Of course most women would rather be at home with their new baby.
If there are two or more children working as well must be almost
impossible. I watch my daughter-in-law and just cannot see how she
could go to work as well.

However most of them *have* to go to work to make the mortgage payment.
Am I the only one who knows why this is so ?
I tell people why women with kids have to go to work and they simply
either do not believe me or don't understand.

Here it is again;
A simple lesson in markets:
If the buyers in a market suddenly get a large increase in the
available money, say doubled, the price of the product rises to meet
the amount of money available.

In the 1970s the feminists were pressuring the government to force
the lending authorities, banks etc, to take both incomes into account.
Being politicians they were too weak or dumb to see the trap that
was being set for the women.

The price of houses and land rose to meet the amount of money
available. The developers must have estatic !

If you borrow on two incomes you need two incomes to repay the loan.
So the women who thought they were doing themselves a favour and gaining
a right found they lost the right to stay at home with the children
and now find themselves paypacket slaves to child minding centres.

Simple isn't it !

US, perhaps if you gave us a reference for the "feminist bleating" we could better understand what you're arguing. I don't believe feminists have any problem with women wanting to stay home and look after the kids. On the contrary, I'm sure most feminists wish they could afford it! A lot of women manage to stay at home until their kids hit school. I really think this is pretty well accepted — comparisons between male and female wages, for example, will omit figures for women working part-time because they're children are not yet school-age. It's skews the comparison, so that you're no longer comparing like with like.

As chainsmoker points out, the argument has always been about removing restrictions based on gender.

Rather than arguing that women have more choices than men, I reckon you (and me, and all of us) should be happy with the amount of choices we all have when it comes to our working lives. Once men were largely restricted to going out and earning the bread while women largely restricted to tending the home fires. Not to say that we might not choose either of those things, but at least now we are not forced to choose. Now, with a little effort, and perhaps sacrifice, a family can work out what constellation of working/staying at home they want to create, and go about creating it.

This is not always easy, of course, but the pressure is financial rather than social.

What government incentives are you talking about specifically US?

Dear Veronika...

its not "restrictions placed because of gender" its..."Gender restricts choices" unless we want to play unfairly with offspring.

Gender in fact dictates so much.. one just sows a seed, the trigger event.. the other brings a new life (for both of them) into the world..

Females are designed.. built.. specified.. to be 'child producers' more than anything else... their whole anatomy is..about 'children'.
Yes..I did say that 'more than anything else' :) and guess what.. God made it that way.

That we have somehow departed (it seems) from this truth, based on a general gullibility to skillful propoganda and social engineering.. is a tragedy we are only beginning to see the sad results of.

Any 'person' can be a rocket scientist.. only a 'woman' can produce a new human being.. profound and wonderful in the highest order.

Country Gal,

How have I lost you? You agree then that probably an even higher proportion of women would exercise their choice to stay at home if they could afford to. That weakens the case even further that workforce participation rates are evidence of gender inequity and discrimination.

'There are plenty of women who dont get the choice about staying home, at least not fulltime'
Well, there is a large proportion of the people who say they have no choice, but really they do. They could move 20km further away from the city and drive an older car, utlilise public schools etc, but they choose to put their kids in child care, and have the nicer house and car. I don't agree with five days a week child care if it can be avoided, but that's the choice that some families make. Obviously some people genuinely cant downsize their standard of living any further, but a hell of a lot can.

Anyway, a lot more women have this choice to stay at home than do men. So why is it a victim feminist's example of gender inequity? If anyone needs equality in this area, it's men.

This applies to a lot of families that say they 'have' to have both parents working.

Veronika (Vanilla),

'I reckon you (and me, and all of us) should be happy '
I am happy, as I said we all have choices. My argument is a woman using her choice to defy the feminists gets wrapped up in a statistic about workplace participation and used as evidence of inequality.

'perhaps if you gave us a reference for the "feminist bleating" '
Just listen to whatever Anna McPhee, Elizabeth Broderick , Marie Coleman says.

i.e.
"I think it is certainly concerning that women are being discriminated against because of their family situation,"

"lower female wages force many families to assume the traditional roles of having a male breadwinner and female carer rather than equally sharing the burden of paid and unpaid work."

This is the attitude I am talking about. How DARE families not have an exact 50-50 share in paid work, and have one parent at home instead.

' time to re-engineer the workplace so senior jobs could be done part-time '
They're even wanting to somehow have the whole workplace re-designed for women to be part time CEOs. Why don't we re-engineer women's expectations and tell them they cant have everything?

'mothers were missing out on promotions because they were unable to be a senior manager and work part-time.
'
It's just so unfair when you cant have your cake and eat it too. No mention of the fact that mothers might not WANT to be promoted. Pretty likely when 70% don't even really want to be there, and are looking to rush off at three to get home to where they really want to be.

I can understand this. I have a new baby and I certainly don't want a promotion. If anything I would jump at a 4 day week, but I certainly don't expect the world to fit in with my lifestyle choices.

*If she worked for me, she would not find me obliging at all, unless she was irreplacable (but I would never employ someone who even thought they could not be replaced).*

Col, I agree with many of your posts, but not this one :)

The last business that I owned, employed quite a few women,
doing relatively repetivive and boring work, at fairly average
pay. That was just the nature of the market and work involved,
so women needed an incentive to do it and turn up every day.

In the end, the answer was quite simple. Women are more social
creatures in general, then men. They also love to get together
with their girlfriends, discuss girl things and tell each other
how they feel. So I landed up hiring exclusively women, a bloke
in there would have stuffed things up. I let them decide their
own hours and let them decide who they wanted to work with, when
it came to hiring new staff. All I cared about what that the
job was done on time, according to our customer's schedules.

The experiment was a huge success! People came to work because
they enjoyed coming to work, to catch up with their friends.
There would be "girltalk" all day as they worked, which would
change instantly when a male walked into the place. They drew
up their own rosters, to fit in with their families, kids etc,
and I kept right out of it.

In the end it was a win-win all round. I was happy, I had all the
staff I wanted, the work was done on time. They were happy,
as they loved coming to work and since then a few of those women
have stopped me in the street and told me that it was the best
job that they ever had. Clearly people skills matter! So
I learnt something out of that.