Excerpt from The Motherhood Manifesto

With Mother's Day fast approaching, I find myself thinking about the lives of all of the mothers I know -- older, younger, expectant moms, future moms, and all declensions of the word "mom" in between. Motherhood is often said to be the most important job in the world, and it's hard to argue that point given the tremendous responsibility that comes with the position. But how much is motherhood truly valued in our society...especially when it comes to mothers in the workplace?

I read the following excerpt from The Motherhood Manifesto, and it really struck a chord with me. Though I may not have any children of my own (yet), my own mother was a working mom who spent some time as a divorcee, and it shed some light on what kind of discrimination and degradation that mothers (especially unwed mothers) can experience in the workplace.

On a hot, humid August day, at an interview for a legal secretary position in a one-story brick building, Kiki sat down in a hard wooden chair to face a middle-aged attorney ensconced behind a mahogany desk. His framed diplomas lined the walls, and legal books filled the shelves behind him. Kiki remembers the attorney clearly, even his general height at 5'10" and the color of his light brown hair. The interaction was significant enough to remain seared in her mind's eye a decade later. "The first question the attorney asked me when I came in for the interview was, 'Are you married?' The second was, 'Do you have children?'"

It was the eleventh job interview in which she'd been asked the very same questions since moving to Pennsylvania. After answering eleven times that she wasn't married, and that yes indeed, she was a mother of two, Kiki began to understand why her job search was taking so long.

She decided to address the issue head on this time. "I asked him how those questions were relevant to the job, and he said my hourly wage would be determined by my marital and motherhood status." Kiki then asked the next obvious question: "How do you figure out an hourly wage based on these questions?"

His response was as candid as it was horrifying. "He said if you don't have a husband and have children, then I pay less per hour because I have to pay benefits for the entire family." The attorney noted that a married woman's husband usually had health insurance to cover the kids, and since Kiki didn't have a husband, he "didn't want to get stuck with the bill for my children's health coverage."

It was the first time Kiki pushed for an explanation, and she was appalled by the answer. "I said to him, 'You mean to tell me that if I am doing the exact same work, typing the same exact subpoena as a coworker, you're going to pay me less because I have no husband and have kids?' And he very smugly told me, 'Yes, absolutely.'"

He couldn't do that, it was illegal, Kiki wondered, wasn't it? The attorney countered that it was perfectly legal—and as an attorney, he ought to know. He invited Kiki to check out the law herself and then ushered her out the door (without a job, of course).

Furious, Kiki went straight home and called the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She found out that the lawyer was right. The questions were legal, as was paying a single mother less than other applicants. Pennsylvania, like scores of states, does not have state employment laws that protect mothers.

The sad truth is that Kiki isn't struggling alone. Recent Cornell University research by Dr. Shelley Correll confirmed what many American women are finding: Mothers are 44 percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers who have the same résumé, experience, and qualifications; and mothers are offered significantly lower starting pay. Study participants offered non-mothers an average of $11,000 more than mothers for the same high salaried job as equally qualified non-mothers.

Dr. Shelley Correll's groundbreaking research released in 2005 is a compelling addition to the long line of studies that explore the roots of this maternal wage gap. This study, like others, also found that the wage gap wasn't linked to self-limiting factors that might cause a wage gap, like mothers taking more time off to care for children, but in actuality is fairly straightforward discrimination. In other words, it's not mothers' "fault" they receive less pay.

We need to open a whole new conversation about motherhood in the twenty-first century by illuminating the universal needs of America's mothers and spelling out concrete solutions that will provide families—whether rich, poor, or middle class—with real relief.