I’ve been sitting on an excellent bit of analysis from the New York Times for a couple weeks now, but didn’t want to let it slip by without sharing. Titled “Counting the Cost of Machismo“, the article describes how Northern European countries where the culture encourages women’s role in the workforce have fared far better economically than Southern European ones where entrenched machismo has kept women out of it.
Europe’s southern fringe, indebted and uncompetitive, has long been the euro zone’s weak link. But besides a sunny climate and shaky economic fundamentals, it also shares a long-entrenched machismo that is costing it dearly. As it turns out, the share of adult women in the paid workforce in the region lags men by almost 20 percentage points, compared with 12 points across the European Union, 9 in the United States and only 4 in Sweden.
Sexism, of course, is not the cause for Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, and in the short term, the euro’s prospects depend more on the right mixture of fiscal austerity and monetary stimulus than on sisterhood. But in the longer term, women could well hold the key to overcoming a fundamental economic weakness that plagues not just Southern Europe but much of the rest of the Continent as well: An aging population and a shrinking workforce that is threatening to explode pension and health care budgets.
“Gender equality is no longer just a human rights issue, but an economic necessity,” said Maria Stratigaki, who is in charge of gender equality in the Greek government. She is using the budget crunch in her country to lobby for more “gender-budgeting” — rules that ensure men receive no more resources from the state than women.
There’s a lesson in this for the US, too, with its stingy maternity leaves and lousy daycare options:
Even generous subsidies for child care pay off: A 2002 study by the German Bundesbank found that public investment in day care in Germany on balance increased government revenues as more mothers returned to work.
Not only do women working outside the home strengthen the economy with their taxable income and GDP contributions, they also are more likely to contribute to long-term economic health by choosing to create more future workers:
And perhaps surprisingly, encouraging women to work out of the home also encourages them to have more babies, thus yielding more future taxpayers. Decades of experience in the Nordic countries show that once women are no longer forced to choose between employment and children, both go up.
Sweden, at the forefront of women’s liberation, boasts a female employment rate of 70 percent and a birthrate of about two children per woman, the highest in Europe along with Norway and France.
The US is just barely hitting that two-child-per-woman goal—the much-desired population replacement rate—but only because of birthright citizenship and higher birth rates among immigrants, not because we have culture that values work-family balance. In other countries—Japan is a oft-mentioned example—chronic workplace and cultural discrimination force many women to choose between having a career (and economic self-sufficiency) and having children. When forced to vote with their uteruses—so to speak—Japanese women have chosen careers, causing Japan’s birth rate to drop so low it’s precipitated a demographic crisis.
Not only are working women—and working mothers—not returning to the kitchen anytime soon; it’s probably in everyone’s best interests to empower even more of them leave the kitchen for the workforce.
“and only 4 in Sweden…Sweden, at the forefront of women’s liberation, boasts a female employment rate of 70 percent and a birthrate of about two children per woman…”
*sigh of longing* If only Sweden didn’t have such long winters and such strange, lingonberry-laden cuisine…
No, but seriously, I hear this is a huge problem in Italy in particular — the men have very regressive gender roles leading to a low birth rate (because the women don’t want to marry or have kids with a sexist jerk who still lives with his mom) and a huge division still in terms of who has leisure time and who does the household labor. Get with the times, Italy!
I’m reminded of a post Megan wrote for Jezebel in 2008/9 (which Google doesn’t seem to want to find for me), about women being far more assiduous about governance in business, leading to many senior roles held by women being in governance and further, several such women (working for banks in the US) actually predicting the financial crisis and being fired/demoted for doing so. Her piece also noted that female-run businesses are (usually) less profitable because they (usually) operate to a higher standard of governance.
If a requirement of more rigorous governance in business is a long-term effect of the current economic situation (and I have no idea if it will be), then a workforce with a higher percentage of women will be desirable. This situation would however, be an extension of the ‘woman as moral guardian and check on the excesses of masculinity’ stereotype.
