This point of view keeps coming up and it completely misses the point that _this already happens to every single women who has given up their career to look after children_.
This flexibility and cost you are talking about is borne entirely by them as they rearrange their lives and attempt to make things work while men continue with barely any disruption.
I'm my opinion this is deep, unintentional, structural sexism. It is the biggest issue I have with articles like this.
Stamping out overt workplace harassment and sexism is barely the beginning. There are deep structures in place that have benefited men like me for millennia.
These need to be considered not as complicated side issues but as the core barrier to achieving equity (as opposed to equality) in these fields.
If you or I were to take off a year to be a stay at home dad, would we suffer the same career consequences as women? If the answer is yes, then the issue is that we don't let anyone have children without harming their career, and that sounds counterintuitive and should be fixed.
If the answer is no, then bigotry is at play. It's impossible to know this answer, so we should just make it painless to take time off. I know of plenty of academics who go on sabbatical, fall off the face of the earth, and ignore every department email for a year or however long. This process actually improves their career, not hinder it. Taking time off is harmless.
Saying that women give up a career to look after their children is like lamenting the fact that people are giving up drinking to look after their liver.
The French word for work, 'travail', comes from 'tripalium', a medieval torture instrument. It's bad for everyone, and I definitely think a society where only one parent has to work instead of two is better.
A 'career' is something pop singers and top athletes (male or female) have. They even have agents to manage those careers. But most people have a job; they do work, travail, tripalium.
The fact that people confuse the two is just capitalist propaganda.
This flexibility and cost you are talking about is borne entirely by them as they rearrange their lives and attempt to make things work while men continue with barely any disruption.
I'm my opinion this is deep, unintentional, structural sexism. It is the biggest issue I have with articles like this.
Stamping out overt workplace harassment and sexism is barely the beginning. There are deep structures in place that have benefited men like me for millennia.
These need to be considered not as complicated side issues but as the core barrier to achieving equity (as opposed to equality) in these fields.