Is that not a form of discrimination? Men have kids and still get promoted.
Even so, you can still point to the discrimination being traditional gender roles, where women are the ones who typically stay at home. Or even to the economy itself; we don't value raising kids as much as we value rising through the ranks of management at some cooperation.
Aren't these statements at odd with one another? When you value raising kids at or above office work, then it doesn't look like "discrimination" that women chose to stay at home to raise a family, it looks like a personal choice that's highly valued by many. I think being a CEO or being a grandparent can both be viewed as successful in our society, they shouldn't really be compared directly though.
Yeah exactly, the problem goes away. You don't make money being a stay at home mom though, so maybe that's why we consider it a problem, IDK.
I was just offering a couple of ways to look at it where it's still discriminatory. Not saying I agree with either. There has to be a reason somewhere that women aren't as represented in upper management, and when you find that reason you can call it discriminatory, if you think that being upper management is a desirable thing. If you don't then the discrimination isn't bad or you don't consider it discrimination, as you pointed out. Economically, being upper management is certainly good though. That's basically objective.
But most men who strive for promotions surely have many reasons other than their children. Who doesn't want {appreciation, autonomy, status, money, ...} just for the sake of their own ego, identity, power, etc.?
Worse than that, I fear that the old-fashioned stay-at-home wife and children is even an unspoken (and unconscious) promotion qualification in many organisations.
Sometimes it's even semi-formalized: a glass ceiling for people who never lived abroad on a company project assignment, combined with an informal policy to not send unmarried people because they get too distracted by the locals. The result is higher ranks uniformly filled with people with spouses that don't have a career of their own that they can't easily shift abroad (or put on hold) for the duration of the assignment.