【中英双语】“贪婪工作”的问题

无法灵活调整的长时间加班，往往是重视增长的高薪高压工作和薪资严重不平等的企业或行业的常态。这类工作是美国性别薪资差异的一大原因。  

无法灵活调整的长时间加班，往往是重视增长的高薪高压工作和薪资严重不平等的企业或行业的常态。这类工作是美国性别薪资差异的一大原因。

Long, inflexible work hours are often the norm in high-pressure, high-paying jobs where promotions are important, or in firms or sectors where earnings are considerably unequal. These kinds of jobs are a big part of why there’s a gender pay gap in the United States.

曾获诺贝尔奖的哈佛经济史学家、劳动经济学家克劳迪娅·戈尔丁（Claudia Goldin）在即将出版的著作《事业与家庭：一个世纪的妇女平权之路》（Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey Toward Equity）中解释了原因。她说，答案在于“贪婪工作”，这个概念涵盖广泛，从收入不平等到男性和女性为自己划定的适合职业。

In her forthcoming book, Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, award-winning Harvard economic historian and labor economist Claudia Goldin explains why. The answer, she says, involves “greedy work,” a concept that touches on everything from income inequality to which jobs men and women sort themselves into.

过去的18个月，新冠疫情迫使几百万人同时应付工作和照顾家人，许多员工更加迁就家庭需求。我想请戈尔丁聊聊这类工作是否变得灵活，灵活性是否会对性别不平等或薪资不平等的现状造成影响，以及有没有什么办法让工作不那么“贪婪”。

Over the past 18 months, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced millions of people to juggle work and caregiving — and led many employers to be more accommodating of domestic demands. I wanted to ask Goldin for her take on how flexible (or not) these jobs are becoming, whether this flexibility might influence gender inequality or the pay gap, and if she sees any ways to make work less greedy.

戈尔丁研究性别薪资差距及相关职业发展动态数十年之久，是美国经济学会会长、国家经济研究局美国经济发展项目负责人、美国国家科学院成员。她还建立了鼓励女性在大学读经济学的Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge项目。本采访通过电子邮件进行，经过编辑润色。

Goldin has been studying gender pay gaps and related career dynamics for decades. She served as president of the American Economic Association, is the program director of the Development of the American Economy program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She also created the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge. This interview, which was conducted over email, has been edited.

你对美国伴侣的研究表明，让所有人都灵活工作是很复杂的，在性别方面尤其复杂。能不能解释一下“工作灵活性”是指什么，为什么一般被当作一种福利？为什么不是所有工作都能灵活安排？

Your research on U.S. couples demonstrates that the idea of flexibility for all is complicated, particularly when it comes to gender. Can you explain what “job flexibility” refers to and why it is generally considered to be an amenity or a perk? Why aren’t all jobs flexible?

灵活性是一个多维度的概念，涉及工作时长、工作强度以及工作时限——一些工作本身就需要随时待命、迅速完成。不过很重要的一点是，这个概念还涉及公司作为福利提供工作灵活性所必须支付的价格，以及员工愿意接受的价格。要理解女性收入为何低于男性、特别是承担照料家人责任的女性薪资更低，这种计算非常重要。

Flexibility is a multidimensional concept concerning the number of hours of work, the intensity of the work, and when the work must be done — think of the rush, on-call, anytime nature of some jobs. But importantly, it also concerns the price that firms must pay to provide flexible work as an amenity and the price that workers are willing to accept. This calculation is of great importance in understanding why women, especially those who undertake caregiving roles, earn less than men.

“公司提供工作灵活性必须支付的价格”是指什么？

What do you mean by “the price that firms must pay to provide flexible work”?

我举一个跟灵活工作无关的福利的例子。比如在工作场所提供净化的空气，公司可以选择为全体员工提供净化空气（比如使用大型的高效空气过滤器），这样会产生成本。如果空气过滤技术昂贵，公司可能只在员工接受为此减薪或工作效率会因此获得提升的前提下提供净化空气。但如果需要的花费很低，公司几乎不需要员工承担成本就可以提供净化空气。

Let me provide an example of an amenity that has nothing to do with flexible work. Consider the provision of clean air at a job location. Firms can choose to provide clean air (for example, using large HEPA air purifiers) to all their workers, but only at some cost to the company. If the clean air technology were expensive, the firm would provide clean air only if workers would take a steep cut in their wages to get it or if it increased productivity. But if the technology were really cheap to provide, the firm could make clean air accessible at almost no cost to the workers.

