Letters to the Editor
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But first, a quibble!
This is not a Boston Globe editorial, and it is not an article. It is an op-ed piece. It was not written by any of their regular columnists, but by an outside columnist. So it in no way represents any sort of official opinion, nor is it a case of "the man" trying to assign blame to women or feminism.
I read the piece, and I disagreed with the thrust of it. However...
There is the law of supply and demand. With more women in the work force, there is greater labor supply, therefore downward pressure on wages, for all workers. If half the workforce, of whichever sex, stayed home for the next year to take care of their kids, pay would very quickly rise.
This is a largely a blue collar vs. white collar issue, although that is becoming less true with time. Office workers are working many many uncompensated hours. Not so with the trades. I first noticed this in the 1980s, when I was working in a printing shop. We did a lot of the work for local businesses: publishers, PR firms, all kinds of stuff. We had regular breaks and left at 5:00. The office workers had mandatory working lunches where they paid for their own pizza, unpaid overtime, mandatory neetings. Yes, a lot of those workers were women, and young just-out-of-college women in particular. They were given titles instead of money, status instead of cash. This was the beginning of the era of "associates", "co-ordinators" and the like. Put the word "project" in front of anything and suddenly, you are not a "worker" anymore, are you? I saw the same thing when I worked on the killing floor of an insurance claims company. Assembly line workers with computers instead of hammers, but they were all "associates" or some such. Take a look at your own work -- are you really a superviosry employee? What would it mean if you were not? Would you be willing to trade the status for the cash? Get paid all that lovely overtime? Become a steelworker in a pantsuit or suit-and-tie?
As someone above mentioned, this is not so much a woman’s issue as a labor issue.
As I like to say, the Family Values folks value families so much they want them all working as many hours as possible.