Tag Archives: flexible

Mums and work: tell Rebecca it gets easier but only a bit

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Rebecca Asher is – depending on your point of view – either a whinger who doesn’t understand how life works, or a modern woman who has discovered she’s been sold a pup.
As a journalist, she seems to have got published a feminist book that many of us have effectively written in blogs, talked about in playgroups or NCT get togethers but have not got the time or energy to write down on paper.  She’s called it “Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality“.
Very clever.  I’d say shattered is just how most new mums feel.
The essential question is:
I’ve been educated as well as any man, secured a high flying job as well as any man, earned my own money, built a social life, but – now I’ve married a man and had a baby and my life revolves around their needs- was this all a lie?  Are we really any further on than the 1950s?

And the honest answer is: it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I know exactly where she’s coming from.  There’s no easy answer.  Misogynists on the comments forums at the Guardian say that “you want to have your cake and eat it“, or “you should’ve thought of that before having a baby”.
 Comments also call her spoiled, that it’s all a sense of entitlement that’s been frustrated and not a legitimate complaint.  Often there’s a comment from someone saying something like I hold down two jobs, I’ve got four children and you don’t catch me being all self-pitying.
Or, I did all this twenty years ago and it’s tough but you do it…  To be honest, I dislike those replies more than the misogynistic ones.  After all, they seem stuck in the view that things have to be the way they are, defeatist rather than simply offensive…

There is no real feminist answer to this problem.
Feminism focuses on work, treatment of women and sexual politics (including the avoidance of children) but this element of the majority of women’s lives is controversial for feminists.
Instead we have conflicting values at play here.  Let me show you why.

I want to work.
Work helps me feel a sense of self-worth, justifies the education that previous generations of female campaigners fought for me to be able to have, enables me to use my mind and skills putting something useful into the world, and have income to spend to make the money go around.

I want to raise my son.
I went through a lot to have him here safely, he is the most precious thing in our lives, I don’t think anyone else can raise him as well as his father and I can, he’s lovely, funny, interesting, cuddly, and I want to be with him.  I enjoy the camaraderie of early years motherhood (both online and in person) and, unlike Rebecca, I positively like the singing at toddler group (I’d better as I lead it!)

We have allowed the debate to become polarised, to become a choice.
Are we “real mums” who stay at home?  The household lives off their partner’s single income while they raise the children, balance the budget, avoid disposable nappies, chocolate and sweets, do baby signing, eat organic vegetables from their own plot, make the easter bonnets for the school competition and act as taxi service, PA, life coach, chef etc. etc.?
Or are we “real women” who go out to work?  We juggle career with home life responsibilities, earn our own money, build our careers and become the women we hope we can be, living as full, active members of the workforce.  And so our children go to daycare, and other people help with collecting them when the work deadlines have to take precedence, and we come home to collect overtired children that have been learning bad behaviour from the others they’ve been left there with…
Neither satisfies.

Society constantly undervalues the roles involved in childrearing.  Intelligent conversation, answering questions through exploration, reading together, learning tool use and acceptable behaviours… we have treated these as menial labour, partly because of an erroneous assumption that childcare involves a lot of gloriously free time (I learned otherwise – not all babies sleep in the day time), partly because looking after children ends up resulting in lots of genuinely menial work (more washing than you could ever imagine, feeding, napisaning the “real” nappies and tidying after toddlers).

In business, we are always told that the most important and valuable asset that a company has is its people.  Then look at the pay of childcare professionals, up to and including qualified teachers, and tell me that the pay really matches the long term investment that we as a society are making in the next generation of workers…

Then look at attitudes towards mothers in the workplace.
Leave aside the idea that it is middle class women that have benefited from feminism at the expense of working class men.
Despite the skills learned through parenting: multi-tasking, time management, compassionate communication (as one Guardian commenter described it), persuasion (getting my son dressed and out the house is sometimes the most difficult negotiation I have in a day)… none of these things matter one jot because they were away from the office and were not meetings-based skills (if you chair the PTA, that counts).

