March 1, 2010
Maternity, Growth and Value Conflicts
On Saturday Liberal Conspiracy ran a post about the benefits of increasing maternity pay. Given that the author was nef-affiliated, it could have been a lot worse. However, it’s worth thinking carefully about maternity care both in its own right and for some wider conclusions.
Let’s start with the basic problem. I’m going to take the liberty of quoting my friend James on this matter:
Having a child is not just a woman’s choice, it is also (often) the man’s choice. What can’t be chosen is the biological given that when a man and a woman opt to have a baby, the woman has to carry it in her for many months, which creates a number of physical obstacles, as a result of which she becomes temporarily unable to (do certain kinds of) work.
As a society, there are various ways we can cope with this biologically determined asymmetry. One way is to make it very difficult for women to get back into the job market post-pregnancy; to make it significantly more difficult for men to take leave from work to care for the newly born child; to allow the mass media to generate a sexist cultural ethos which says that it is a woman’s job to rear the children; and to respond to criticism of this set-up by blithely banging on about “choice” and “responsibility”, whilst ignoring the extremely elementary point that choices take place in economic, social, and cultural contexts, and as such are influenced by a wide array of financial and institutional pressures, social attitudes and values, and so forth. All of which – if we are not conducting an academic seminar on Mars – rightly has an impact on our thinking about allocations of responsibility.
That is one way of dealing with the biologically determined asymmetry. Another would be to make it much easier for women to get back into the job market post-pregnancy; make sure that it is just as legally possible and financially viable for the man to take care of the newly born child; to criticise in the harshest terms the ridiculously sexist attitudes and values cultivated by the press, so that it becomes just as acceptable for a man to raise a child as for a woman; and so on.
I think it is clear which of these approaches is preferable.
[N]one of these points require the deployment of a lofty “egalitarian philosophy”. They are just elementary points for anyone who has a halfway decent attitude towards women, and doesn’t allow their thinking to be distorted by a background ideology.
James’ point agreed, I think the next question is: what should we do then?
One obvious candidate is to equalise maternity and paternity leave. At present, we enforce an asymmetry in the law and the economy between men and women. The former are entitled to only 2 weeks paid leave, the latter 9 months. As a result, employers are likely to discriminate against all women of child-bearing age, on the grounds that they might get pregnant (and therefore be money-losers).
Incidentally, this will be quite a rational course of action for employers to take. Indeed, given that their first obligation is to their business or their organisation, they may also be justified in pre-emptively so discriminating. The collective consequence, however, is that because men are not discriminated against, the structure of the laws generates unequal treatment between men and women. And I think that such unequal treatment is wrong – and that it is created in large measure by the law itself makes it (IMO) even more objectionable.*
And There’s more. As Tim Worstall commented on the LibCon piece:
“There is an observed effect on both the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling of more generous maternity leave provisions. The longer the leave taken the greater (other things being equal of course) the gender pay gap and the harder it is to break the glass ceiling. This wouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have an inking about economics.”
Tim is right. It’s because only women can take 9 months off that when a man and woman choose to have a family together, it’s the woman who takes the longest time off. (Furthermore, there’s the dominant, misogynistic social expectation that the women will be the primary carer for at least the next 5 years, making her work-reliability arguably even lower – and arguably this is perhaps what really matters). Result: from an employer’s point of view, women-with-babies take more time out of work than men-with-babies. As a result, women don’t get promoted. As a further result, they end up being paid less.
Again, I think this is a very undesirable outcome – and that we should try and change it. And again, equalising paternity and maternity leave would arguably eliminate, or at least help eliminate, the problem.
Except – and here’s the rub – everything comes at a price. If we enforce equality of paternity and maternity leave, then we can surely expect the following overall effect: more people will take more time off work. As a result, overall economic productivity is likely to go down, businesses are likely to run less efficiently, and the economy is likely to perform less well. We thus have a dilemma:
To increase equality and see national output – and collective wealth – fall
or
To tolerate inequality but keep output – and collective wealth – high.
Personally, I mean it when I say that I believe gender inequality is wrong. So I’m prepared to pay a price for it, in the form of lower overall economic productivity. I will bite that bullet, and say “that’s the price worth paying for equality”. Others will disagree. They might argue that women (and men) benefit overall more from a more productive economy than from having equality of parental leave, and perhaps in the long term a smashed glass cieling and an end to the gender pay gap.
The real point I’m trying to make, however, is that in politics, not all your values will always come together. Sometimes you can’t have equality and a better economy. Sometimes you have to choose.
Of course, by happy co-incidence it might turn out that enforcing parental leave equality renders the national economy more dynamic and thereby more productive. Maybe. Indeed if it does, bargain!
But equally, it may not. And it’s likely that an awful lot of country-specific factors beyond my remit of expertise will decide. Yet I think it’s safe to say that, in the short term, the impact is likely to be: fewer people working therefore lower overall productivity.
Which means having to choose between values.
