Move over, Equal Pay Day. You were so five minutes ago.
A new study from the Australian National University suggests women be allowed to work 13 fewer hours per week than men while still collecting the same salary – because we have to go home and cook. Or something.
The premise is this: professional women struggle to balance a full-time job with taking care of their home and kids. We used to call this life. Now, apparently, it’s oppression.
So instead of encouraging women to a) stay at home with their kids, b) cut back to part-time and take a salary hit or c) keep their full-time job and hire some help, ANU has decided to go with option D:
Let women work fewer hours than men while still paying them the same amount.
From the Daily Mail:
A study published by the Australian National University found that the healthy working week for women should be limited to 34 hours, compared to 47 hours for men.
Here that, guys? Have fun putting in 13 more hours at the office so we can head home for a little extra R&R. We're stressed.
Oh, and it gets better:
Experts recommend that women should work shorter hours in order to compensate for the unpaid jobs they do every single day.
In order to achieve gender equality, working hour limits must be lowered. Co-researcher at the ANU Professor Lyndall Strazdins is deeply concerned about the impact of disproportionate working hours on women's mental health.
'If we encourage women to try to attain those work hours, we're basically confronting them with a trade off between their health and gender equality,' Professor Strazdins says.
But while women's work hour limits must be reduced to help poor little Susie compensate for her supposedly weaker physical disposition, don’t even think about touching her salary. And, if she does happen to stretch past 38 work hours in a given week, she should be paid extra, regardless of how many hours her male coworkers are putting in.
In the meantime, Professor Strazdins is calling for fair reward for women who are working close to or above a 38-hour working week.
Forget the poor employer, who's apparently supposed to be A-O.K. with paying female workers to go home and do laundry instead of, well, work. There's no way that could possibly cut into a business's bottom line.
This, right here, is a perfect example of what happens when you give progressives an inch. They’ll take a mile – and drive us right off a cliff. It’s no longer enough to demand equal pay for women who hold the same position and work the same hours as men (which is already a thing, by the way). Now, men must willingly accept the same salary to work longer hours, because women just can’t take the stress.
Which somehow isn’t sexist, because #ThePatriarchy.
Except that it is sexist.
It’s sexist against men to suggest they put in more work for the same pay as their female counterparts – work that would likely include doing all the stuff Susie left behind when she peaced out at 2 p.m. It's also sexist to assume men don't take care of their kids or do anything around their home that requires time and effort after work.
It's also offensively sexist against women to assume they can’t figure out their own work-life balance without their bosses giving them an unfair leg-up.
If I, as a woman, get paid more than a guy in my office, it should be because I worked harder, did better, and earned it. Not because someone assumed I couldn’t.