As for your stats from the rest of the world: who cares. I don't live in the rest of the world, not do I care to. You, on the other hand, are free to leave the US, disavow your citizenship, and enjoy your new home overseas forever.

I will point out that the European/socialist economy is in a mess...far worse than the US economy....in part because of excessive give-away programs. See, when the economics of reality meet the left-wing paradise, it eventually all falls apart.

But poor little bo....I know facts are hard to deal with. So just keep on believin'...don't let those pesky little *facts* get in the way of your Utopian dreams...

yeah the FACTS are that women and men are DIFFERENT and should be treated as such

remember, separate doesn't mean unequal. leftist tripe

"Someday when you are a big boy and live in reality, you will understand that forcing a business to pay a year's worth of wages for an employee who is not there...who also may then choose to not come back anyway - is ridiculous."

The fact that you think businesses are paying those wages and not some sort of fund just proves that you know nothing about the world that you claim I know nothing about that we both live in. Congratulations, krellin.

"as between the two fo them they have had 6 teachers over the years disappear half way through a school year, never to return, thus disrupting their education and diminishing it when a substitute is stuck in place to finish out the year."

Okay, so let's just force those teachers to not have children. What's your point? That female teachers actually do have a uterus like the rest of them?

"but suggesting that a business has to pay a woman to stay home is simply retarded."

Again, your genius is showing.

"I will point out that the European/socialist economy is in a mess"

European doesn't mean socialist, socialist doesn't mean European. Consider that one of the nations I pointed out - Germany - is booming economically, socially, and environmentally all at the same time, running on a welfare state that offers huge benefits for many things other than maternity leave. So, shockingly, the rest of the EU is looking to model after Germany. So yes, when the economics of reality meet the left-wing paradise, paradise wins out. Sometimes takes this weird thing called "compromise" to get it done.

"But poor little bo....I know facts are hard to deal with."

I was the one that presented facts, you are the one presenting useless ad hominem trash. You are the one that evidently can't deal with facts, no matter how much you like them or not.

The fault in the article, and presumably the study, has been alluded to by others, but not explicitly mentioned. Namely, it fails to include references to any control group. The article makes no mention of obesity rates and activity rates among men. Yes, a sedentary lifestyle is on the rise among women, but this cannot rightly be attributed to feminism or lack of housework without first answering the question of whether activity rates among men or children are also down. One would have to hypothesize that they are. If feminism were to blame, one should be able to correlate a decrease in activity among women with a rise in activity among men. Casual observation would not suggest this hypothesis.

A more likely hypothesis would be that technology reduces people's household activity. The microwave reduces time spent cooking, vacuums reduce time spend sweeping, washing machines reduce time spent hand-washing garments, etc.

You don't need a paid year off in Europe when you don't have a job because your social Utopia economy is self-destructing...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-01-05-28-59

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_ECONOMY_GLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-01-05-37-55

"how is it dickish to point out the obvious..."

by itself, not at all. But I suspect that you're trying to use this to imply that feminism is bad for women, rather a "haha look they got what they wanted enjoy it." You don't post things by accident, krellin. You don't post things merely to say, "Oh look at this fact, and there are no other implications or contexts to it." Do you?

If your point is truly only that working women are heavier than homemaker women of the past, I say that's trivial. If your point is anything greater than that, I say you're a dick. So which is it?

It seems to me your title, "Feminism killing women," makes it obvious which of the two it is. That's not the conclusion this article draws, that's krellin's fucked interpretation of it. So yeah, you're a dick.

Just can't take the facts, krellin... once you learn to take the facts and make a counterargument, you'd be worth talking with.

@bo - There is no fund that pays those women for the year. Dream on, idiot. A business would have to pay that salary itself. And for a small business, that would likely put them under to pay that salary and pay a temp worker for a whole year. What should be done is 6 weeks paid and then FMLA kicks in guaranteeing the women unpaid leave so the employer just brings in a temp to cover the position or gives a responsibility increase to someone just beneath that position and a tmeporary bonus (like hazard pay) for covering it and bring the temp in to cover that person's old position. Then the woman can take off if she so chooses knowing her job will be there in a year but the company is not having to pay two salaries for one years worth of work.

It's called Social Security, idiot.

Social Security doesn't pay maternity leave, putz. The companies do (I had to pay it out for my bookkeeper when I was actively running Draugnar Productions). You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

In the US, typically nobody pays for maternity leave. Social Security certainly doesn't. It's generally unpaid, unless your employer is very generous.