What I don’t understand (or maybe I do, and I just don’t want it to be true) is why so many people rail against regulation, oversight, governance, whatever you wanna call it. These things are what enables a good life (and not just a good wage) for the most people.
People are motivated by greed and covetousness. This is an argument *for* regulation, not against it. “A rising tide lifts all boats” sure, but it totally fucks over those who couldn’t afford a boat in the first place.
PhDork, in my experience (and I’ve worked in the consumer policy section of a national economic regulator and am well-informed in financial exclusion issues), lax regulation absolutely screws the poorest people in society and benefits the richest and most powerful.
Guess who most people prefer to identify with? It’s very ugly.
This is an interesting discussion, PhDork. I admire your facility for turning an execrable puff-piece into a real discussion. I miss that about academics.
But onward. I loved OldFeminist’s perspective, that it’s about a partner’s attitude toward contributing (in every way), not about the money.
When I met my now-husband, I knew he probably made more than I did, because of the very different industries we worked in. What attracted me to him was his quick wit, his passion, his drive, his intellect, and his playful sense of humor (among other things). But when, after three months of dating, I learned almost by accident (he had to find a new apartment, and he didn’t hide his salary from me when we were at the real estate broker’s office) that he made 400% of my salary, I was not only astounded, I was mad.
We finished out the day nicely, but then I seriously had to think for a few weeks how I wanted to handle the vast discrepancy, and whether I could be in a relationship with someone who made so much more money than I did.
I was so pissed off, not with him, but with the very idea that what he did meant that he was worth so much more to society than what I did. He did have one more advanced degree than I did, but that had no bearing on his field of work whatsoever.
Admittedly, this was my hang-up. I assumed that that discrepancy would make for a power imbalance in our relationship.
It did not. And that was entirely because my husband just didn’t think of money that way. To him, everything we have is ours together. It wasn’t at that point, of course, but we discussed the issue a lot because I was so suspicious. And he has always treated me as the equal partner I am, or we would never have lasted.
And you know, I really shouldn’t have worried so. Husband has now been unemployed for five years, and we live on my salary. But we still benefit from the money he made during his salad days.
As others have said, over a lifetime relationships see many ups and downs. I do want my husband to do something in terms of a job in the future, because I want him to be and feel effective, and I want an equal partner. I would love it if he could make some money so that I could feel that we were providing for our children’s and our own future as best we could. That includes providing for our own long-term sustenance. I don’t want to be burdens on our kids. But I know that if we NEEDED him to work, he would. And for now, he is providing childcare and house-husbanding par excellence. And that is worth a lot.
Crap – posted this on the wrong page – sorry Becky!
@PhD – My theory on this (which is not super profound or original) is that one of the reasons that sort of regulation can take hold in other countries is because they’re more homogeneous and it’s easier for the majority of their citizens to consider it as everyone playing for the same team, so to speak. So if they pay high taxes or their businesses are curtailed by a regulation and so on, they can say to themselves, “well, this is for the benefit of me and/or *people like me*”. I think that in the US so many people just have a very, very difficult time conceptualizing everyone else in the country as “a person like me” and would rather that they not get a benefit than that people they don’t like do get one.
@baraqiel, I have long suspected what you state here, that in this country we can’t consider ourselves all part of the same family because we aren’t all “people like me.” I would agree that our less-than-well developed sense of unity is based on a bad us/them social dynamic and a history of outright race discrimination. But, I think that we are also too individualistic, capitalist-survival-of-the-fittest culturally to ever have a wide enough notion of “we” so that all get included. And this, in total agreement with the title of this piece, is a direct outgrowth of the fact that macho (hyper-masculine) institutions in Southern Europe, and here in the US, have overwhelmingly dominated public social policy decisions. Because of this, I am now very curious now about Swedish men and their brand of masculinity.
baraqiel: YES. Now I’m curious to know how these prosperous countries treat immigration issues and perceived “invasion” of another cultural group.