Gender, Women's Issues

Gender Gap Disappears If You Just Keep Working

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A new study shows that women who have children — but don’t put their careers on hold to raise the kids — perform just as well as men when it comes to salary and partnership prospects:

A study of data concerning graduates of the University of Michigan Law School showed no significant difference between men and women who had children yet didn’t interrupt their careers or work part-time to take care of them. However, it revealed a significant gap between those attorneys and their colleagues–both male and female–who put their careers on pause for several years to stay home with the kids, says law professor Kenneth Dau-Schmidt of Indiana University at Bloomington.
“Gender was secondary, and much less important, than whether they had interrupted their careers to do child care,” he tells the ABA Journal.

This is excellent news for nannies and au pairs everywhere.
On Monday, we asked readers if this was a terrible time to have a child. Over 60% thought having a kid wasn’t the best idea in this economy. But maybe many of your were assuming that if you had a kid you’d have to feed it or talk to it or something.
Apparently that is not the case. And if you outsource the child rearing, there might not be any deleterious professional consequences.
Of course, women that take significant time off to spend with their young children can get something a little more intangible than money.
More notes after the jump.


If you do take some time off and actually spend time with your kids, the study suggests that you won’t make as much money. But you will be “happy,” for whatever that is worth:

Lawyers in the career-interrupted group worked less, earned less and made partner less frequently than those who soldiered steadily on with their full-time legal careers, he says. However–as far as the women are concerned–those in the career-interrupted group are also the most satisfied of all the lawyers studied, both with their personal lives and with their professional lives.

I imagine that men who put their careers on hold to raise their young family would be happier as well, if they could just get over a couple of Mr. Mom jokes on football Sundays. All of the benefits (and consequences) of stay at home parenting can be accessed by either gender.
I suppose that is progress.
What Gender Gap? Many Women Lawyers w/ Kids Do as Well as Men, Researcher Says [ABA Journal]
Earlier: Milbank Layoffs Follow-Up

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