什么是“母职惩罚”？
母职惩罚（motherhood penalty）是社会学的一个术语，指的是在工作场所，职场妈妈在薪酬、认可度、福利方面相对于未生育的女性会遇到的一些劣势。
全文字数：2286字 / 阅读时间：7分钟
01
Unconcious biases, outright discrimination and the tendency for women to take on greater childcare mean women still hold just 23% of executive positions and 29% of senior manager positions globally, in spite of making up 40% of the workforce.
无意识的偏见、赤裸裸的歧视和女性更应该照顾孩子的倾向，导致了女性只占有全球23%的领导职位和29%的高级管理职位——尽管女性劳动力占全球40%的劳动市场。
But new research suggests timing could also play an important role in women’s likelihood of reaching the corner office. Women aiming for leadership roles (defined in this study as a director or C-suite-level position) are most likely to secure them in the first 10 years of their career. After that, their chances tend to plummet while 26% of men are promoted or moved to a better job in the first five years of parenthood, just 13% of women can say the same.
但新的研究发现，时机也是影响女性职场晋升的一个重要因素。想要获得领导地位的女性（该研究中特指董事或者最高管理层级*）最有可能在工作的前十年实现晋级。在工作十年后，她们的晋升机会暴跌。26%的男性在初为人父的前五年可以被提拔或者换一份更好的工作，但只有13%的女性能有同样的待遇。
译注：C-suite-level，指公司最高管理层，即CFO、CEO等以C开头命名的领导位置。
In this phenomenon, women find their careers stalling in areas such as promotion and pay once their children are born (while, conversely, men’s careers accelerate after becoming fathers). Women who don’t scale the leadership ladder very quickly are less likely to make it to the top at all. They are racing the clock against the so-called motherhood penalty.
女性们发现，在这种大环境下，一旦孩子出生，她们的事业就会停滞，晋升机会和薪水将减少；而相反，男性在成为父亲之后事业会加速上升。职场女性如果不尽快爬上权利顶峰，她们就不太可能再有机会。为了战胜所谓的“母职惩罚”，想要晋升的女性们在与时间赛跑。
Women who manage to sprint to leadership within the first decade of their careers might feel a sense of relief to have secured a senior role. But the achievement is often hard-won.
在工作前十年成功冲刺到领导位置的女性似乎可以松口气了——她们已经给自己谋得了一个较高的职位。但这种成功往往需要付出惨痛的代价。
With statistics showing that working women tend to be more burned-out than their male counterparts. experts emphasise the enormous toll of career sprinting.“Achieving as much as possible in the first 10 years of a career can cause burnout and stress for women as they focus on producing good work, building a good reputation and advancing to leadership roles.” This can lead to a toxic storm of physical and social stress as well as mental-health problems that can last for years.
数据显示，职场女性往往比自己的男性伴侣更容易疲倦不堪。专家强调了职场冲刺的巨大代价：“女性要在工作的前十年尽可能地取得成就，就要饱受压力和疲惫，因为她们必须拿出好的作品，建立威信，提前成为领导。”这些压力、疲惫会如风暴般危害女性的生理和心理健康，带来顽疾。
02
Between 2019 and the first half of 2022, the share of self-employed Americans within the total employment pool grew 4%, amounting to an uptick of 600,000 people, according to the CEPR researchers. And the biggest jump in this pandemic-era data was among women, who reported becoming newly self-employed at about twice the rate of men.On the surface, it seems empowering – but there’s a dark narrative driving this rise in self-employment.
在2019年到2022年上半年间，据美国政治和经济政策研究中心研究，美国个体营业者在总就业人数中增长4%，小幅增长了总计60万人。此次收集于疫情期间的数据中，女性数据变动最大。据报道，新成为个体经营者的女性数量是男性的两倍。表面上，这似乎合情合理，但背后的故事却并不光彩。
Some of the spike can be attributed to people “reinventing themselves” and their work situations during the pandemic, says Misty L Heggeness, an associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration, US. “A traditional office nine-to-five, even if it went remote during the pandemic, wasn’t really working, especially for mothers,” she says, “in part because it's really difficult to work, even if you're teleworking, while your children are still in your household.” It’s seems that the biggest contributing factor to whether women moved to self-employment was whether they had primary school-aged children.
