Speaker 1: Hey, it's me Rebecca Greenfield, the host of The Paycheck
Speaker 1: Welcome Back. Last season, we looked at a lot of
Speaker 1: the reasons why women earn less than men, from illegal
Speaker 1: discrimination to the everyday workplace sexism that makes it harder
Speaker 1: for women to get raises and promotions. But one idea
Speaker 1: in particular really stayed with us that there's one thing
Speaker 1: that hurts women's earnings more than anything else. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that there's no sexual harassment, no gender discrimination,
Speaker 1: no bias, no absence of negotiation skills, no lack of
Speaker 1: competition for women relative to men. I never want to
Speaker 1: ignore someone's hurt in someone's stories. That's Claudia Golden. She's
Speaker 1: an economics professor at Harvard University. She's been studying women
Speaker 1: work and pay for decades, and she says, even if
Speaker 1: we were able to magically erase workplace discrimination, harassment and
Speaker 1: all that other stuff, the gender pay gap would still
Speaker 1: exist and it would still be pretty big. But I
Speaker 1: think it's extremely important to point out what the real
Speaker 1: problem is. So what is the real problem? What Claudia
Speaker 1: calls joyful events also known as having kids, And she's
Speaker 1: got a point. Study after study has found that the
Speaker 1: gender pay gap widens to a chasm after a woman
Speaker 1: has her first child. It's true even if she continues
Speaker 1: to work full time. It's true for women at different
Speaker 1: levels of education and income. It's true even for women
Speaker 1: with same sex partners. Over and over again, that's what
Speaker 1: the data show. It's not that women don't face discrimination
Speaker 1: or get pushed into lower paying jobs. They do, but
Speaker 1: the impact of having kids on women's earnings is way bigger.
Speaker 1: If we take a group of women who never took
Speaker 1: time off and who don't have kids, their earnings don't
Speaker 1: seem to deviate as much from men's. The gender pay
Speaker 1: gap often gets talked about as women versus men, but
Speaker 1: really it's moms versus everyone else. We talked to a
Speaker 1: lot of moms for this season, and they'll tell you
Speaker 1: exactly why they're not making as much as men, because
Speaker 1: there are only so many hours in a day. You know.
Speaker 1: I decided to work part time so that I could
Speaker 1: spend more time with the kids. It's definitely more challenging
Speaker 1: than I would have expected, especially as my kids become
Speaker 1: more involved in extracurricular activities. But then I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm not moving my career forward right now, and I
Speaker 1: just feel really kind of stuck. I remember my colleagues
Speaker 1: sort of ship talking somebody else who left it five
Speaker 1: and me being like, oh god, can I do that?
Speaker 1: In general, the office is on the standing, But then, um,
Speaker 1: it's disappointing when you see a comment an annual review
Speaker 1: about how you change your hours or took a day
Speaker 1: off unpredictably. At the same time, I feel like I
Speaker 1: should be grateful because I'm lucky that I do get
Speaker 1: to work just three days a week. I want to
Speaker 1: day at home. I have small kids. They don't have
Speaker 1: a babysitter who is just able to hang out with them.
Speaker 1: I don't have the cash for that. And what's frustrating
Speaker 1: about being working mom. I feel like I can't be
Speaker 1: doing my best at both. I actually can't really do
Speaker 1: it all, and that weighs on me. These joyful events,
Speaker 1: it turns out they're having not so joyful consequences. When
Speaker 1: you look at the world, you know what the population like,
Speaker 1: Where is our place like? Where is our value? Women
Speaker 1: deserve people for people work and nation y a comedian
Speaker 1: salary for men is greater than women In weeks six
Speaker 1: percent of major occupations when men have children, they experience
Speaker 1: a pay bump when women have children. The opposite happens
Speaker 1: when women are financially stronger. It's good for their families,
Speaker 1: it's put money to the economy in the markets. It's
Speaker 1: good for everybody. Gender is no longer the factor creating
Speaker 1: the greatest way to discrepancy in this country. Motherhood is.
