“[T]here’s a long-standing trend in employment that is absolutely unlawful, but employers do it anyway: A married man with a stay-at-home-wife and/or children is viewed as stable, reliable and dependable, and is therefore more valuable to employers, who are taught to specifically seek out candidates who have debts and dependents. Those kinds of employees tend to be more tractable and less free-thinking than single people with fewer financial pressures, who can just leave and get another job if the working conditions don’t suit them. The inverse is also true, in as much as employers generally try to underpay single and divorced women, and view married women’s caregiving responsibilities as liabilities to firms. They reason that single and divorced women have only themselves to support, so they don’t need to be paid as much as men doing the same jobs (who presumably have the SAHW and kids to pay for). However, they also reason that married women should be paid less too, because they can rely on their husbands’ incomes, so they don’t ‘need’ raises and promotions like married men do. I’m sure that was the reasoning behind the massive Wal-Mart debacle which has affected over a million female workers and stands to cost Wal-Mart billions of dollars in unlawfully withheld wages.”
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Mezosub, Pandagon, comments (via realinterrobang: Quotes, Igh Edition)
I’m really worried about how having children is going to affect my career. Mostly, I worry that employers will be less likely to consider me for opportunities, will be less likely to give me a raise, or will be less willing to hire me because I have children. I know my husband will not be similarly affected by this, which only makes it all the more infuriating that I’ll have to deal with this.