There’s a good article in Aftenposten today about how marriage and parenthood affect salary for women vs. men. It basically confirms my view that women cannot expect to receive equal pay, beause they don’t do equal work.

- Så lenge de fleste mødre tar ut nesten hele foreldrepermisjonen, ligger lønnsforskjellene nærmest nedfelt i permisjonsordningen, siden det å få barn medfører tap av arbeidserfaring og arbeidstilknytning for kvinner, mens den ikke gjør det for menn, sier Terje Høgsnes til forskning.no.

- Tida utenfor arbeidslivet gir mødrene dårligere vilkår i konkurransen om høyere stillinger og dermed høyere lønn, forklarer han.

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- Det er lite som tyder på at arbeidsgiverne diskriminerer, sier han.

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Ulikhetene i lønnsnivået har dermed mye å gjøre med hvem som får hvilke stillinger, og at flest menn blir ledere.

Roughly translated, so long as mothers take out their entire allotted maternity leave, differences in pay are practically inherent in the parental leave system, since having children results in a loss of work experience and networking for women, whereas this is not the case for men. “Time spent out of employment gives women worse conditions in the competition for higher positions and therefore higher salary,” says researcher Terje Høgsnes. Høgsnes goes on to say that there’s little evidence that employers are discriminating against mothers—that differences in compensation reflect differences in position, and that most managers are men.

This has always been my point in discussions on this subject. Men invest more time in their careers than women, so it’s only fair that they get compensated for it. You can only expect to benefit from a job you do. You benefit from parenthood in a number of ways when you do that job, but as parenthood takes time and attention away from your day job, you should expect that fact to be reflected in your salary as well as in the positions you get. I’d expect things to work the same way for anyone who took on more than one full-time job. Which is what parenting is.