The myth of women's equality in Europe :: Newsweek: International Editions

Rana Foroohar reports:

It sounds impossible, but it's true. For all the myths of equality that Europe tells itself, the Continent is by and large a woeful place for a woman who aspires to lead. According to a paper published by the International Labor Organization this past June, women account for 45 percent of high-level decision makers in America, including legislators, senior officials and managers across all types of businesses. In the U.K., women hold 33 percent of those jobs. In Sweden—supposedly the very model of global gender equality—they hold 29 percent.

Germany comes in at just under 27 percent, and Italian women hold a pathetic 18 percent of power jobs. These sad statistics say as much about Europe's labor markets, lingering welfare-state policies and corporate leadership as they do about its attitudes toward women.

Ouch. The lesson you take from this next bit probably explains a lot about your view of how markets work. Quote:

Why is this? Simply put, Europe is killing its women with kindness—enshrined, ironically, in cushy welfare policies that were created to help them. By offering women extremely long work leaves after children, then pushing them to take the full complement via tax policies that discourage a second income, coupled with subsidies that serve to keep them at home, Europe is essentially squandering its female talent. Not only do women get off track for long periods, many simply never get back on.
. . .
Any number of studies, including some by the OECD and the ILO, have shown how excessively long leaves can derail women's career prospects, often permanently. Employers are understandably reluctant to hire and promote someone who may absent herself for years on end, often more than once. "Being a potential mother becomes an obstacle for women in certain types of jobs, and that is the case all over Europe," says ILO labor sociologist Manuela Tomei. Removing one's wedding ring for job interviews has thus become commonplace. So have probing questions. "Your family plans come up at every single job interview," says Sasha Buehler, a Munich film buyer. "I've had to promise potential employers that I won't get pregnant." While questions like this might elicit a lawsuit in the United States, European women are less likely to fight back. Europe doesn't allow class-action suits and, outside of the public sector, the burden of proof in a discrimination case still falls on the individual rather than the corporation, making it incredibly difficult for a single person to initiate and win a case.

So, what's the lesson you take from this? That government should make it more difficult for business to defeat its good intentions to be kind to women? If so, then you ought to also agree that Emiratization is best pursued with more regulation, more vigorously enforced.

Which environment is preferred by women? That partly depends on the individual woman's preferences: whether she likes working in environments where incentives are sharp or where they are soft.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Cato Unbound - "The principal motor of Europe’s current decline is, in my view, its obsession with social security, which has created rigid social and economic systems that are extremely resistant to change. And this obsession with social security is in turn connected with a fear of the future: for the future has now brought Europe catastrophe and relative decline for more than a century."