My daughters don’t want to hear about gender equality. So I decided to simply tell them what happens to the typical women in North America when she gets married and has children.
The typical woman enters into a type of contract where she becomes dependant on her husband. As a result of this, without even realizing it, she loses her equality and power. And things go downhill from there. Unless she knows what is likely to happen, she cannot correct the imbalance.
Here are the 10 top things I felt my daughters needed to know about careers and marriage.
- You will likely earn less than a man, even if in a similar job.
- You will likely have fewer advancement opportunities as a man.
- You will likely do more than 70% of your household chores even if you have a paying job.
- You will likely do more than 80% of raising your children and likely be left with the task of hiring and managing child care if you need it.
- If you divorce, you will likely be in a worse financial situation than your husband.
- If you take off time to raise kids you will find it very difficult to get back into a high paying job.
- If you divorce and keep the kids will find it difficult to find high paying, flexible work.
- If you give up your career you will lose not just money, but your pension and insurance.
- If you divorce after raising kids your x-husband will not likely want to give you any money to compensate you for giving up your career to raise your kids.
- If you depend entirely on your husband for money it is likely you will suffer loss of self-worth and low self-esteem and will often feel powerless in your relationship with your husband.
You can find these and more in my upcoming book: Occupy Women.