Speaker 1: For the next six weeks, we're going to investigate the
Speaker 1: impact of having kids on women's paychecks and why it's
Speaker 1: such an important part of the gender pay gap. First,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a cold economic look at that
Speaker 1: joyful event. I know it's weird to talk about the
Speaker 1: miracle of life and economic terms, but until relatively recently,
Speaker 1: that was the full time job for a lot of women,
Speaker 1: because having kids was critical to the economic well being
Speaker 1: of families and society. Those kids worked, they joined the army,
Speaker 1: bought stuff. But when women went to work for actual money,
Speaker 1: that turned out to be good for the economy too.
Speaker 1: When you look at American economic growth in the last century,
Speaker 1: a lot of it can be traced to women going
Speaker 1: to work on mass. But the thing is, as more
Speaker 1: women went to get paying jobs, we never stopped doing
Speaker 1: that first job. Many women now work and have kids.
Speaker 1: We call us having it all like it's an achievement
Speaker 1: or even a choice. But when we talk about having
Speaker 1: it all, what we're really talking about is having two jobs.
Speaker 1: And as anybody who has two jobs will tell you,
Speaker 1: doing two things at once has costs. I guess I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how much work it would be, and that
Speaker 1: taking care of kids would be like a full time
Speaker 1: job that just doesn't have a salary. Balancing or managing
Speaker 1: work and family responsibilities for me has been really tricky.
Speaker 1: It's part plate spinning, part magic act, and definitely part
Speaker 1: wishful thinking. I also need coffee to make it through
Speaker 1: a day now. Prior to having children, I consumed it
Speaker 1: here and there, but I averaged a lot less sleep,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty much moving from five thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning until then thirty at night without a doubt. Though
Speaker 1: whenever I've hit a stride at work, someone at home
Speaker 1: would break a bone or have an allergy attack, or
Speaker 1: get an opportunity at something that they really wanted but
Speaker 1: which required a substantial amount of support for me. And
Speaker 1: now I'm down to sixteen hours a week, and at
Speaker 1: this point I feel like I am sort of Okay.
Speaker 1: The only reason I'm able to do this is because
Speaker 1: I had a spouse who makes a decent living and
Speaker 1: he brings home the bacon. I've missed a lot of
Speaker 1: my daughter's first birthday, for example, my son's first soccer goal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I often feel mildly bad and sometimes tearably bad
Speaker 1: at all of the things that I care about, And
Speaker 1: I think about my priorities right now, it's work and kids,
Speaker 1: and my relationship comes comes last. And there's a fall
Speaker 1: up from that. This balancing act. It has financial consequences.
Speaker 1: It's showing up in their paychecks. Gina Smile covers economics
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg. I brought her in to tell me how
Speaker 1: exactly this plays out. Hi, Gina, Hi, Becca, So are
Speaker 1: women just getting pregnant and taking a pay cut. It's
Speaker 1: not that simple, Okay, So tell me what is happening
Speaker 1: to women's earnings over their lifetimes. So it's pretty stark.
Speaker 1: When women first start working, they're making a little bit
Speaker 1: less than men. For college educated women, when they're twenty five,
Speaker 1: they're making on average of what men do. But by
Speaker 1: the time they're forty five, they're earning so a little
Speaker 1: bit more than half of what amand does. So men
Speaker 1: are making almost twice as much as women do buy
Speaker 1: their mid forties. That's a huge difference. Why is such
Speaker 1: a small earnings differential exploding into this big gap. It's
Speaker 1: about what happens when women are having kids. So in
Speaker 1: Claudia Golden and two other academics tested that idea in
Speaker 1: a really novel way. They studied what happened to a
Speaker 1: group of NBA students at the University of Chicago after
Speaker 1: they graduated. And so this is a group of competitive,
Speaker 1: ambitious people who all have pretty similar credentials a graduation.
