Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeroen | Hacker News Reader

Is "less than 10 percent of women here are employed full-time" really that interesting?

My sister works 32 hours a week, yet earns more than her husband. Sure, technically she doesn't work full-time, but I see no classical gender wars scenario here.

My wife recently stopped working. I love my work, she started to resent hers and would rather spend her time on other things. I earn enough for both of us and with her now doing more of the housekeeping I have more free time as well. We're both happier this way, so where's the problem?

View on HN

There's no problem with your wife choosing not to work.

The problem is when people attribute women's participation rates solely to "choice" and other benign phenomena. Some women very much want to work like hell and kick ass at work, and there are real barriers for them that we all need to continue working on taking down.

In other words, the problem is if you stop caring about women's representation in your business, because you assume all women are like your wife.

Not that I have any reason to think that's what you're doing. I'm just answering your question. :)

I agree, but I don't think the 10% number adds anything useful to that. I just wanted to show that not all of the other 90% of Dutch women are struggling to find employment or wishing they could work more hours.

Well, one problem is: "In 2000, a law was passed mandating that women have the right to cut back hours at their jobs without repercussions from employers."

If the article's correct, that seems like it discriminates against men. If cutting back working hours is an important right, then why can't men do the same without repercussions?

Because typically workplaces are already biased towards men and employers do not need more incentives not to disadvantage male employees, I suspect.

Maybe a misunderstanding, but the law in question (WAA) does not mention male or female employees but deals only with the right of changing th eweekly work hours for everyone. It is probably exercised most often after child birth, other than that, I would think that "women have the right" is wrong as a statement.

They can. The law does not discriminate.

Lots of men work part-time too... In fact it's fairly common to see both spouses work part time to have a higher-than-single provider income, yet not be in the traces 40 hours per week.

traces => trenches?

No, traces. Horses were traditionally ganged up using long lines of leather, called 'traces'.

see:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1358886

have not heard that term used for people, interesting.

Not a word commonly seen used by native English speakers, though (or maybe just not Americans).

Not a native speaker myself either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com