Comments on: Equal pay for equal work?

By: Public schools teach equality of outcome? | Conservative Dallas

Public schools teach equality of outcome? | Conservative Dallas — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:40:04 +0000

[...] on the left suggest that TRUE equality can only be accomplished when we are equally compensated. Feminist suggest that mothers should be given government funded grants to cover the cost of childcare which [...]

By: S. Brykczynski

S. Brykczynski — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:33:34 +0000

I am a stay at home Mum. If I were to go back to work, I would need to pay someone else to care for my child. It's that simple. I do it myself or I pay someone else. If I pay someone else, they earn a living wage, doing their job . So how is it when I do it myself it's suddenly not a "job"?

By: Ami

Ami — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:02:32 +0000

When the current conservative government here in Canada was first elected a few years back, one of the first things they did was to scrap the liberal child care plan (funding for daycares) in favour of a “universal child care benefit” similar to what you’re describing here.

There are a few problems with using the available funds this way, as opposed to subsidizing daycare spots:

* the amount women receive is a pittance – $100 monthly does not go very far either in terms of household expenses or the cost of child care (~$900 in my area);
* because of the way it’s taxed, IIRC, wealthy single-income families actually receive more money than single parents or households where both parents work for less income. If you’re interested, check out this report, which explains the problems in very clear and rather devastating terms.

I’m not sure whether these issues would crop up in the UK system as well, but I do think this paragraph in the report you link to is telling:

Miller admitted, however, that a package enabling all mothers to stay at home could be prohibitively expensive. ‘All too often people talk about women having a choice but in actual fact many families don’t have the choice: financial necessity means that they have to go back to work. It’s very difficult to envisage the programme that is going to take away that financial necessity for large numbers of people.