We are not the society we were in the time of the baby boomers.  Unlike our parents who are retired (and therefore able to help with the childcare?  But having done it once, why would they want to again?) we expect to work into our late sixties, to have minimal pensions, live into our eighties.
But we know that the penalty of taking time out of our labour market for childrearing impacts for the long-term.  So why allow 50% of the population to have their careers permanently scarred because of their gender and not their talents?
And just as our careers have to last longer, the need to be carers for partners or parents kicks in too.  The vast majority doing this at present are women – but that is generational.  What are today’s mums of young children going to say if it is them that this burden falls to again – because they’ve already lost out on career development through childrearing?
One woman commenting in the Guardian comments said she resented mothers expecting to pick up their career where they left off because they should accept the penalty for having had a baby and “working at 75% for 10 years” but a father was better than a bachelor because he has to work to support the family.  I’m horrified that another woman would say that.
I’m all for a right to request flexible working for all, including part-time working, but this commenter’s attitude shows there needs to be social pressure not only on companies but also with co-workers to ensure that working parents are not being made to feel guilty that they need to use leave, and work their conditioned hours so that they can spend time with their children rather than always the pressure to stay longer, and quantity of work appearing to be valued over quality.

And don’t think this is just a middle class issue – how many mothers working per hour in jobs that just about fit in with available childcare or school hours can’t get promotion because of not being able to take on the more awkward hours?
And if you drop out of the labour market, how will you get back in?

We need proper, high quality childcare available term time and holiday, recognising both the needs of the child in terms of care and learning, and of the parent in terms of a happy place to let their children develop which also allows them to work.

In the workplace, the first issue is one of recognising employees as humans not just resources.  Everyone has a life outside work – it ought to be a prerequisite!  But while being a champion skydiver is something to be respected and time allowed, accept that parents ought to put children first, or carers their care-ee first. Be clear that this is understood and they’ll be grateful for the flexibility and more dedicated and loyal as a result. Normalising shared parenting  - say, meaning that each parent has four days in their office each rather than five and three, now that would really help.

Finally, no one tells prospective parents what hell awaits them: birth, post partem life, colic, sleep deprivation, sore nipples, breasts as public property, being constantly covered in someone else’s bodily fluids…
This new job, at least in the first few months, one that is not limited in terms of office hours. So the men complaining that they’ve gone to work all day and why should they be handed a screaming bundle on returning home miss the point – the parent out to work may have worked nine hours but so has the parent looking after the child, and that evening caring time should be shared.

But it gets easier.  And after a year or so, they’re a delight.  When they go to nursery, you realise you’re sharing your house not just with an extension of you but an individual with thoughts, feelings, options, preferences, ideas and a whole life ahead of them which is theirs, not yours.  And with wrap around childcare you can even work!  Now, what to do about school journeys and school holidays…

But let’s challenge the perception that life isn’t fair and women should just accept it.  We do the next generation a disservice if we can’t persuade fathers that their role is with their children in person, not just as the wallet in the workplace, and employers that letting employees be themselves will help their wellbeing and their productivity.

So where are all the EU women?

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Five inter-related thoughts on the theme of where are all the women:

1) I’ve been following an interesting debate over on Twitter.  Life’s a bit complicated technologically at the moment so my joining in Tweets haven’t all got there, but the gist of the discussion is this: why, when there is an EU-related panel discussion, is it so hard to find a panel with gender balance?  Or more than just one woman?  Where are all the women? (@europasionaria, @EuropeanAgenda @maitea6 @euonymblog)

2) Meanwhile, the European Women’s Lobby has drawn attention to the issue of where all the women are in the European External Action Service (just 36% at present – the petition calling for more can be found here)?  Just over one third?  Seriously, where are all the women?

3) At the same time (and there is a link here too, I promise), my care arrangements have suddenly got more complicated: it now offers half an hour less time in the evenings with no good reason offered for the change, meaning a much bigger risk of being late…
Then, for reasons best known to themselves, the public transport system in London has decided that I should have to have a minimum extra half hour journey a day…
And Eurostar has changed the timing of the Brussels train meaning it is now impossible to catch our care at the end of a day at meetings in Belgium…
Argh!  Logistics nightmare!  But I know I’m not alone in this.
Thousands of families have complications. Many sort it out quietly, anecdotally often by having another baby or someone downgrading or giving up work.  Does it have to be like this?

