Dutch working mothers are paid less than working fathers

By

OK, this is somewhat old news (in fact, Dutch Daily News covered it two months ago), but I still want to write about it because this follows up on earlier stories. Basically what I am trying to find out is how we, the Dutch, define Enlightenment ideals such as freedom, equality and happiness. It is clear that they are important to us, but we have been pursuing aspects of these ideals hundreds of years before other Western nations did and as a result, when looking through a global lens, we seem to do everything exactly different.

As they say, Dutch women don’t get depressed.

Here is the deal. In many ways the Dutch are some of the least gender equal people in the world. Our ratio of men and women in management roles is similar to that of the United Arab Emirates—and the Arabs at least are working to improve theirs. Furthermore, 60% of all Dutch women do not make enough money to pay their way through life—but they like it that way! In fact, men want some of that part-time action too!

So now a new study has come out that adds another piece to the puzzle. It appears that gender inequality is especially strong among working parents in the Netherlands. On the other hand the income of single men and women without children who work full-time jobs are exactly the same. I thought that was interesting. You’d expect at least some old-fashioned sexism to depress even those incomes by a couple of points. Perhaps that in the parts of our population where sexism is still rife (the Bible belt, anyone?) single, childless women with full-time jobs are rare.

If everybody is happy about this arrangement, then who I am to disagree? There is a difference between women being forced into inequality and women choosing inequality. Where things get weird is in relationships. The default Dutch marriage setting is that of community property (for now). The state sees a marriage as a contract between the state and two people. When the partners dissolve the wedding, the state typically demands that the high earner keeps supporting the low earner through alimony. What kind of incentives does an arrangement like that produce?

See also:

(Link: Statistics Netherlands. Photo by ValentinaST, some rights reserved)

4 Comments »

  1. Vincent says:

    Hi Branko!

    I recently saw this article about gender equality on Yle News, the Finnish national news site: http://yle.fi/uutiset/index_finland_third_in_gender_equality_in_eu/6688240

    It says “The index reviewed gender equality in six areas: work, money, knowledge, time, power and health.” and “The new index measures gender equality on a scale of 1 to 100. Finland scored 73.4 points compared to the European average of 54. Sweden racked up 74.3 points and Denmark 73.6. In fourth place, the Netherlands trailed with 69.7 points.”

    That seems to contradict your statement about the Dutch being some of the least gender equal people in the world.
    I could not find the source of the original document unfortunately.

    Cheers
    Vincent

  2. Branko Collin says:

    I qualified my statement with ‘in many ways’, and followed up by giving examples. I could have been clearer though in stating that in many other ways, the Netherlands seems to lead.

    For example I remember reading a story in the 1980s about Dutch woman fighter pilots receiving their F-16 training in the USA when American women were still not allowed to fly those same planes.

    In the report you mention, the Netherlands scores #1 in the domain of Time (how equally divided care roles are in a family) and #2 in Money (the financial situation of women). I have only glanced at the report, so I cannot tell you how the second place in Money squares with the results of the Dutch study I wrote about.

  3. Vincent says:

    Thanks for the info and the link to the report!

  4. Orangemaster says:

    For me, in a country where 75% of women work part-time (highest in all of Europe) and 60% cannot earn their own keep and like it that way, but go boo-hoo-hoo when they lose their husband (= their lazy income) there is no equality, full stop.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL