This study seeks to determine the association between gender role attitudes about childcare, utilization of parental leave policies and parental/infant preferences, on the one hand, and the distribution of childcare in the families of assistant professors with children under two on the other. Both utilization of paid parental leave policies by men and men's belief in non-traditional gender roles are associated with higher levels of participation in parenting tasks. However, even those male professors who take leave and believe in nontraditional gender roles do much less childcare relative to their spouses than female professors do. This result holds even when the male professor's wife works full time. Our results suggest that one reason why female professors do more childcare may be that they like it more than men do. The association of enjoyment of childcare with gender role attitudes or leave-taking status is not statistically significant, which suggests that sex differences in the enjoyment of childcare will not be easily changed by changes in policies or gender role ideology. Accordingly, when exploring the stickiness of gender roles with respect to infant and toddler care, it would seem prudent to consider biological and evolutionary explanations as well as those focusing on institutions and gender ideology.
Comparable worth, or pay equity, is now an established policy in some US states, such as Minnesota, and the UK and Australia. Yet Steven Rhoads's research on those jurisdictions indicates there is no consensus on how to compare the value of dissimilar jobs involving 'comparable' amounts of effort, skill and responsibility. Consultants whose job evaluation systems are used in states adopting comparable worth policies do not agree on the factors to be included or how they should be weighed and arbitrary results produced by comparable worth policies have led to inefficient functioning of the labour markets. These policies have generated ill will among the workers who lose pay-equity cases, with political as well as economic consequences. The book argues that jobs are truly incomparable using the methods comparable worth relies on, and that the principles of comparable worth are not reconcilable with those of a market economy.
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