Moms' Equal Pay Day: How Companies and Partners Can Help Close the Gap

To anyone who’s left an important meeting to pick up a sick child, or left a sick child at home to get to a job; to anyone who’s had their ambition questioned simply because they are a mom; to anyone whose partner isn’t carrying their fair share of the load: We see you.

This week marks Moms’ Equal Pay Day, which means that mothers have to work an additional 218 days to catch up to fathers’ earnings from the year before. Count those days: all two hundred and eighteen of them!

Moms who work outside the home often face unfair challenges on two fronts — from their employers, and from their partners. Some women see these challenges compounded by racial bias.

Working moms face a motherhood penalty — they are seen as less committed and competent than non-mothers. Moms are 79% less likely to be hired, are half as likely to be promoted, and are offered an average of $11,000 less in salary than equally qualified women without children. Meanwhile, men receive a fatherhood bonus — they’re paid more and perceived as more competent when they have kids.

At home, even when couples earn equal incomes, women spend more than double the time on housework as men, and extra time on caregiving. When both parents work from home, mothers are more than 50% more likely to be interrupted by their children, compared to fathers.

These dynamics can burn moms out, hold them back in their careers, and drive them out of the workforce.

Yes, there are things moms can do to position themselves for success despite these headwinds, and you can find resources on that below. But today, we’d like to call on companies and partners to do better.

Companies must:

• Offer flexibility to everyone — and leaders should role-model making use of it. This can reduce the flexibility stigma that affects women more than men.
• Make it the norm to offer the same career opportunities to mothers as you would to any other employees. Don’t assume mothers want to step back.
• Offer strong work-family benefits such as parental leave, gradual on-ramps for new parents returning from leave, and, if possible, childcare subsidies or support.
  
  

Partners must:

• Step up and take on more at home. For straight couples, when relationships are more egalitarian, both parties tend to report higher satisfaction, and they have sex more often.
• Hold regular check-ins to make sure the load is split fairly. Be open and listen when your partner wants to redistribute the load.
• Take on household or childcare tasks end to end, rather than helping with parts of them or asking for direction on how to complete them. This means you’re taking on the mental load of the task, which women more often carry.

Consider bringing this to a more senior colleague who you think is open to these ideas … and forward this email to your husband or partner.

— Sheryl Sandberg, Founder, and Julie Alvin, Head of Content, LeanIn.Org