那么，假如女性比男性更需要净化空气呢？女性可能会选择在提供净化空气的公司工作，乃至为这个福利接受降薪。如果净化空气的成本让薪资减少太多，一些女性可能根本不工作了。男性和女性会根据公司提供净化空气的成本区分适合自己的公司。但如果提供净化空气的成本全面降低，工作场所的性别之分就会更少。

Now, what if women had a greater preference for clean air than men? They might choose to work at firms that provide clean air, and may even take a pay cut for the amenity. Some women might not work at all if the cost of clean air lowered their wages too much. Men and women might segregate themselves by firm according to the firm’s cost of cleaning the air. But if the cost of clean air fell across the board, workplaces would become less segregated by gender.

灵活工作时间的问题与此相似。如果一项工作可以由一位员工传递给另一位员工，信息几乎没有损失，那么公司提供灵活性的成本就比较低，因为如果一名员工不得不留在家中照顾生病的孩子，可以由另一名员工无缝代替其工作。即使是要接触客户的职位，如果两位员工的工作内容非常接近，那么若有需要，税务文书、诉讼摘要、离婚协议、房地产交易和银行对账单等等各种任务都可以交接。

The issues with time flexibility are somewhat similar. If a job could be handed off from one worker to another with little loss in information, then it would be less costly for the firm to provide the amenity of job flexibility, because if one worker had to stay home to care for a sick child, another could seamlessly take her place. Even for positions that are client-facing, if two workers were very close substitutes, then tax documents, legal briefs, divorce papers, real estate transactions, and bank statements could be handed off from one to the other, should a need arise.

但如果员工和任务的重叠很少，比如说只有一个人负责接听客户电话，这时候灵活工作的成本就变高了，因为允许一个人放下工作就需要聘用和培训另一名员工，而且这两个人还可能同时在岗。

But what if there’s only a small amount of redundancy among employees and tasks? For example, what if there is only one person to take client calls? Then the cost of flexibility is higher, since allowing one person to hand off their work requires hiring and training another employee and possibly having the two work together for part of the day.

最后，工时更长、灵活性较低的工作通常时薪更高。简单地说：如果每周工作70小时、可能晚上和周末都在工作的人拿到的时薪比每周工作35小时的人高出两倍以上，这种工作就叫做“贪婪的工作”。

In the end, jobs that require more time and less flexible hours have generally been those that pay workers more per hour. Putting this simply: If the person who works 70 hours per week, possibly during evenings and weekends, gets a lot more than twice the wage per hour of the person who works 35 hours per week, we call that “greedy work.”

贪婪工作还牵涉什么？

What else does greedy work entail?

贪婪工作可以定义为在员工工作时间很长或对工作时间自主权很小的情况下时薪超高的工作。可能是需要赶时间的工作，可能要在深夜11点应付挑剔的客户打来的电话，也可能是上司要求员工为项目放弃休假。公司认为让员工赶工、在特定时间完成或额外加班值得付出额外的薪水。另一个重要的方面是员工同意拿这份薪水加班。这是一种常见的供求关系。

Greedy work can be defined as a job that pays disproportionately more on a per-hour basis when someone works a greater number of hours or has less control over those hours. It could be a rush job, a demanding client who calls at 11 PM, or a supervisor who asks that the worker give up a vacation day for the project. The firm has deemed the additional payment worth it to have the work done over more hours, at a particular time, or during odd hours. The other critical aspect is that the worker agrees to do it at that wage. Supply and demand, all over again.

如果员工不在乎加班，公司就不必开出高薪，但很多人在乎。这是一个复杂的平衡，薪资不足以让一些员工（比如女性）放弃自己的时间或家庭生活，但对于另一些员工（比如男性）而言足够了。这样的情况下，女性会去找对时间要求不那么苛刻的公司，或者不再工作。

If workers did not care about giving the additional time, then the firm would not have to pay them that much more. But many do care. It is a complicated equilibrium in which the compensation may be an insufficient reason for some workers (let’s say women) to give up their time or family life. But the compensation may be sufficient for some other workers (let’s say men) to do so. Under these conditions, women will shift to a firm with less demanding hours or leave the workforce.

