| now this will sound sexist. believe me I am not - I'm just a dev and I wish we had more women in the field for reason I won't articulate here - take this as 'seen from vc eyes': on a big enterprise, the kind of which people work for more than ten years, maternity leave pay is just a fraction of the whole worker working life - say you work at a company ten years, it's just about 10% of productivity lost. less if you factor days instead of months and account for not giving out bonuses nor vacation in that period) this of course should not justify a 10% pay reduction, however it is what it is, I'm not deciding it, I'm just telling it. in the VC worlds, a company they invest on should have a return in three years or even less. in that context, a maternity leave is a 50% productivity loss - three years is too short to absorb a leave and too long for not being at risk of being impacted by it is this sexist? of course it is. is it fair? of course it isn't. are there any solutions to this? well, since VC is currently male dominated and they tend not to understand the potential of a woman energy, I can't see many. |
One, who's on her way to her JD, remarked how it upset her that she'd always have extra baggage because she's a woman -- that no matter what the people hiring her would always factor in the chance she could become pregnant once, twice, or even more times.
Before I get off on the wrong foot, I think that maternity leave is a small price to pay if you have a good employee and anybody who turns down a woman for a petty reason like that should rethink how they're running their company.
That said, is it really sexist or is it just life? By that I mean is factoring in all potential issues the same as a hiring manager who thinks women are, by default, worse at X than men?
I almost want to liken it to my car insurance, as weird as it sounds. I have to pay a fair amount more simply because I'm a male and in my 20s. Sure, it's a form of discrimination, but it's also just life. A high enough percentage of us do cost the companies more money, so they charge us more.
A job is more important than car insurance, but my point isn't to compare the two and say they're of the same importance or argue in favor of discrimination.
It's late and I don't think I'm making my point clearly enough, but I kind of wanted to get it down on paper.
Sometimes I feel there are parts of life that you can't really change or blame people for taking into consideration. Whether the fact that women produce babies is something that should be taken into consideration, that's (obviously) something we as a society need to figure out.