> Heck, let’s spend 99% — $1.485 billion (in the states alone) on better support. That should put a dent in the support bill, and I’d sure pick up $15 million if I saw it lying around. Wouldn’t you?
According to PEW (https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-the-...) there were 17M STEM employees in 2016, so this leaves less than $1000 per employee for childcare. According to Fortune (https://fortune.com/2018/10/22/childcare-costs-per-year-us/) the average cost per child is $9K/year (probably more if you adjust for the distribution of STEM careers?). I'm guessing STEM employees have at least one child on average (some have none, others have multiple, etc), so that only covers about 1/9th of the bill. That's a dent in the bill, but I'm not sure it's enough to make even a proportional dent in the pipeline.
Note that this assumes the money finances a benefit that must be offered to all employees; if you can target the women in question, the calculus clearly changes; however, I suspect that would be difficult under current US discrimination law (IANAL).
That said, I'd rather that money go to employees where it would certainly be useful as opposed to the current programs which, as far as I can tell, is squandered (to put it nicely).
According to PEW (https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-the-...) there were 17M STEM employees in 2016, so this leaves less than $1000 per employee for childcare. According to Fortune (https://fortune.com/2018/10/22/childcare-costs-per-year-us/) the average cost per child is $9K/year (probably more if you adjust for the distribution of STEM careers?). I'm guessing STEM employees have at least one child on average (some have none, others have multiple, etc), so that only covers about 1/9th of the bill. That's a dent in the bill, but I'm not sure it's enough to make even a proportional dent in the pipeline.
Note that this assumes the money finances a benefit that must be offered to all employees; if you can target the women in question, the calculus clearly changes; however, I suspect that would be difficult under current US discrimination law (IANAL).
That said, I'd rather that money go to employees where it would certainly be useful as opposed to the current programs which, as far as I can tell, is squandered (to put it nicely).