Speaker 1: So you think that their pay would be pretty equal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At graduation, the women in the study are earning something
Speaker 1: similar to what their classmates are making just about less. Okay,
Speaker 1: so not exactly equal. But the thing is that it
Speaker 1: got a lot worse. So nine years later, women in
Speaker 1: this study were earning two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on average. Men we're making four hundred thousand, almost two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars more. Yeah, because these are higher earners,
Speaker 1: the gaps are particularly big. But it's an example of
Speaker 1: what happens throughout the economy at different income levels. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we know this happens in this decade when women
Speaker 1: are in their twenties and thirties, also known as the
Speaker 1: child bearing years. So what's happening. Well, A big part
Speaker 1: of the difference seems to come from job interruptions, so
Speaker 1: time out of the workforce, to drop an hour's etcetera.
Speaker 1: When a woman has a child, two things happen. She
Speaker 1: takes off at least a little time from maternity leave
Speaker 1: at a minimum, but she's also more likely to work
Speaker 1: a little bit less even after that. Maybe that's a
Speaker 1: shift of part time work, or it could just be
Speaker 1: not being on call all the time, which could matter in,
Speaker 1: for instance, a demanding consulting job. Here's Claudie again. When
Speaker 1: I say that they've taken off some time, it's not
Speaker 1: that they've taken off a lot of time. They've taken
Speaker 1: off just a small amount of time. But the penalties
Speaker 1: it appears for deviation in the corporate and the financial
Speaker 1: sectors are extremely large. Part of it is that if
Speaker 1: you're an eye banking, you better be working very very
Speaker 1: long hours. If you're in consulting, you better be working
Speaker 1: very long hours and rather uncontrollable, unpredictable rush, on call, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it happens, Claudia says, is that in almost every
Speaker 1: two parent household, one of those parents is taking on
Speaker 1: the line's share of child related responsibility. In order to
Speaker 1: do that, they're having to work a little bit less.
Speaker 1: That could mean just having a hard stop at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you know, taking time to relieve
Speaker 1: the babysitters, or taking sick days when their kids are sick.
Speaker 1: There's nothing really special about women here except that they
Speaker 1: tend to be the on call parent. They're also the
Speaker 1: ones who are more likely to take that pay hit.
Speaker 1: Is this true everywhere? That's what the research suggests. There's
Speaker 1: a pay gap related to motherhood in many places, but
Speaker 1: it varies in magnitude. So in Denmark, for example, women
Speaker 1: who have kids do earn less, but the gap isn't
Speaker 1: nearly as large as it is in some other places.
Speaker 1: We're looking at penalties in the long run that are
Speaker 1: larger in the UK and the US, and we're looking
Speaker 1: at child penalties and the German speaking countries that are
Speaker 1: almost three times as large. That's Henrik Clevin. He's an
Speaker 1: economist at Princeton University, and in a recent paper he
Speaker 1: compared the pay gaps across six countries Denmark, Sweden, the UK,
Speaker 1: the US, Austria and Germany. Those countries were all interesting
Speaker 1: to Clevin because they have different public policies for working moms.
Speaker 1: Some places have paid rent to leave, others had subsidized childcare.
Speaker 1: What's interesting, though, is his research found that the differences
Speaker 1: had less to do with public policies in these given countries,
Speaker 1: and then they did with societal expectations for women. But
Speaker 1: we hypolicize that a lot of this has to do
Speaker 1: with differences in social norms about what men and women
Speaker 1: should do after they have kids. So what's going on
Speaker 1: is that in countries where people express a strong conviction
Speaker 1: that women with young kids should stay at home, the
Speaker 1: gender pay gap is a lot bigger if you think
Speaker 1: about it. Germany has a lot of the same social
Speaker 1: safety nets as Denmark. Women get more than a year
Speaker 1: of paid parental eave, for instance, yet they saw a
Speaker 1: pay gap for working moms that's three times as large.
