Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn vowed last week to do a number of things for women if he were re-elected. He spouted off a list of items that included yet again accepting the gender wage gap as fact (it’s actually an earnings gap due to choices men and women make in their lives) and assuring women that sexual harassment is rampant.
But he also claimed that after-work drinks represented some sort of discrimination against women.
“The behavior of companies that encourages an ethic of after-work socialization in order to promote themselves within the company benefits men, who don’t feel the need to be at home looking after their children, and it discriminates against women who want to, obviously, look after the children that they’ve got,” Corbyn said.
It’s an insult to both genders, really. He’s suggesting fathers don’t want to be around their children and that motherhood harms women by taking them away from work. Maybe other companies are different, but from everything I’ve experienced, married people in general (mothers or fathers) don’t tend to gather for after-work drinks. Bosses usually don’t come out either (looking at you, Daniel Allott).
My colleague Tim Carney might go out with coworkers maybe once a month, and spends the other 27–30 days talking about what he does with his kids. Corbyn’s whole viewpoint seems stuck in the “Mad Men” era (even though the women in that show went out with male coworkers after work too) and devalues parenthood.
Lauren Collins writes in the New Yorker that Corbyn was actually right, and that “it’s less complicated for men to go to the bar with colleagues, and that women disproportionately bear the costs of having to stay late at work, whether for a meeting or a margarita.” She blames the gender wage gap as part of the cause, without, of course, mentioning the part about the gap being due to choices and not discrimination.
Parenthood and the acceptance thereof has evolved. After-work drinks are not an exclusive club of men and not attending doesn’t mean one’s career will suffer. In fact, after-work drinks could end up harming some people, if they drink too much.
I will agree with Collins on her solution to the whole concept of after-work drinks, which some people may not be able to attend regularly: “drinking during the workday.”
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
