The Class Ceiling: barselsorlov og kønsdiskrimination

The text “US stands apart from other nations on maternity leave” written by Jeff Geissler (USA Today) concerns the subject Maternity leave in the US, compared to the rest of the world. In the States women only get three months of job protected leave, while countries like Sweden, Canada and many others provides up to 16 months of paid maternity leave. The reason for this according to some professors at Columbia University could be that after world war two some countries like France expanded maternity leave to fight falling fertility and encourage childbearing, but massive immigration to the US has ensured the populations growth preventing the same problem. Another reason could be that American feminists has focused their fight for rights some other places than maternity leave, leaving them with only three months of job protected leave today.

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Assignment A

Why is it that women are getting discriminated in the job market? Is it because men are threatened by women? Or is it just because women aren’t equally qualified as men? I think the answer lies in the way people are raised and in with culture. If you look a couple of decades back, women were staying home and taking care of the domestic work like raising kids, preparing dinner and keeping the house clean. But then slowly the norms changed and women began to study and achieving high degrees. But the mentality in the society didn’t follow with new situation that occurred. Many men still saw the woman’s place in the society in the domestics rather than as their colleagues. And therefore women didn’t get the same opportunities as men. But now in the 21st century one should think the situation has changed, but the question is, has the situation changed? Or is it still the men that are getting hired for all the high posts? There is no doubt about that more women today are working in big firms sitting on higher positions than just 10-20 years back. But several researches are still showing that men are very dominant when we are talking about high posts in the labor market. So the million dollar question is, in this time where equal rights fore both genders is at its peak why is many women still stuck in the typical female professions. As mentioned earlier the way one is raised has a lot to say. In generally the society has different expectations to the genders. Men are more likely to become a director in a big firm while women have to become a nurse or a schoolteacher, or so are we told. So it’s a lot more difficult for the females to break the social heritage when they are told almost from birth what they should become when they get older. But the women who do manage to established them selves as successful leaders are exposed to a great amount of pressure because they are representing a Minorities so they have to perform every time to prove that they posses the qualities to function in what is typically a male profession. I don’t believe that this problem will be easy to solve, but in time more and more women will get hired instead of men, but I never think that we will ever live in a world without discrimination, because some men will always see the female as a weaker person even if it is not true.