Education Gap

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=education_gap

Interesting article about the education/money earning and gender. It says that women with more education make more money, but still not as much as men. I can totally see how this happens. I am an attorney, but now a stay at home mom. When I chose my employer I was looking for something that might be compatible with motherhood. I found many of the firm jobs were 60 to 90 hour a week jobs. The pay reflected these hours. In the end, I took a job that was 40 hours a week with flex-time and work at home priviledges. This was also reflected in the salary. I felt my family and the ability to keep up with my home were more important to me than making more money than god. Luckily my husbandis well-employed as well. When our daughter Lucy was born I had the option of staying home full-time. I have been doing this for a little over a year now and we are expecting our second child. I have thought long and hard about this and I will probably not return to full time employment until our children are in school.

I think a lot of women are put in the position of taking a less attractive job (from a monetary perspective) because they are seeking a work life balance that men don't necessarily want or need. In the majority of households I have seen, women are still the primary caretakers of the home and children. So it doesn't suprise me that working women are willing to take less money for better hours or such.

The only thing bad about this so far as I can tell is that so many married people end up spliting up and the female spouse ends up with a raw deal as far as retirement benefits and further may not have progressed as far in their careers because of these decisions. I worked for the Elderlaw Protection Project in Atlanta and met a lot of divorcees living at or near the poverty line while their exes were faring much better. Also I met many seniors who were forced to go back to work.

The point to all this rambling - divorce is bad. I am glad I have a husband who is supportive of my decision to stay home.