根据我的研究，在很多专业领域，女性就职于对时间要求较宽松的企业或机构。大部分女性是兼职教授而非终身教职教授，供职的会计和律师事务所规模比男性更小，在金融方面也常在HR等时间要求较低的职位而非投行。她们在工作中获得各种福利，但赚的钱也更少，且往往会越来越少。

In many professions, women work in firms or for institutions that are less demanding of their time, according to my research. They are disproportionately adjunct faculty rather than tenure-track professors, they work for smaller accounting and law firms than men do, and they are in finance occupations, like HR, that require fewer hours than a job such as investment banking. They gain various amenities in their work, but they also earn less today and will often earn even less in the future.

为什么会变成这样？

What are some of the mechanisms that got us here?

我们不清楚过去的工作是否不贪婪。美国人一直是工作狂，从很久以前就比欧洲人工作时间长，现在也一样。1831年亚历克西斯•德托克维尔（Alexis de Tocqueville）访问美国，谈到民主政体中的工人比贵族统治下劳动得更多，因为有上升空间。有趣的是，比起法国、英国和德国，当时美国是一个平等的国度。

We don’t really know whether work was far less greedy in the past. Americans have always been workaholics — they worked more hours than their European counterparts long ago, and they work more hours now. Alexis de Tocqueville, during his visit to America in 1831, remarked that workers in democracies labored more than in aristocracies because they could advance. Interestingly, at the time, America was the land of equality relative to France, Britain, and Germany.

然而现在催生了贪婪工作的大问题却是严重的经济不平等。收入不平等从20世纪80年代开始加剧，由于目前尚不得而知的原因，在21世纪初的十年里达到巅峰。最顶层的10%、1%乃至0.1%的人获得的社会财富比例增加，催生了贪婪工作。顶层获得的收入比略低一层的人们高出那么多，一些人就会拼命努力争取走上顶层的机会。

The big issue that powers greediness in work today, however, is the enormous degree of economic inequality. Inequality of earnings began to rise in the 1980s, and for reasons that we are still exploring, top-end inequality exploded in the 2000s. The increase in the fraction of income earned by the top 10%, the top 1%, and even the top 0.1% fuels greedy work. If earnings in the top position are so much greater than in a position slightly below it, some will work enormously hard for the chance to have that top position.

经济不平等还给面向客户的公司增加了许多压力，从各个角度助长了贪婪工作。其中之一是赢家通吃形的工作增加。最好的例子是娱乐和体育行业，但法律、会计和金融行业也有很多。比如法律行业，如果聘用某一位律师可以提升胜诉的可能性，胜诉的价值比聘用成本高得多，你就会去找这个人，愿意为他支付高额时薪。不过，贪婪工作盛行的不止面向客户的企业。大部分有“非升即走”职位的公司和机构，亦即涉及成为合伙人、拿到终身教职或获得重要晋升的地方，都会助长这种贪婪。

Economic inequality also puts pressure on client-facing firms in a number of ways that further drive greedy work. One way concerns the increase in winner-takes-all positions. The best examples are in entertainment and sports, but there are many in law, accounting, and finance. In law, for example, if hiring a particular person increases the probability of winning a case, the case is now worth so much more, and you would pursue that particular lawyer and be willing to pay a tremendous amount more for that person’s hours. But client-facing firms aren’t the only ones that have greedy workplaces. Most firms and institutions with positions that are “up or out” and that involve making partner, getting tenure, or achieving a major promotion will give rise to the type of greediness I’ve mentioned.

有没有抵制贪婪工作趋势的公司或行业？抵制获得了什么益处？

Are there examples of companies or industries that are bucking the greedy work trend? What benefits are they seeing?

一些变化自然而然地发生。比如以前独立经营药店的药剂师会雇用另一位药剂师当助手，通常是女性，赚的钱远少于他，主要因为他是“剩余索取权人”，要为药店承担风险和投入时间。

Some changes happen organically. The example of pharmacists comes to mind. There was a time when a pharmacist would own his business. He might hire another pharmacist as an assistant, and often that pharmacist was a woman. She would earn far less than he did, largely because he was the “residual claimant” who would take on the risks and the time commitment of ownership.

