the father will choose the project. Perhaps some day that will change, but right now that's how it is.

This policy reduces the need for women to make that choice. Instead of having to choose between children or career... they can add a third choice: career now with children later.

Well, they've had that choice--maybe*--all along. It's not as easy to become pregnant or to carry a pregnancy in your 40's or later as in your 20's and 30's. It's just not. I don't see that changing.

You know what else won't change: Kids take up time and energy and mental and emotional space no matter what age they are. Sure, teenagers do not usually require diaper changes and can feed themselves and do their own laundry. But let me tell you the truth: I've spent plenty of nights up very far past the bedtime I needed to make to be able to function at my best at my work--because I was talking to my teenagers. Because when a teenager wants to talk, you talk.

There is no magic time when it becomes easier to 'time your pregnancy' to fit in with your career. It's all trade offs, balancing acts, a lot of sleep deprivation, lots of adrenaline, lots of work--and lots of sloppy kisses, messes on the kitchen floor, wet towels on the bathroom floor, mountains of laundry and incredible love and satisfaction. Someone very wise once told me that it is possible to have it all: wonderful career, wonderful kids, wonderful spouse/marriage. Just not at the same time. And I think she was right. You may be having a wonderful year at work--and your kid may be struggling with math homework. Or your kid may be acing all the benchmark tests, in line for Harvard--and you get laid off of work. Doesn't matter much if you start when you are in your twenties or your 30's or 40's--although there is a pretty steep decline in energy about half way through the 40's that you should keep in mind when making decisions.

Here's what I did: I strove to structure my life so that I was able to be nice to my kids. Not perfect, but nice. Meaning not so stressed out or so lonely or so bored or so exhausted that I couldn't enjoy them every day. Maybe not every single minute of every day: flu happens! but every day. I wasn't entirely successfuly but they have turned out pretty good so far. And we still like each other, so that's something.

The fact--observable fact, observed by me is that men ARE taking on greater household and childrearing responsibilities. They ARE sometimes taking primary care of the kids allowing their partner to focus on career. I am guessing from the things you've written that I am old enough to be your mother so, not pulling rank but just saying: I've seen a pretty dramatic change since I had my first kid who is now all grown up and has been for some time now. The shift has begun and while I won't say that we will achieve a 50/50 sharing of responsibilities between mothers and fathers, I will say that as more men take over home life responsibilities and as more women have the opportunity to have more careers and more work of substance and substantial income and influence: change will keep right on happening.

What needs to happen is that workplaces look deeply at what work/life balance really means. It's not a one size fits all kind of thing. As a society, if we are to do right by individuals, by families, by children, by the elderly and those who are disabled, all of us need the flexibility to have our actual life lives, not just work lives. Families AND careers because those kids do exactly what you had been hoping for: they grow up and leave home and start their own lives. And will need jobs, homes, etc. that fit their lives and their dreams.

 

[Metaphor]

If a woman decides to do it on her own, without being pressured into it by corporate policy, then who am I to argue?

I'm sorry, but I don't know what that means. "On her own". It's always on her own. No-one's holding a gun to anyone's head.

First off; "...that you don't take a year off every few years to breed"; is that really what you think of women?

Is it the word 'breed' you object to? What about 'have a kid'? By the way, a woman who takes a year off every for years to have a kid is as much a liability to a company as a man who does it. You're the one bringing gender into the statement.

Secondly; it's wrong because it's top-down pressure.

I can't make sense of this. Everything about being an employee is 'top down pressure', unless you're at the top.

Of course they won't, because they're the the kind of psychopathic bastards that claim it's perfectly okay to lay off half the workers and run a company into the ground so long as it produces a nice stock return, and still get a 10 million dollar bonus while their employees dig around in the dirt for scraps.

So we both agree it will be the people who are not at the top will be the ones to pay.

Ignoring the fact that A), maternity leave doesn't have to be taken all at once, B) it is actually, typically, not necessary to train up a new employee, since most companies have enough slack in their workforce for the expressed purpose of someone being temporarily unavailable.

A) I've never heard of anyone taking it in 'chunks'
B) If the rest of everyone who remains can 'pick up the slack' without their own work being affected, then the role wasn't necessary in the first place. You're entertaining a fantasy that paid parental leave does not have a price. There is a price; it just depends on who's paying.

Forgive me for not feeling any sympathy for the fact that Apple, with it's 50 billion dollars cash reserve, has to pay a little overtime to the employees picking up the slack.

Can Sally Housecoat's Fish and Chip shop afford to pay parental leave?

I don't think you understand what the word 'contradiction' means. Or for that matter, what the term 'social obligation' means. You DO understand that corporations are a PART of society, right? So even from just that fact, they are subject so social obligations the same as every other organization within society. But wait; cause in fact they arguably have a *greater* responsibility than any other organization. Why? Because unlike the government, which is by the people for the people; corporations are by the people, for the few. It is society that enables corporations to make profit (both by working for them, and consuming their products and services). That means they have a moral obligation to give something in return. Sure, they pay taxes; but those taxes are already ridiculously low, and in any case even if they weren't, they'd still have a debt of obligation to take care of their employees.

Corporate taxes should be zero, and personal income taxes should be raised to make that move revenue neutral.

Also, you presuppose that 'taking care of their employees' means targeting a select group of them for special treatment, which everyone else pays for. That to me isn't 'taking care of them'.

 

[dystopian]

I'm sorry, but I don't know what that means. "On her own". It's always on her own. No-one's holding a gun to anyone's head.

I think you know perfectly well what it means; I don't think you're stupid enough to not see the difference between someone coming up with an idea on their own, and being pressured into it from above.

I can't make sense of this. Everything about being an employee is 'top down pressure', unless you're at the top.

That pressure isn't supposed to transgress into people's personal lives.

A) I've never heard of anyone taking it in 'chunks'

Then you must not get around much.

B) If the rest of everyone who remains can 'pick up the slack' without their own work being affected, then the role wasn't necessary in the first place. You're entertaining a fantasy that paid parental leave does not have a price. There is a price; it just depends on who's paying.

You're entertaining a fantasy in which I said there's no price. All I'm saying is that said price doesn't have to be a nightmare if companies do the right thing; and that it is worth paying.

Can Sally Housecoat's Fish and Chip shop afford to pay parental leave?

If that's really your concern, why not introduce a system where a company pays parental leave only if their size/profits top a certain line, with the rest caught by the government? Everybody wins.

Corporate taxes should be zero, and personal income taxes should be raised to make that move revenue neutral.

That's ridiculous.

Also, you presuppose that 'taking care of their employees' means targeting a select group of them for special treatment, which everyone else pays for. That to me isn't 'taking care of them'.

Wow, really? Giving people who need to take care of their children the time off to do that is giving them 'special treatment'? Is it special treatment to give the sick days off from work too? What kind of Victorian capitalist nightmare would you like to live in?