So here’s my beef with the LibCon post: although it’s talking about maternity pay (rather than leave), the argument is distinctly that both gender equality and the economy will be improved in the long term. Now maybe that’s true (but again, see the comments). Maybe we can have our cake and eat it. But I suspect that very often we cannot – and I worry about the integrity, and the political viability, of left-wing campaigning if we assume that our goals can’t conflict. I worry about what I take to be a general tendency on the left to assume that all our ideals come together by happy harmony, simply because they’re our ideals.**
–
* To anticipate an objection: I don’t believe in biological-determinist type nonsense that says that women are automatically “better” at bringing up children and therefore they “ought” to be the ones doing it and therefore it is “right” for there to be an asymmetry in legal entitlements. In fact, I think that’s a piece of sexist nonsense. Simply because a woman gives birth to the child, it doesn’t follow that she should play the primary role in raising it.
** I don’t have any, y’know, evidence for this. It’s just a strong hunch.
Grace said,
March 1, 2010 at 8:17 am
Small businesses are disproportionately affected by this kind of regulation – it’s a lot bigger deal to have to employ 2 people in a year to perform 1 job if you only have 5 staff than if you have 1000. So increasing maternity/paternity leave is likely to decrease competition and lead to there being more dominant firms – another economic consequence which may also have implications for equality, for example if small firms can get away with discrimination less because the consequences of not employing the best people are greater.
Also, the more substantial paternal leave is, the more likely that employers will use covert means to try to weed out those men and women who may well have children. I know that the head of English at my school, after losing 2/6 (or therabouts – it might even have been 3) teachers in a year to maternity leave, each of whom came back for a few months before having another baby (*severely* disruptive, one class had 5 teachers, they had by far the lowest GCSE average), asked her newly hired teachers to promise not to have a baby for 5 years!
Robert said,
March 1, 2010 at 8:51 am
I worked for a company that kept it’s work force to a min it paid well mind you in 1970 I could earn £800 a week, which was massive. But the job was dangerous and it was hard, my first year at work I saw five of the work force killed in falls.
When my first child was born the company gave me a day off and docked my time, then I was told that I was needed 400 miles away when I said what about the new born they said make up your mind are you going or are you leaving.
About six months ago I saw some of the work mates and they said nothing has changed except now we are all self employed.
Great world we live in, but I suspect people working in offices and councils will feel the benefits of this.
FranLydie said,
March 1, 2010 at 9:42 am
Ah but it’s not just looking after the child once it’s born. As an employer you need take into account that your pregnant worker is going to take time off for ante-natal care (to which she is legally entitled, and hospital clinics run during working hours), that she, even if perfecty healthy, may well feel tired/ill and take sick-leave during the pregnancy (she may also have been throwing up for 2 hours every morning in the first three months of her pregnancy, even if she is still at work) – and that she will leave work on maternity leave several weeks before the birth. (And you won’t know the exact leaving date in advance, because the baby may be premature). In addtion, her return-to-work date is also, by law, quite flexible.
Therefore it is still going to be incredibly tricky to faily recruit women of child-bearing age even if their male partners have the same rights once the child is born.
Peter said,
March 1, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Grace,
“Small businesses are disproportionately affected by this kind of regulation – it’s a lot bigger deal to have to employ 2 people in a year to perform 1 job if you only have 5 staff than if you have 1000. So increasing maternity/paternity leave is likely to decrease competition and lead to there being more dominant firms – another economic consequence which may also have implications for equality, for example if small firms can get away with discrimination less because the consequences of not employing the best people are greater.”
- Wouldn’t a natural response to that problem just be to say that small businesses (defined in terms of numbers of staff) can claim back some or all of the cost of maternity/paternity pay from the government (or make it tax deductible or something), whereas big businesses would not be granted that option.
Grace said,
March 1, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Yes I suppose. Though graduating tax rates according to the size of the business (our points could be generalised to a lot of regulation aimed at fairness etc) does result in skewed incentives, marginal corporation tax being v. high. But I guess we can’t have everything. Also (though I don’t know the law behind this, perhaps transfer pricing laws rule it out, though these can be avoided) mightn’t your plan lead to a few dominant firms, separated into lots of small firms in theory/for tax purposes but not in reality? Like a multi-plant monopolist.
Alex said,
March 1, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Excellent post.
If maternity and paternity leave were made equal, I am optimistic that the net economic change would be positive, simply because the labour market should be so much more efficient (i.e. firms stop rejecting candidates based on possible-future-motherhood).
I agree entirely though that even if the economy was worse off, it is a price worth paying.
uberVU - social comments said,
March 1, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by paul_sagar: Maternity leave: problem of value conflicts: http://badconscience.com/2010/03/01/maternity-growth-and-value-conflicts/...
Metatone said,
March 1, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Grace,
Of course there are culture specific issues, but we can look at other societies with more equal maternity rights for men and women, to see some effects. In Scandanavia, it doesn’t seem that it’s put a huge skew towards larger firms.
Paul,
You are right to identify potential trade-offs, especially in the short term (although, again, it’s far from clear in international comparisons that the trade-off is inevitable.) However, it’s also necessary to call Tim Worstall and his ilk out on their trade-offs, notably their commitment to deregulating sectors like banking despite it clearly reducing output/productivity in the economy overall.
