Negotiation: at work and at home?

Gender Parity

Negotiation: at work and at home?

Helen Broadbridge reviews the literature on gender parity starting at home – have you picked a suitable partner?

Claudia Goldin, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, advises women that, despite being told that they don’t negotiate well with their employers, the most important negotiation they can have is with the person with whom they’re going to spend the rest of their lives. 1 But is it true? Do couples need to look within to find routes to a more equal partnership, or does responsibility for gender inequality lie with governments and employers?

Business and psychology professors David G. Smith and W. Brad Johnson have argued that gender equity starts in the home. 2 They observed in mid-2020 that, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many men who found themselves working from home for the first time had their eyes opened as to the sheer volume of caring and domestic work required in their homes. Smith and Johnson hope this front-row seat will bring about a greater appreciation of the challenges of raising a family while in full-time work and the benefits of flexible working arrangements. Their research found that sharing the load of childcare (including transportation for children’s activities, cooking, cleaning and the overall labour of managing everyone’s lives): (1) ensures both parents have a fair capacity for paid work, (2) role-models equal partnership for children, and (3) gets men talking about these experiences at work, helping policymakers see “people issues” not “women’s issues”.

Gender scholar Avivah Wittenberg-Cox has argued that equal partnership in the home is so crucial that women may be better off single than with a partner who is unwilling to support their career. 3 However, she notes equal partnership is not always in ready supply. She points to the increasing trend of divorces initiated by women in their 50s and 60s as evidence of what can go wrong when women are side-lined in their relationships and resentment grows. Goldin calls this the “dirty truth”. The fact that, despite women thinking they are in an equal partnership before having children, “in heterosexual couples in which there are caregiving responsibilities, generally children, women, at least for a while, step back a bit and do more of the care and the men step forward and have more of the career.” 1

Sometimes, as Goldin points out, the short-term financial impact is too persuasive – why both cut down to £50,000 a year, when one of you can lean in and earn £200,000? Couples may find that the price of their commitment to gender equality might not be as high as the salaries on offer. And there are plenty of them; as Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu has noted, white-collar jobs can expand infinitely through the “generation of false necessities”, creating “giant make-work projects” that end up having nothing to do with real economic or social needs. 4 Therefore, the lower earner leaving the workplace may not be the right thing, given the lifelong negative impact those decisions can have on life satisfaction and financial independence. After all, it is only from a place of financial independence that individuals can fairly decide whether to continue with their partnership or not – as Wittenberg-Cox puts it, to decide, “whether to grow or whether to go.”

So what should couples do? Wittenberg-Cox highlights that family trends are changing faster than workplace policy. 5 For example, many workers are living longer, working longer, marrying later and having fewer children. If employers are still expecting their employees to be from single-career couples with full-time domestic support, or not to take leave if they have children, they may be surprised by the ever-increasing number of dual-career couples, demands for equal parental leave, and older employees. Wittenberg-Cox proposes a new framework, where couples work as teams and use their skills from the workplace to manage their home lives more strategically to avoid resentment and crisis later on. And if not? Wittenberg-Cox highlights the global trend of falling fertility rates. 6 If workplaces do not make it easy for women to both work and have children, many of them will choose not to sacrifice their hard-won financial independence for the sake of having a child.

And governments and employers? They should do their part, by: (1) giving workers the right to protected time off (to make longer careers more sustainable), (2) giving equal parental leave (to gender neutralise and mitigate the career impact of taking time out for caring responsibilities, and to set a gender-equal precedent for children), and (3) vastly expanding the provision of child care (not just pre-school, but wrap-around care to cover before and after school and school holidays). After all, it need not be a binary choice between women leaving the workplace now (and losing tax payers now), and women not having children (and losing tax payers later). We can create a workplace that is fit-for-purpose.

‘the lower earner leaving the workplace may not be the right thing’

Helen Broadbridge

Public Sector Solicitor

1. People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt, Claudia Goldin: What’s “Greedy Work” and Why Is It a Problem?, December 2021

2. Gender Equity Starts in the Home, HBR, David G. Smith and W. Brad Johnson, May 2020

3. If You Can’t Find a Spouse Who Supports Your Career, Stay Single, HBR, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, October 2017

4. You Really Don’t Need to Work So Much, The New Yorker, Tim Wu, August 2015

5. Conscious Coupling: Managing Dual Careers, TEDx, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, June 2018

6. Women Are Voting – With Their Wombs, Forbes, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, April 2022