4) Are the EU women working part-time and thus unavailable, or not highly enough ranked to take part in the more public roles?
Short answer is no – not all women are mothers, not all women work part-time. But a big group do.
A quick look at the UK: is it possible to be both successful in your career and work part-time? In the UK public sector, broadly yes.
What about the private and voluntary sectors? Well, the right to request flexible working is out there, for parents and carers at present and with a good take up rate.  It’s less clear how many do not request for fear of career implications or pessimism about being turned down.
Also there is a prevailing view that somehow part-time and full-time labour markets are and should be separate.  Well, this makes no sense given the quality of individuals looking to work part-time whose skills and experience should not be confined to lower level roles (particularly now that the retirement age is gone and older workers might want to reduce their hours without actually leaving work altogether). It also makes no sense given the news that the huge majority of jobs created recently have been part-time (let’s just hope it doesn’t also mean that they’ve been low-paid ones).
Recently there’s been quite a lot of resentment in newspaper letters pages towards demanding parents who have made a “lifestyle choice” to have kids and should not expect any special treatment as a result.
Let’s leave aside for now the “who pays your pension” argument, though it should be made.
More immediately, is there actually anything wrong with parents wanting both to play a major role in bringing up their own children and also using the skills and talents that they’ve spent their lives building up for the profit of all?
And there also seems to be fear about employing women as it is just “more difficult” than employing men (a view openly expressed by working mother Katy Hopkins on BBC Question Time).
So can it be done?  Well obviously yes.
Are there any non-superwoman role models?
The Evening Standard ran a brilliant piece (not available online) on a London mother working a very senior design job at a well-known designer store part-time three days a week – but noted that her father had given her the role with some resistance from other decision-takers. Dammit, why does it take a father to demonstrate that it can work?

What about the EU institutions and related organisations?  Given that the institutions staff are not covered directly by EU legislation on part-time working etc., how exemplary are the institutions as flexible employers?
And what about the lobbying industry?
Or the voluntary sector in Brussels?
Do they expect the Belgian childcare system to step in so parents can work full-time? Is there any scope to work part-time?
And, given the likelihood that family are not close by, what happens when meetings run on past the 6pm childcare cut-off point? Or the essential networking sessions are all held in the evenings?

5)  Final thought: the gender pay gap (notional average wage difference figure) and indeed everything affecting where the women are job-wise, are complex and interconnected.
Not least because it all matters for men too.
Measures taken now might not have immediate effect, but it does not mean no action is necessary.  Governments across the EU, and the institutions themselves, are realising this and trying to do something about it.
Gender balanced panels would be one small step, but a visible one.

A few thoughts on feminism…

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MotherhoodImage(Image from the brilliant http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/101408.html)

I’ve joined the British Mummy Bloggers social network. While the new blog hasn’t covered much parenting yet, it will do.
I was struck by the categories used as forums on the site, and joined the foodie, writing and feminist groups immediately.

Feminist?
Yes, I feel a bit uncomfortable with the word.
Here’s my comment on the forum in all its glory…

For me, feminism is not about being and acting like men, but about gaining respect for things that are important to me as a woman.
The dungaree-wearing, man-hating, bra-burning stereotype seems to me to be fading away, but feminism still seems to be a dirty word.
It tends to be used rather than in the equality sense as a way of portraying strong women as being in relentless pursuit of men to put them at a disadvantage, or used by usually younger women that take their clothes off in public to justify what is essentially titillation as something that makes them feel less uncomfortable ethically about something that’s earning them a lot of money…
I feel inherently uncomfortable with the term – having gone to a girls school and having had it thrown at us as an insult and often used as if it were a synonym for lesbian as opposed to a political position.