后来发生了许多变化，独立经营的药店减少，与CVS、Walgreens和Rite Aid等公司相关的企业模式兴起。药品标准化和详尽的信息技术，使得药剂师彼此之间的可代替性更高。药剂师不再获得独立经营的经济回报，也不必再承担相应的时间要求。药店时薪的性别差距在高薪行业中达到最小，尽管很多女性药剂师在职业发展的某些阶段是兼职工作。

Many changes occurred that brought about the decrease in the fraction of independently owned pharmacies and the rise of the corporate model associated with CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. Pharmacists became much better substitutes for each other through the standardization of drugs and the use of elaborate information technologies. They no longer receive the financial rewards, or have the time demands, of ownership. And the gender earnings gap for hourly earnings in pharmacy is among the lowest among high-paying professions, even though a substantial fraction of female pharmacists work part-time at some point in their career.

儿科的变化则是因为截然不同的原因。很多儿科医生，不论性别，都希望有更高的灵活性，并且组成医疗团队，以便获得更大的选择空间。这样一来，顾客也能多认识几位团队里的医生，减少孩子这次见到的不是上次那位医生的沮丧。医生和患者都更满意了。兽医领域也发生了类似的变化。这两个领域的女性比例都有所增加——现在的兽医学学生里约77%是女性，1975年仅有10%。

A very different set of reasons for change is found in pediatrics. In that case, it appears that many pediatricians — independent of gender — wanted more flexibility and formed group practices that enabled them to better choose their schedules. At the same time, their clients could get to know various pediatricians in the group, so their children would be less upset if the doctor they saw last time was not the one on call this time. The physicians were happier and their patients were happier. Similar changes occurred in veterinary medicine. In both fields, the fraction of the group that is female increased — it is around 77% among veterinary students today, up from 10% in 1975.

另外，还有一些公司鼓励父亲为家庭原因请假。我在几项关于公司为什么提供带薪家务假的研究里注意到，很多公司希望男性员工利用休假，部分目的是减少女性员工休产假招致的抱怨。鼓励男性休假并真正将时间用于家庭，是在公司和伴侣之间促进平等的一种好方法。

Plus, there are firms that appreciate when dads take time off for family reasons. In some research I’ve done concerning why firms provide paid family leave, I noticed that many firms want their male employees to take advantage of their leave benefits, in part to have less resentment when women in the firm take parental leave. Encouraging men to take the leave and really use it for family matters is a good way to increase equity in the firm and in couples.

伴侣之间该如何减少贪婪工作相关的不平等？

How can couples make an imbalance around greedy work less likely to occur?

五五分是一个崇高的目标。但工作贪婪程度越高，伴侣之间五五分的成本就越高，每次分摊家务隐含的“损失”越大。现状是伴侣双方不会都从高薪工作转为时间更灵活的工作，而是只有其中一方，通常是女性这样做。如果是异性伴侣，那么女性在事业发展中后退一步，性别不平等随之产生。即使是同性伴侣，贪婪工作也会影响双方的平等，但不会助长性别不平等。

Fifty-fiftyness is a noble goal. But the greedier work is, the more expensive 50-50 equity in a couple becomes. Every time the couple tries to share, they will implicitly “pay” more. Rather than having both give up higher-paying jobs for more flexible ones, just one member of the couple will, and it is often the woman. In consequence, if they are a heterosexual couple, gender inequality will generally increase when the woman steps back from her career. Even for same-sex couples, greedy work will serve to upend couple equity, but it will not add to gender inequality.

简单地说，非常重视平等的伴侣要准备接受降薪，以及成为合伙人、获得终身教职或重要晋升的可能性降低。比方说，两人都是律师，可以在中等规模的事务所工作，不要一个在大律所、一个在小律所。重点在于双方平等是有成本的，比贪婪工作的成本高。

The short answer is for couples who greatly value a 50-50 balance to take the hit in terms of lower earnings today and a lower probability of making partner, getting tenure, or landing a big promotion. If they are both lawyers, for example, they could work at medium-size firms rather than one working at the big-ticket firm and the other at the boutique firm. The point is that couple equity costs money, and it costs more the greedier work is.

灵活工作的成本有没有因为我们在疫情之下采用的技术和居家办公制度而降低？你如何看待这18个月以来的居家办公状况，这对工作场所的平等有什么影响？

Have the costs of job flexibility been lowered by the technologies and WFH arrangements we’ve used during the pandemic? What do you make of what we’ve seen over the past 18 months, and what might it mean for equity in the workplace?