That of course brings up another point, you use the word “productivity” quite loosely here, I think I know what you mean, but I think it’s important to be careful as there are a bunch of definitions in use – GDP/hour and GDP/worker, etc.
It seems like at one point you’re referring to total GDP produced for the economy too. Given that long term better parenting of toddlers seems to do a lot for reducing crime, it’s not clear that it’s such a big tradeoff…
Paul Sagar said,
March 1, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Fran Lydie,
Those are good points. I may do a follow-up blog with relation to them in due course.
Grace,
There’s prima facie a possible risk that corporations could do that. Though we’d need to know more about the tax breaks offered, and the feasibility and desirability for large firms to exploit them via avoidance mechanisms. But let’s suppose that large firms do so engage in the form of tax avoidance you describe (they do it with enough other things). The logical response would be: get tough on corporate tax avoidance (not: let’s not do anything about gender inequality just in case further down the line it leads to tax avoidance).
Metatone,
Thanks for the really good comment.
Re my confusion on productivity, that’s mea culpa by virtue of the fact I don’t really know very much about economics, and am out of my area of expertise. I think you get the general point I’m making, but yes it was sloppy and thanks for pointing that out.
You’re right about calling-out Tim Worstall et al, of course.
One quick point, though:
“Given that long term better parenting of toddlers seems to do a lot for reducing crime, it’s not clear that it’s such a big tradeoff…”
This looks more like a comment about childcare/nursery provision than immediate post-natal parental leave. So arguments about the long-term economic benefit of equalising parental leave look like they may have to come from elsewhere.
Sam said,
March 1, 2010 at 11:37 pm
“It’s because only women can take 9 months off that when a man and woman choose to have a family together, it’s the woman who takes the longest time off. (Furthermore, there’s the dominant, misogynistic social expectation that the women will be the primary carer for at least the next 5 years, making her work-reliability arguably even lower – and arguably this is perhaps what really matters).”
You’ve missed the obvious biological difference here. Men don’t lactate. Women do. If a man and woman are otherwise equivalent, it is therefore rational for a couple to allocate the woman to primary child-nurturing duties (because she can’t go out to work and leave her breasts at home) and leave the man to take paid employment.
Sam said,
March 1, 2010 at 11:43 pm
On the subject of maternity pay, small businesses and disfavouring women’s employment, perhaps the solution is to make maternity pay entirely the responsibility of the government. If as a society we decide that we want to support employed mothers by offering maternity pay, then we as a society should bear the cost – not impose it on those businesses that happen to employ women who happen to become pregnant.
This would remove the cost of maternity pay concern from employers, and only leave the need to find a “temporary” replacement.
Paul Sagar said,
March 1, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Sam,
Have you ever heard of a bottle?
I hear they’re all the rage.
Tim Worstall said,
March 2, 2010 at 7:41 am
Several things.
I’m not sure I’ve ever called for the “deregulation” of banking. I’ve certainly called for “different” regulation….but not none.
Re maternity pay and governments. I agree, it’s a couple of decades since I had to do this myself from the company side but it certainly used to be that maternity pay was deducted from the amount of NI the company had to send off. (ie, you deduct all the right amount of NI from everyone’s paycheque and if you had someone getting maternity pay you deducted that pay from the amount of NI you had to send in).
So the direct costs were carried by the government. The indirect costs were carried by the company.
“In Scandanavia, it doesn’t seem that it’s put a huge skew towards larger firms.”
Actually, it has. Firstly, there’s a huge gender bias: 75% of women work for the State and 75% of men for private companies (I may have that slightly wrong: 75% of the state workforce is female etc). The State is, of course, the ultimate large employer.
Secondly, the Scandanavian economy is dominated by large firms in a way that the UK or US economies are not……but I agree, there are many reasons for this, not just maternity leave.
Grace said,
March 2, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Paul, yes bottle-feeding may be a good substitute but you must admit it’s not a perfect one – in terms of nutritional value and the emotional bond.
Sam, as Tim said there are loads of indirect costs, for example the GCSE English class at my school having very disrupted teaching and consequently doing badly. Also, making maternity pay completely the responsibility of the government – what about women on massive salaries?
In some industries (like the kind of banking my father works in) any kind of time off (apparently) marks the death of your career, as you have to be continually up to date with everything that’s happening in the market, trends over time etc. Also, if you leave for a long period your job will probably be gone when you come back – the job security is bad enough that your job may disappear even if you are there, networking and making clear that you are useful. I think this is just the nature of the job, not easy (or perhaps possible?) to change. No woman has *ever* come back after maternity leave.
David Weber said,
March 2, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Paul,
I don’t actually follow your logic (or quite understand what you mean by “enforced” equalisation). Logically, if maternity pay is equalized, it doesn’t need to be a net doubling. Instead, it can be halved for each parent, possibly with an exception for single parents where one parent refuses to take responsibility. At the very most, this should prove to be a marginal net cost to the economy, and in fact might make Employers more relaxed about the prospect of child leave (as for each employee, the potential is less, and therefore easier to plan around).
FranLydie said,
March 2, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Bottle not ideal, by any stretch of the imagination.
Also need to take into account gay couples who adopt (is he or he going to take the time off?)