The most obvious issue on which I feel feminist is work – while of course my workplace is pretty good, why does it continue to be acceptable in the main to require parents (or others with caring responsibilities) to fit to a working pattern than causes stress and complication in their lives?
Surely you’d get the best out of people by acknowledging that they are in fact people and have lives outside the office?
Why isn’t there more term-time working/ work patterns that fit with school or nursery hours?
Do workers that work flexibly and/or part-time get taken as seriously?
Is working long hours a prerequisite for good annual reports and/or promotion prospects?
And is enough being done to help younger women focus onprofessional jobs with prospects and a future rather than just hairdressing, childcare, etc.? I hope so these days, but this is in itself complicated because in order to work I need some people providing childcare that doesn’t cost so much that it’s not worth me working…
These are the issues that I feel are what the modern feminist should focus on.

I also think that feminists need to be making the case that having children is not a “lifestyle choice” but an essential part of the continuation of the human race, and raising them is as valid a way of spending time as pursuing a “career” (I say this as someone attempting to do both, of course) but that we have the right to do both to the best of our abilities.
Women are our own worst critics – we seem to trumpet the superiority of our personal situation over those of our sisters (older women saying that younger shouldn’t have it easy because they didn’t, the constant SAHM – v- working mum rivalry, the look our best -v- accept us as we are arguments…)

But it’s more complicated than that, of course. I don’t think that being taken for fools by fashion that’s designed with an eye on women changing their bodies to fit an unattainable flat shape rather than the curves we’re meant to have (size zero? The UK average is a 16 – who are we kidding?) is something that we could or should accept – fat is a feminist issue as it used to be said.

And to continue on from that, I think that feminism has lost its way a bit.
It’s not about a right to be near naked in public or to sleep with as many men as possible and not be called a slag when theres no real male equivalent term.
It’s not about telling Muslim women not to wear a headscarf (more about listening to each woman’s reasons for choosing to do so or not, and being supportive either way).
It’s not about championing abortion as if it is a consequence-free event, ignoring the support that women need if they choose to end a pregnancy (which is a lifechanging event).
It’s not about coveting the next designer bag, latest clothes, perfect hair and grooming – we should be valuing women no matter what model of beauty they do or don’t conform to.  (I myself am Reubenesque and so a few centuries out of date…)
For me, it’s about championing the idea that women, collectively and individually have as much right to do things their way and develop as individuals and members of families and society as men do and to be encouraged, supportedand taken as seriously as men are while doing it.

I simply cannot understand why we have fewer women in politics than some in some developing countries (and was horrified by the comments from one man that only pretty women would make it past selection procedures), and so few women in very senior management roles etc. unless timeserving counts more than anything else (such as decision-making ability, leadership) and unfair selection procedures are in play somewhere in the process.  Of course a good way of doing something about this would be to incentivise men’s flexible and/or part-time working so that there was a more equal balance of men and women taking on caring roles so that this element could not be built into decisions on employing a woman as opposed to a man so easily as there would be a much more even “risk” of them needing not to work all the hours God sends…

I think feminism will either get a bit of a shot in the arm – or will be susumed into a wider set of issues of a similar nature - once you get more Generation Y in the workplace… bear with me on this.
There seems to be an expectation amongst employers that the current attitude that is perceived in GenY will eventually be replaced and that they’ll knuckle down and conform, as if thinking they can have it all their own way is youthful naiveity.
I disagree – I think that in a world where there’s no job for life, no final salary pension etc., the attraction of being a corporate drone is much less than it was say a decade ago.
This is a generation used to downloading what it wants to, instant communication with friends, mixing the personal and professional with confidence.  They’re a product of the 1980s and 1990s in which they grew up – consumerist but green, individualist and (perhaps because of having spent more time in educational or childcare environments?) more used to being indulged by working parents.  They do no easily accept being told “no”.
The only downside if you like is the constant exposure to rap music with its objectification of women and the risk that this passes over into the generational attitude… but then my husband points out that “Skins” is not actually a documentary…

So let’s hope in particular that GenY women kick up one hell of a stink if they feel they’re being treated unfairly in the workplace, or in life.  And let’s hope the men do too – after all a fight ofr recognition of the needs and diversity of the individual applies to them as much as to women.
And as the generation before them, let’s be helpful, supportive feminists to help them get there.