Speaker 1: That is surprising that two places with generous policies for
Speaker 1: working women have such different wage outcomes for moms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's where social norms come in. So Germany and
Speaker 1: Austria both have very traditional views on gender roles, at
Speaker 1: least based on this survey, and they also have bigger
Speaker 1: motherhood related gender wage gaps. You look at countries in Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: so Denmark for example, and respondents were more comfortable with
Speaker 1: women at work, and so the wage gaps in those places,
Speaker 1: although they still exist, are a lot smaller. Does that
Speaker 1: mean that public policies are completely useless. M not necessarily,
Speaker 1: but they have a surprising perk. Here's Henrick again. So
Speaker 1: it could be that policies still have an important role
Speaker 1: to play because they affect the social norm. If people
Speaker 1: are making less because they want to work less, that's
Speaker 1: their choice. But what merits for their examination is if
Speaker 1: women are being forced to choose between equality and motherhood.
Speaker 1: When a culture tells women that their main job is
Speaker 1: taking care of their home and their kids, well that's
Speaker 1: what they prioritize. When women get the message that it's
Speaker 1: acceptable and even expected that they'll work outside the home,
Speaker 1: they do that too, which brings us back to having
Speaker 1: it all. Here's Cheryl Sandberg during the heyday of len In.
Speaker 1: Mothers in the United States are in the workforce because
Speaker 1: they have to be, and so telling women constantly you
Speaker 1: can't have it all, you can have it all, is
Speaker 1: not helpful because they have to. For the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: I've been talking to women in their twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: when their careers and prime childbearing years are just getting started.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know how ambitious women with big plans
Speaker 1: for their careers also thought about out their plans to
Speaker 1: have kids, and you can hear them wrestling with these
Speaker 1: two conflicting ambitions. I see myself sometimes thinking I would
Speaker 1: love to be a full time mom at some point,
Speaker 1: but I think the anxiety of what if I want
Speaker 1: to return to the workforce, what does that even mean?
Speaker 1: What does that look like? I think I've always just
Speaker 1: known I've wanted to have kids has never been a question.
Speaker 1: But in terms of how it would affect my career, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, it's going to hold you back from a
Speaker 1: lot of things. I was a person who delayed my
Speaker 1: first pregnancy because I was always thinking about sort of
Speaker 1: a corporate calendar. Um. I was really like, oh, if
Speaker 1: I got pregnant this month, that would be after this
Speaker 1: executive meeting, before this time of year. I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew up like I think any female grew up like
Speaker 1: with society telling them that's what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: You went to a good school, um, and you met someone,
Speaker 1: and you had a career, and then you had kids.
Speaker 1: I think like if I were to be a mom,
Speaker 1: I would want to be a good mom um, and
Speaker 1: I don't think with where I'm headed, I would be
Speaker 1: able to give them the kind of time that they deserve.
Speaker 1: I'm also at this exact point in my life. I'm thirty,
Speaker 1: the same age my mom was when she started her family,
Speaker 1: and just about the average age women in New York
Speaker 1: City where I live have their first kid. Just like
Speaker 1: these women I talked to, I'm deeply ambivalent, and it
Speaker 1: feels kind of scary to say that out loud, like
Speaker 1: I'm some heartless monster for not being a hundred percent
Speaker 1: sure that I want to have kids or when when
Speaker 1: I do think about it. I know from the reporting
Speaker 1: I do and the moms, I know that there will
Speaker 1: be penalties financial but also emotional, and that having a
Speaker 1: kid will require more compromises of me than my male partner.
Speaker 1: For a lot of women, these are good enough reasons
Speaker 1: not to have kids at all. But I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1: What I and all the other women I spoke to
Speaker 1: know in our bones is that if we want to
Speaker 1: embody both identities, have both a job, money power, financial security,
Speaker 1: and a family, something's got to give. Because even the
Speaker 1: people who seem to embody the ideal of having it
Speaker 1: all don't. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs in combat,
Speaker 1: is the first disabled woman elected to Congress. She is
Speaker 1: also the first Senator to give birth while in office,
Speaker 1: and today's she helped make history again when her daughter
Speaker 1: was the first infant allowed on the Senate floor from
Speaker 1: the outside. Senator Tammy Duckworth is a picture of progress.
