Science figures out that women miss more work without suffering consequences:
A new study formally links the data and the norm, indicating women miss more work than men because that’s what society expects. This seemingly benign “policy” could foster workplace discrimination in wages and advancement for women, the study authors suggest.
“The results suggest that a distinct absence culture exists for women that might legitimize their absenteeism, but it might also perpetuate gender stereotypes and lead to gender discrimination,” said researcher Eric Patton of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Another way of putting that would be that women miss more work because, being generally viewed as an advanced form of children, they aren’t held fully accountable for their actions. How any of this would lead to grammar-based discrimination is beyond me, but I have some doubts that an entirely sex-blind workplace where women were always expected to work as many hours as men would ultimately be regarded as being to the advantage of women in general.
There’s the Mommy thing, of course, but beyond that, I can’t recall a single woman in our office ever requiring a reminder that she needed to use up her vacation/sick days before the end of the year, whereas I can’t remember any of the unmarried programmers or tech guys ever using all the days to which they were entitled. My boss used to wonder why I never bothered taking vacations, he didn’t seem to understand that from my perspective, my business trips were more fun than any vacation was likely to be.