Maternidade, trabalho e mitos

"It is necessary to distinguish between horizontal and vertical
occupational segregation, which are often conflated.23
Horizontal occupational segregation exists when men and
women tend to choose different careers – for example men are
carpenters while women are cooks. Vertical segregation exists
when men dominate higher-grade higher-paid occupations and
women are concentrated in lower-grade, lower-paid
occupations in the same area of activity: for example men are
managers while women are secretaries, men are surgeons while
women are nurses.

Most studies focus on horizontal occupational segregation,
which most people would regard as inevitable, and where there
is no immediate link to earnings differences. Few women aspire
to be engineers or soldiers, and few men choose to be nursery
teachers and beauticians. Insisting on 50/50 quotas of
men/women in all occupations makes no allowance for
variations in tastes, talents, interests, personal choices and
cultural diversity."

"
Case studies of the professions and management regularly
explode the myth that women’s access to higher education and
higher status occupations brings gender equality into the
workplace. Case studies of women who achieve high status
professional and managerial jobs also demonstrate why familyfriendly
policies can be irrelevant. They show that women in
high-powered jobs reduce or eliminate work-life balance
problems by remaining childless, in about half of all cases, or by
low fertility, as illustrated by the nominal one-child family, or by
subcontracting childcare and domestic work to other women. In
contrast, almost all their male colleagues are married, with
several children, but also with wives who typically remain fulltime
mothers and homemakers."

"sex discrimination
does not prevent women’s access to senior positions in
management and the professions. Sex differentials in the
professions are due primarily to substantively different work
orientations and career choices among men and women, even
among university graduates, even among people of
exceptionally high intellectual ability, and hence to very different
career paths."