Speaker 1: She's a U S Senator, a war hero, and a
Speaker 1: working mother of two. She even had the Senate rules
Speaker 1: changed so now any Senator, if that's a working parent,
Speaker 1: can bring their baby to the Senate floor. But we
Speaker 1: often spend so much time applauding Senator Duckworth's achievements that
Speaker 1: we failed to hear what she had to do to
Speaker 1: get there. So I asked her it was tough, It
Speaker 1: was misery. Um, it was just hard on me, hard
Speaker 1: on my family. But I'm so so lucky to have
Speaker 1: both my daughters, and I'm so proud to be a
Speaker 1: U S Senator. Like a lot of working women, Senator
Speaker 1: Duckworth put her career a military career first. For a
Speaker 1: long time. She became a commissioned officer in the Army
Speaker 1: Reserves and went on to become a helicopter pilot back
Speaker 1: when it was one of the few combat jobs open
Speaker 1: to women. After she was injured in a rock she
Speaker 1: came home and ran for office. The first part of
Speaker 1: my career, I was on track to become a platoon
Speaker 1: leader and try to become a company commander and UM
Speaker 1: operations officer and executive officer in my army unit. And
Speaker 1: none of those things I could pursue and take time
Speaker 1: off UM and mommy track and take time off to
Speaker 1: go of children. I just kept pursuing my career. And
Speaker 1: then the next thing I know, I look up and
Speaker 1: I'm thirty six years old, And what happened to my
Speaker 1: most fertile years. By the time she decided to have kids,
Speaker 1: she was forty, and by then it wasn't so easy.
Speaker 1: My guynacologist said to me, she said, you know, is
Speaker 1: this common now? Women? We we trade our fertility for
Speaker 1: our careers early on, Well, I didn't know when I
Speaker 1: was forty and decided I was going to try to
Speaker 1: have kids and I would struggle with infertility for at
Speaker 1: least another six years. She had her first daughter when
Speaker 1: she was forty six, and then another when she was fifty.
Speaker 1: This is the point in the story where we declare,
Speaker 1: she has beaten the odds in a million different ways.
Speaker 1: She has got it all. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: never good enough whatever I was doing. When I was
Speaker 1: with my my older daughter. I wanted to be with her,
Speaker 1: but then I felt like I was neglecting my job.
Speaker 1: As I was campaigning for the Senate, I felt like
Speaker 1: I was leaving my daughter behind it. And I mean
Speaker 1: there was even one point where I broke I'm crying
Speaker 1: during a campaign meeting where I would just so upset
Speaker 1: and mad at my staff for switching my schedule, which
Speaker 1: meant I was going to get, you know, an extra
Speaker 1: forty five minutes less time with my daughter. And um, Finally,
Speaker 1: one of my staff members put me a science like Tammy,
Speaker 1: there's no happy medium, it's just going to suck. The
Speaker 1: senator told me a story about going back to her
Speaker 1: job while she was still nursing her infant daughter. To
Speaker 1: fully appreciate it, we need to take a quick biological
Speaker 1: aside in order to breastfeed the baby, which is what
Speaker 1: the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. A woman's body makes milk.
