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Comment by petjuh | Hacker News Reader

> The Netherlands consistently ranks as one of the best places in the world to live.

> However, the Netherlands’ record for getting women into top management roles is dire.

Isn't happiness what's important?

We had a neighbor in our village who had chickens, who always kept the same number of black-feathered and white-feathered chickens. I never saw how this helped with anything. He did it for its own sake I guess. He just liked symmetries and equalities, always keeping his things ordered and aligned, he was kind of obsessive like that.

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Still, it's interesting that 80% of women and only 20% of men are most happy working part time. Why such large discrepancy?

Because working part-time you can't really advance very far in your career, and that is expected from men. From women, less so.

But that is the point. Why are women happy to sacrifice their career, for the sake of the family, and men not as much. So, is that really a choice for all these women, or perhaps a necessity?

I think the point is the reverse. Why are men happy to sacrifice family and everything else that really matters in life for the sake of the rat race, and women not as much? So, is that really a choice for all these men, or perhaps a necessity? What can be done to make it less of a necessity?

(As I understand it, some Scandinavian countries have brought in the legal right to paternity leave similar to maternity leave, which strikes me as a good start.)

What rat race? The work environment in the NL isn't stressful at all. I would almost call it enjoyable. It's one of the few remarkably pleasant things about living there.

Germany has a maternity leave law, but people regardless of gender can take it.

"for the sake of the family"

It's not for the sake of family.

80% of employed women work part time in the Netherlands. This includes singles, double income no kids, middle aged women whose children have already left home. Only a small percentage of those working part time have young children.

When you ask them about it, they try to justify not working more. "Daycare is so expensive" (in another post I try to demonstrate that this excuse doesn't fly), "Working environment is hostile to women" etc etc.

If deep down inside people didn't feel at least a bit guilty about not working more, they wouldn't try to justify it. In reality, working part-time is a luxury. Americans prefer the luxury of a large home, two cars, air conditioning, maybe a swimming pool in the yard. Dutch people seem to prefer the luxury of few working hours and long vacations.

Feeling guilty about something does not imply guilt in the absolute sense of the word. Also you've proven nothing about anything.

I don't see how a single comment can account for any/all complaints that people in the Dutch workforce might have.

Living (instead of working) is not a 'luxury', as other might say: work to live, don't live to work.

You're fighting a straw man, read my comment again without pre conceived bias.

A luxury is anything beyond basic necessities like food and shelter. People in poor countries, working 12 hour work days for $10 per day or less, don't have the luxury of working part time.

I'm totally fine with someone choosing to work fewer hours or more hours than I'm willing to do, as long as they're capable of supporting themselves.

I'm not totally fine with people claiming they would like to work full time, but the government is making it impossible by not subsidizing daycare, out of some kind of conservative bias against working mothers, because that is simply a lie.

It's not a luxury if it makes you more productive to work less.

It would not be a problem for a male executive to marry a woman working part-time at a café.

Would a female executive marry a male who works part-time at a café?

IANAFE, but sure, why not?

Have you seen it happen? Heard about it happen? Read about it happening?

No, but I could only name about two female senior executives and I have no idea about their marital status.

So, in your experience, it doesn't happen a lot, right? I mean, since you've never, ever heard of it happening.

quit dancing around your point.

the answer is no, it is exceedingly rare, because women marry up socioeconomically. no matter how successful a woman is, her preference is to marry someone equally or more successful.

people tend to provide extreme counter-examples to argue against this, but in the vast majority of cases, it's true.

This obviously depends on culture, but I think the majority of men and women marry a partner with the same socioeconomical status as themselves.

The highly-visible counter-examples tend to come from fields with high gender imbalance, like your stereotypical doctor-nurse or boss-secretary matchups.

I think it's reasonable to posit that this effect would be weak or non-existent in an equal society.

damn this sounds amazing! working 3 days a week for example, doing adventures & social life in rest (social life = family life). But first let me earn some dough for later...

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