米斯特·L·哈根斯是美国堪萨斯大学公共事务与管理学院的副教授，她认为，疫情期间的某些变动确实能促使人们“改变自我”及改变工作环境。“然而，朝九晚五的传统办公室工作即使在疫情期间变成了远程办公，也没有真正奏效，尤其是对于母亲而言。”她说，“即使能线上办公，女性仍然需要看顾在家的孩子。”似乎对于女性而言，是否成为自由职业者主要取决于她们是否有幼龄儿童需要照顾。
03
Historically, men have almost always out-earned their female partners. Women, often entirely excluded from the workforce, tended to instead shoulder the majority of domestic labour, including housework and childrearing.
历史上，男性往往比自己的女性伴侣赚得多。女性往往被完全排除在劳动力之外，因而常会承担家务劳动、育儿等大部分的家庭职责。
But evidence suggests that since women have entered the workforce , the imbalance in domestic duties hasn’t really been redressed – even when women make more money than their partners. Women may feel compelled to compensate for violating traditional gender roles as a breadwinner by redoubling their contributions at home.
但是证据表明，在女性成为劳动力后，家庭事务的不平衡分配仍未得到纠正——即使在女性比伴侣赚的多的情况下。赚得更多的女性可能会因违背传统性别职能分配，而被迫补偿以加倍的家庭贡献。
Some researchers have found that in the UK, 45% of female breadwinners still do the majority of household tasks, compared to just 12.5% of male breadwinners, and that the average female breadwinner spends the equivalent of an entire working day taking care of the house on top of their full-time job.So, in couples where a woman’s income has a greater potential to exceed her partner’s (for example, if she has qualifications in a higher paying industry), she is still less likely to engage in paid work, and tends to earn below her potential when she does.
一些研究者发现，在英国，45%的女性养家者仍然承担大部分的家庭事务；而与之相比，只有12.5%的男性养家者需要承担如此之多。同时，几乎所有养家的女性都需在全职工作的基础上照顾家庭。因此，即使有女性工作潜力远超于男性伴侣的情况，女性也更不可能专注于工作，更不可能比配偶多赚钱。
04
“I think that there’s too much emphasis on what women should do to help themselves,” Kelly Shue, a professor of finance at Yale School of Management, says. “I wish that the discussion were centred around what firms could do differently instead. Employers should be leaning into this, which will ultimately keep more women in the labour market and give them more pathways to rise up in the ranks.”
“我想，人们过于强调‘女性为了帮助自己该做些什么’这点了。”耶鲁大学管理学院的金融教授凯莉·苏说道，“我希望讨论能集中于另一点——‘公司该改变些什么’。公司老板们应该多加考虑，将更多的女性劳动力留在市场，并为她们提供更多的晋升机会。”
Some of the ways that companies can change is by re-assessing how they evaluate employee potential for higher-level positions as well as offering longer protected maternity leave, greater flexibility around working hours and stronger support for childcare.
公司可以在某些方面作出改变：重新建立评估员工晋升潜力的机制，提供更长的有保障的产假，在工作时间方面更灵活，以及在儿童保育方面作出更有力的支持。”
“The main takeaway is that gender roles are not destiny,” she says. “Couples that push through the discomfort of non-traditional arrangements and negotiate a fair split of household chores relative to financial contributions are more likely to achieve equity in a broader sense, too.”
“最重要的结论是：性别不是宿命。”她说，“那些克服非传统安排带来的不适，并就家庭琐事与经济贡献进行公平分配的夫妇，也更有可能实现更广义的平等。”
1. plummet
v.（数量、价值等）暴跌；（尤指从高处）坠落 n.铅锤，测深锤；骤降
例句：Share prices plummeted to an all-time low.
股票价格暴跌到历史最低点。
2. sprint
v./n.冲刺，短跑
例句：He sprinted for the line.
他向终点线冲去。
3. exclude
v. 排除；驱逐；拒绝接纳
例句：Many of the youngsters feel excluded.
很多年轻人感觉受排挤。
原文链接：
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220406-women-breadwinners-why-high-earners-compensate-at-homehttps://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20221024-the-women-forced-to-choose-self-employmenthttps://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220603-why-women-have-to-sprint-into-leadership-positions
编译 | 阮佳炫
排版 | 阮佳炫