工作总是可以灵活的。问题在于公司要付出怎样的成本，降薪的员工又要承担多少。

Jobs can always be made flexible. The question is what the cost to the firm is and what the price to the worker will be in lower earnings.

疫情从多个角度降低了灵活工作的成本。企业和员工学会了使用远程会议技术，可以让许多人一起远程开会。

The pandemic appears to have lowered the cost of flexibility in various ways. Firms and workers have learned to use technologies that enable remote meetings, including those with huge numbers of participants.

我们20世纪90年代就有了远程会议软件，却直到最近才真正频繁使用起来。部分原因是现在网速快了，但还有一部分原因是现在迫不得已，而且网络用户越广泛，新入者的优势就越大。另外，聪明的初创企业已经在开发新型软件——比如Sophya和Gather，可以提供比Zoom更灵活、更亲密的虚拟空间——让团队更有归属感，促使远程团队更好地建立信赖、发挥创造力。

Even though we’ve had teleconferencing software since the 1990s, we didn’t greatly depend on these tools until recently. Partly that’s because we now have high-speed internet, but partly it’s because we were forced to use them, and the more extensive the network of users, the greater the advantage to new entrants. In addition, clever startups have been inventing new types of software — like Sophya or Gather, which create virtual spaces that are more flexible and intimate than Zoom — that provide teams with a greater sense of familiarity and togetherness, promoting trust and enabling creativity among teams of remote workers.

这为什么会影响灵活工作，灵活工作又如何促进工作场合的性别平等？

你不坐飞机就能跟东京或北京的客户开会谈并购，晚上要在家照顾孩子的家长也可以接受这份工作——这个人很可能是女性。工作时长可能是一样的，但员工对时间有更多的控制权，比如可以腾出时间哄孩子睡觉或者跟家人共进晚餐。

Why would this impact flexibility, and why would flexibility enhance gender equality in the workplace? If you can do an M&A meeting with a client in Tokyo or Beijing without ever getting on a plane, the parent who needs to be home at night can take that job — and that individual is likely to be a woman. The number of work hours may remain the same, but the employee has more control over which hours are free, like the ones just before a child goes to bed or when the family eats dinner together.

但在线合作依然有阻碍。我发现自己跟合著者直接见面的时候更有效率和创造力。我们要正视这个问题，一些人际关系需要实际接触。

But there are still snags in virtual collaborations. I find that I’m more productive and creative when my coauthors and I meet in person. Let’s face it, some relationships may always require some degree of physicality.

将来能不能让工作变得对每个人都不这么贪婪，而且对女性特别是对母亲更公平？我们怎样才能实现这样的未来？

Is there a future in which work becomes less greedy for everyone — and makes work more equal for women and, in particular, mothers? What do we need for that to happen?

如果经济不平等奇迹般地消失，那当然很好。贪婪工作的一些方面会随之改变。但短时间内不会有这种好事。不过要创造公平的竞争空间，还有其他方式，主要是孩子（令人吃惊！）。举例来说，通过有补助的日托服务改变父母承担的成本，并不会改变贪婪工作本身，但可以让父母的时间更宽松，有余地跟其他同事换班。但这样还是解决不了由哪一方应对校医院打来的紧急电话、哪一方带老人去看心脏病医生的问题。

It would be great if economic inequality would miraculously decrease. That would change some aspects of greedy work. But that isn’t going to happen soon. There are other ways to even the playing field, though, and they mainly involve (surprise!) children. Changing the cost to parents through subsidized day care, for example, won’t change greedy work, but it will mean that the time of parents is less critical. Parents will substitute someone else’s time for their own. However, there will still be issues regarding which parent will respond to the emergency call from the school nurse or take the older relative to the cardiologist.

比如瑞典的日托服务有大量补贴，收入不平等状况也比美国好得多。我觉得获得更平等的收入对于大学毕业生而言是更为决定性的因素，对社会其他人群可能也一样。

Sweden, for example, has heavily subsidized day care, and it also has far lower income inequality than the U.S. My sense is that having more-equal incomes is the bigger game changer for those who are college graduates and probably for the rest of society as well.

格蕾琴·加维特是《哈佛商业评论》高级编辑。

Gretchen Gavett is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.