Female absenteeism is not just about child care
Why women call in sick more than men is a complex workplace issue
By Eve Tahmincioglu, MSNBC contributor

The bad news: Women are still absent nearly twice as often as their male counterparts in the workplace.

The obvious answer from human resource experts, employers, employees and even us in the media is always that “working moms have most of the responsibilities at home,” and that translates into female employees having to take sick days to tend to sick kids.

Indeed, new Labor Department data shared with msnbc.com seem to support this to a degree.

What’s interesting, McMenamin points out, is that married men with kids actually report a lower rate of absences than men without children. It was so surprising to this labor data expert that he checked back to 2000 and found the trend is consistent for the past six years.

Before you pat yourself on the back, having guessed that child rearing is what has many women calling in sick, McMenamin surmises there must be many other factors contributing to the high rate among women.

“Even among people who have no children at home,” he adds, “the reported absence rate is higher among women than among men.”

That focus on gender, he adds, has created a situation where co-workers and managers expect women to be absent more often, and that, in turn, can creates an air of unreliability around female employees.

The researchers postulated that social expectations have created an "absence culture" for women that may be a factor.

"This absence culture for women may partially legitimize absenteeism for this group and attenuate perceptions of deviance surrounding women’s absence," the researchers said. "At the same time, such an absence culture, regardless of whether it leads to actual higher absenteeism for particular women, may also be harmful to women in other ways.”

Female absenteeism about more than child care - Your Career - MSNBC.com