A decent proposal

According to a new study published by some feminist academics at the Australian National University, women risk damaging their health if they work more than 34 hours a week. That’s not because women are the weaker sex, obviously, but because they do more housework and childcare than men, effectively working just as hard but dividing their labour between the office and home. On the back of this, the report’s authors have called for women to be paid the same for working a 34-hour week as men are for a 47-hour week. Until this happens, according to the researchers, women are being forced to choose between their health and gender equality.

On the face of it, this proposal is bonkers. Think of all the small firms — and even some quite large ones — that would go out of business if they had to reduce the number of hours their female employees work without reducing their salaries. And presumably this would be on top of maternity pay. Gender equality is one thing, but under this proposal women would be paid 38.5 per cent more per hour than men.

But then I began to think about it from a purely selfish point of view and realised there might be something to be said for it. Caroline hasn’t had a full-time job since becoming a mum, arguing that the cost of hiring a nanny is prohibitive. To illustrate this, suppose she was able to get a job in PR that paid £40,000 a year and the nanny’s salary was £26,500. After tax, Caroline’s take home pay would be £30,367.20 and the cost of hiring the nanny, if you factor in our National Insurance contribution, would be £29,059.07. So Caroline would effectively be working a 40-hour week for an annual salary of £1,277.76.