And, since someone mentioned teachers as part of this, someone should mention that teachers don't pay into Social Security at all, at least in my state. Anyone with a state pension is exempt from Social Security tax, and consequently is ineligible to receive social security distributions.

Well, I'm used to working for employers who pay for the first 6 weeks at least in part, and I had it in my contract with all my employees that I would pay them the first six weeks beyond what ever vacation they had. They had to use up their vacation first though (I believe FMLA doesn't require the employer to consider FMLA having started until after the employee has used up accrued vacation as well).

But bo seems to think that paid maternity leave would be paid for out of Social security like it is some magical coffer and not a bankrupt fund about to collapse in on itself from the weight of the baby boomersd retiring abd the fact that, despite or poor general health as a people, we are living a lot longer.

Wow. The best employer I've ever had paid two weeks of vacation, then 50% salary for four weeks. Anything beyond that was unpaid.

UPS pays for 6 weeks of maternity leave. That's the best I've ever heard of.

France pays maternity leave by Social Security, Germany pays by Social Security to its ceiling and the employer covers the difference, and the UK pays by social security.

Look for yourself. It's not the same as the USA.

http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_008009/lang--en/index.htm

Well, considering I already get 3 weeks vacation (and so do my female coworkers here), I work for a good company. Of course, some of it may be my disconnect with the working class. Salaried professionals make more and get better benefits at most places, which is why there are loopholes in the FMLA that allow employers to *not* grant that kidn of leave to certain levels of executive. I still qualify, but most VPs and PResidents and Officers (COO, CIO, CEO, CFO type) don't.

And most of my employees of DP were part time, so paying their leave was easy enough as I took their average hours per week for the last 6 months. And I only had to do it once with a 16 hour per week bookkeeper (Thursdays and Fridays) who made $20 per hour and had no vacation (you had to work at least 24 hours per week to accrue it with me and she only wanted to do the two days cause she had other clients). Cost me about 2 grand but kept her happy cause none of her other clients paid her during that time.

And it never will be the same, bo. Germany also requires employers to pay employees they *fire* (one of my former employers was global and I had to fire one of the mid-level programmers in Lindau, wasn't fun.)

And here my dad is forced to pay out of his own pocket for one of his employees who had his hand crippled by machinery because the employee was too dumb to know not to stick his hand inside a running carwash's interior panels. Head to France and he'd have paid about, oh, $18 for all those surgeries, and my family would be $60,000 richer.

Yeah, that's a pointless anecdote, I know.

Germany is a welfare state. France is a socialist/capitalist mix. The United States is capitalist with bits of socialism. They'll never be the same.

I don't want to focus a nation on an employer, nor an employee. I'd rather there be pushes and pulls - checks and balances, if you will - on both sides of the ball.

Head to France and he would have had to pay about, oh, 3 tiems the tax rate in social wlefare taxes as he does here. Germany and other nations that are still "thriving" do so at the employers' expense as someone has to generate the revenue that the government uses to pay those claims. It is effectively a zero sum system. Either your dad pays the idiot directly, or your dad pays the government who wastes a shitload on bureaucracy and then they pay the idiot. Either way, your dad pays. He just sees a big chunk of what he pays wasted on some departments payroll and the head of that departments wastefull lavish "expenses" like first class trips to "conferences" in Hawaii and Mercedes-Benz S-Class "company cars".

"UPS pays for 6 weeks of maternity leave. That's the best I've ever heard of."

Amazing what unions can do for you, isn't it?

Wonder what FedEx's maternity leave policy is?

bo - lie, you dad doesn't have to pay out of pocket for an injured employee, unless Daddy was negligent. That is what companies have INSURANCE for, plus he should fall under workman's comp.

Now that you have been caught in a lie...I shall insult you again.

You are an idiot.

And...need I point out AGAIN....the failing European economy, worse than ours, with much higher tax rates. Daddy woudln't be 60,000 richer in Europe, he would be being taxed tio death.

Someday Bo will learn how to read, gather facts, and apply them....but then he would have to give up his Utopian dream and live in reality. Daddy must hate you, Bo...quite a disappointment, I bet. Anyway - shouldn't you *hate* your capitalist pig father? Now you are telling us sob stories about him having to pay out of pocket for having dangerous machines? And yes...a dangerous machine...If Daddy was a good guy, he woudl have a machine in which it is impossible for a hand to be multilated.

Idiot...

Unless he simply picked an insurance policy with an obscene deductible.
Or if he wasn't up on his worker's comp premiums.

Oh, the things you learn on this forum... European economy is failing and we are also all a one united country now. And we tax people to death. Sure is american in here.