Speaker 1: If that milk doesn't get expressed multiple times a day,
Speaker 1: either by a baby's nursing or a press pump, everything
Speaker 1: goes out. At best, it's physically uncomfortable. At worst, it
Speaker 1: can make women sick and their bodies will stop making
Speaker 1: enough milk to feed their babies. For working moms, that
Speaker 1: means figuring out how to fit multiple pumping brakes into
Speaker 1: your work day or, in the editors case, a packed
Speaker 1: campaign schedule. I breastfed my first daughter for a little
Speaker 1: over a year, and I was traveling around the country
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find a clean, safe place to express
Speaker 1: breast milk. And airports people were telling me, oh, just
Speaker 1: go use the handicap stall on the public toilet, or oh,
Speaker 1: you need to plug in your breast pump where you
Speaker 1: can go use the outlet where everyone else is charging
Speaker 1: their phones. I'm like, I'm not going to sit there
Speaker 1: and pump breastmilk next to total strangers, or or you know,
Speaker 1: and use the toilet. Um that's discussing, Senator Duckworth wrote,
Speaker 1: impassed legislation that requires all medium and large airports to
Speaker 1: have clean private rooms where women can go breastfeed or
Speaker 1: pump while traveling. But these are the calculations working moms
Speaker 1: have to make all the time, and not just in airports,
Speaker 1: and not just when it comes to breastfeeding. Do you
Speaker 1: skip the meaning to take a pumping break? Do you
Speaker 1: leave early to pick up your sick kid? Do you
Speaker 1: work from home and miss out on important face time?
Speaker 1: Towards the end of her first pregnancy, Senator Duckworth's doctor
Speaker 1: told her that she couldn't travel. It was too dangerous
Speaker 1: and would compromise her pregnancy. At the time, she had
Speaker 1: a job where her physical presence was required. She was
Speaker 1: a congresswoman and had to be at the US Capital
Speaker 1: to cast her votes. The Senator asked if she could
Speaker 1: vote by proxy. Her colleagues and the Democratic Party rejected
Speaker 1: her request. They didn't want to set a precedent for
Speaker 1: everyone else who might have a doctor's note saying that
Speaker 1: they can't travel for medical reasons. They treated her like
Speaker 1: she was a worker with a rare medical emergency, not
Speaker 1: like a woman in a common and temporary biological situation.
Speaker 1: So Senator Duckworth had to miss a handful of votes.
Speaker 1: She couldn't do her job, and she's still paying for it.
Speaker 1: In the official record, Tammy Duckworth has missed twelve of
Speaker 1: roll call votes since she's been in the Senate. That's
Speaker 1: a lot more than most of her colleagues. Here's what
Speaker 1: that stat doesn't tell you. For most of those votes,
Speaker 1: she was on maternity leave. It's hard. You try to
Speaker 1: do everything and you try to um, you know, live
Speaker 1: up to that image of what a good mom is
Speaker 1: and what a you know, good worker is in the workplace,
Speaker 1: and and I think women we tend to try to
Speaker 1: be perfect and everything and you just can't. So you
Speaker 1: have to give yourself the room to do the best
Speaker 1: job that you can and then keep moving forward. How
Speaker 1: did we get here and what can we do about it? Well,
Speaker 1: over the next five weeks, we're going to figure this
Speaker 1: out together, because it turns out research shows that kids
Speaker 1: of working moms grow into happy adults. Their daughters are
Speaker 1: more likely to have successful careers, and their sons spend
Speaker 1: more time caring for family members. Working moms are making
Speaker 1: a path towards a more equal world for their kids,
Speaker 1: even if they don't always feel like it. Next week
Speaker 1: on the Paycheck, how women get sidelined at work for
Speaker 1: being moms before they even have kids. You know, as
Speaker 1: the morning anchor. Viewers want to see a beauty queen.
Speaker 1: So I'm pregnant now I've gained like forty pounds. I
Speaker 1: knew it would be an issue. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: The Paycheck. If you like the show, please head on
Speaker 1: over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. The show was hosted and reported by me
Speaker 1: Rebecca Greenfield and reported by Gina Smile. This episode was
Speaker 1: edited by Janet Paskin and produced by Liz Smith. We
Speaker 1: also had production help from Francesca Levy, Jillian Goodman, and
Speaker 1: Samantha get Sick. Our original music is by Leo Sidron.
Speaker 1: Pamela Guest did the illustrations on our show page, which
Speaker 1: you can find at Bloomberg dot com Slash the Paycheck.
Speaker 1: We also want to thank the Wing for allowing us
Speaker 1: to record on site, and thank all of the moms
Speaker 1: who took the time to speak with us. Francesca Levy
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of That's