[Agenttin]

I understand that women tend to make choices that cause them to earn less money. However, as a society, we benefit hugely from people making these choices for which we do not properly compensate them to the tune of $1.2 billion a year.

> For 2018 (the most recent data available), the dollar value of women’s unpaid work in the U.S. was equal to 86% of all the economic activity recorded in the state of New York. In other years—say, the late 1990s and late 2000s—the value of women’s unpaid work even surpassed New York state GDP. And keep in mind this value is at the low end of the possible range because we use the federal minimum wage and not, for example, higher state minimum wages let alone market wages that correspond to the specific work being done.

> The UNDP Women and Development Report of 1995 conducted a time-use study that analyzed the amount of time women and men spend on paid and unpaid household and community work in thirty-one countries across the world, including countries classified as 'industrial, 'developing' and 'transition economies.'[12] They found that in almost every country studied women worked longer hours than men but received fewer economic rewards. The study found that in both the 'developing' and 'industrialized world', men received the "lion's share of income and recognition" for their economic inputs, while women's work remained "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued."[12]

The fact that we don't pay as much for the things women tend to do is the problem. We've created a world where if you choose to spend your life sitting in a cubicle, you can support yourself. But if you spend your life caring for the people around you, you cannot, your labor still has value, it's simply not compensated. This is a really bad incentive scheme. We want parents to spend time with their children, not just because children with present parents perform better, but because of course we do. We want smart, capable people to become social workers and teachers and pediatricians without sabotaging their finances. To put another way, the world would be made worse, if 20% of the people who are currently working in their homes, decided to become software engineers instead. The world would become better if 20% of software engineers decided they'd rather contribute to their homes and communities.

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2020/03/calculating-the-valu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaid_work#Gender_and_unpaid_...

[etripe]

I was talking about compensation in a professional capacity in the West. In that context, women are very much not paid unequally. Sectors compensate differently, but that's true for women and men. If you want to pivot to unpaid labour: sure, I'll go along.

> But if you spend your life caring for the people around you, you cannot, your labor still has value, it's simply not compensated. This is a really bad incentive scheme.

That's true, but that goes for any type of activity in the trade economy, whether you're raising kids, doing the shopping for someone, building their shed, teaching them to drive, troubleshooting their devices, fixing their flat tire, etc. That incentive scheme is evidence of a mercantilist attitude in society: social capital is just not valued in monetary terms.

Calling it sexism is reductive, because there are a lot of things men do for free, too. That's also my problem with your first link, which didn't examine men's unpaid labour at all as far as I could tell. I'm unable to tell what the picture looks like on balance.

> We want smart, capable people to become social workers and teachers and pediatricians without sabotaging their finances.

Public sector jobs will always be subject to government budget whims, "cost saving" initiatives and the like. What's needed there isn't feminism but collective bargaining and lobbying. It's also worth remembering that the rest of the West isn't like the US: in Europe, teachers can make median income or above.

As to pediatricians: I see no evidence of them being paid badly across the West. In fact, here in Belgium gynaecologists make more than ER doctors, and pediatricians make more than neurologists and oncologists, but less than ER doctors.

Sadly, the recurring theme everywhere seems to be nursing, which is just undervalued, micro-managed and thankless in general. Nurses can generally get somewhat better wages when they get some extra certificates. Of all examples I know, this one is the most suspiciously low across the board. Then again, I don't think it would be considered less menial or low-status if men did most of it.

> We want parents to spend time with their children, not just because children with present parents perform better, but because of course we do.

When a woman stays at home taking care of the kids, does she not enjoy the same lifestyle as the man? How is that not being compensated? When they get divorced, is she not entitled to half the money and how is that not getting paid? Is she not entitled to child support? Women aren't being disadvantaged simply because they don't get a payslip every month. Now that definitely isn't true everywhere else yet, so globally there's an argument for change towards our current status quo. That also seems to be what your second link is referring to: there is more yet to be done in the Middle East and beyond.

If you think parenting for free (as a couple) is unfair, what would be fairer? Parents already get tax cuts and benefits by virtue of having kids, so there's already a wealth transfer going on from childless people to parents. What would you do instead/additionally? In concrete terms: who should be paying what? I'm not asking for an exact solution, but would like to know what principles or policy levers you're thinking of.

> To put another way, the world would be made worse, if 20% of the people who are currently working in their homes, decided to become software engineers instead.

I agree on that too, but that is also not evidence of sexism but of a machinistic, homo economicus kind of collective philosophy. It's admirable to dream of and take action in order to create a better world, but I'm not sure how we'd get there, in terms of re-evaluating what's fundamentally important. Perhaps restructuring money creation itself (pivoting from loan-based to UBI based) would get us there, but I don't think that movement is anywhere near critical mass.

> The world would become better if 20% of software engineers decided they'd rather contribute to their homes and communities.

The assumption being that they don't, right? There's more to it than raising kids. Let's also please not pretend like men do none of that, or that being a stay at home parent is a full-time job at all kids' ages. I mean: do professional women not contribute to their homes and communities?