Should any parent be penalized for parenting? No. Should every parent be given the opportunity to parent? Yes. If women and men were equally able to take parental leave, prioritize their families over their careers, etc. there wouldn’t be a “motherhood penalty”.

My vagina, yes.

In your case, that is not discrimination. To assume this is a choice for all women or most women, however, is grossly inaccurate.

I admittedly haven’t watched the video clip in this article so can’t speak to its accuracy, however, the wage gap as presented here is accurate, though oversimplified.

A. Wikipedia is not a credible source.

In general, we need to tackle bias in our everyday lives even when it’s uncomfortable to do so. I don’t see any other way around it.

I can only speak from personal experience re; interest in engineering but I distinctly recall being interested in engineering but feeling that I wasn’t proficient enough in math or physics to pursue it at university. I was a very high performing student though so I’m not quite sure where that message came from. I…

I like you, fiberman. More of you in my diet.

Framing motherhood as voluntary is fairly problematic for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the tricky economic/policy situation that sub-replacement birth rates result in, and framing the prioritization of family over career in service of motherhood comes perilously close to equivalency with the former. I think…

Anecdotes are not without value when discussing a topic inherently experience-based. That being said, dependence on qualitative anecdata in an argument drives me nuts... So here’s your data:

What do you believe might be the cause of that based on your experiences in the field and with those few female applicants? (I’m genuinely interested in discussing this with you - not trolling!)

I appreciate your thoughtful response, meathead.

Oh I respected HR managers’ time. I applied for only positions I was qualified for or over-qualified for - exclusively internships and entry-level positions - and always thanked all parties (including HR) for their time via email after an interview.

Re-posting from up-thread because relevance:

I hear what you are saying and there is a recent article making the rounds that evaluates the wage gap as a ‘motherhood penalty’. Two comments on that assessment: 1). Do women choose to leave their careers to focus on their families or are women expected to choose between their careers and their families when men are…

I’ll just leave this here: https://iwpr.org/publications/five-ways-to-win-an-argument-about-the-gender-wage-gap/

Failure to engage in scholarly discourse? Why I never.

Alright, show me your proof. Peer-reviewed journal articles only. Go.

Sure, it’s egregiously oversimplified - as I mentioned in a reply to another comment on this thread - but labour market inequality (e.g. structural sexism, access, etc.) is very real and an apples-to-apples comparison like the wage gap is something easily communicable to the masses. We aren’t all economics/stats…

The reason it is interpreted as misleading is that it is egregiously over simplified by purely quantitative approaches because it’s extremely difficult to assign a quantitative value to something like structural sexism in a society. Current literature in the area acknowledges that discrimination cannot be discounted.