Tag Archives: woman

So are you going to have another one?

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I’m losing count of the number of times I’ve been asked this question.

At best, it’s when my adorable toddler is running around being cute.

At worst, it was during a job interview – something which I think it is actually illegal to ask me.

But every time I wonder what exactly I’m supposed to answer.
Generally it’s a well-meaning question.
But actually it risks being quite personal and intrusive.

Think about it in the context of work.
Now I’ve had some months to think it over, I think the correct answer would have been: “would you be asking that if it was my husband sitting here in this interview and not me?”
If it’s a question that an employer might want an answer to from a thirty-something woman, then there’s a whole load of assumptions that go behind that.
It correctly assumes that I would have to take time out of the office to have a baby and deal with the immediate issues with breastfeeding a newborn and postnatal maternal health – that’s one thing a father can’t do instead.
But I suspect it goes rather further than that, assuming that I would be taking the parental leave for any future child all by myself.  While for a couple, you may think of yourselves as a unit, at the moment your employer almost certainly doesn’t.
It’ll be interesting to see, if our law changes in 2011 to a system of shared parental leave, whether the assumption shifts from being that one parent will take all the leave to an assumption that each will take half.
And what did I actually say when I was asked?  Well, it was suffixed by, “I hope you don’t mind me asking…” and I think I said, “no it’s fine, and not at the moment“.
But it was sufficient for me to feel negative about the idea of working in that team.  What would’ve happened if I had joined and then got pregnant?  A sense that I’d gone against what I’d said before joining the team and therefore betrayal and untrustworthiness?

But it’s not just parental leave that figures in that sort of thinking.
What if my toddler or newborn was ill and I needed to take time off to be with them?  The rough truth is that childcare doesn’t do child illness.
You hear about “pink medicine babies” – the guilty reality that if the child is just a little under the weather most parents will shove a spoonful of calpol down their throats and deliver them to the childcare provider anyway.  They then spend the day dreading the call to say that their little bundle has a temperature and needs picking up NOW.  It’s not ideal from an employer’s perspective.  It’s not ideal from a parent’s perspective.  It’s certainly not ideal from the child’s perspective.
But – particularly in a recession, where it’s a financial imperative that people are in work- it happens.  All because people are afraid to take time off work to be there when their child is ill in case their work decides it can do without them, permanently.
Is it any wonder that the lesser-earning parent is often the one that takes the time out?   But again it is not always a matter of choice.  I keep hearing about employers who don’t exactly say to fathers that they can’t take time with their children but imply that they are letting themselves and the team down. But wouldn’t it be better if that didn’t automatically mean Mummy had to let hers down?

So are you going to have another one?
Is the question any better in your personal life?
It happened to me yesterday.
I was just getting my hair cut, and my toddler was pushing one of the chairs around the salon.  I’m sure she only meant it in a he’s-cute-wouldn’t-it-be-lovely-to-have-more way.
But it’s a risky question.

What happens if the answer is “Good God, no!  Awful little blighters, don’t know why we had the first one!”  Not the case for us, thank God, but how would the questioner feel if that was the answer they got?

Who knows what circumstances the family are experiencing?  May be they are sandwich generation, with adult caring responsibilities as well as a small child?  Not having a second one might be a matter of necessity rather than choice.

Who knows if the person they’re asking has tried and failed for months? Miscarriages are not exactly a bundle of laughs and not usually the thing to share in smalltalk situations.

The thing is, unless you are already pregnant with the next one, which I am not, it is impossible to answer that question without sounding defensive.

And you get all kinds of advice offered to you as if to compensate for the embarrassment caused.  Sometimes it just digs the hole deeper.
But ultimately the old platitude is the best: “it’ll happen when it happens“.
I don’t think you can really go wrong with that, as when it happens may be never…

What the EU has done for women…

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Have you ever tried to find a list of what the EU has done for women?
It’s International Women’s Day today… while Sarah Brown (in this odd unelected First Lady-type position that appears to have been evolving for Prime Ministers’ wives which rankles a little when celebrating issues of women’s equality) is leading the UK events for IWD, CSW (the UN Commission on the Status of Women) is meeting in New York, and the EU is… well, let’s see.

Did you know that the European Commission had launched a Women’s Charter on Friday, in advance of IWD?  Here it is.
The Charter was accompanied by a Eurobarometer survey on gender equality. Interesting for me was that, while the UK participants surveyed shared a common set of priorities with the other EU Member States for addressing gender equality, when asked which sort of organisation (NGO, EU institution, national government, or others) had done most for gender equality, only about 10% of Brits cited the EU institutions.
Not really surprising I suppose, given the UK ambivalence towards the EU and tendancy to simply bank any good thing that the EU does…
So I decided to try and help out and post a link to the Commission’s list of what the EU has done for women. I Googled the phrase (amazing how quickly that has become the first port of call for all information searches these days) but nothing came up from the Commission’s own website.

Actually, the best source of information has turned out to be the website of Arlene McCarthy MEP – from four years ago. So with apologies to Arlene (much of this is hers, but I’ve removed the party political commentary), here’s a quick list of what the EU has done for women:

1) Moving towards Equal Pay

  • Equal pay for women workers: this was included in the original Treaty of Rome, the first EU Treaty in 1957
    (NB this was 13 years before the UK legislation on equal pay. Given that the UK was looking at EEC membership at that point could it have been the prospect of joining the EEC that prompted the UK to adopt its legislation?)
  • Equal pay for work of equal value: despite the equal pay legislation, many companies classified jobs done by men and women differently, paying higher wages to men for doing jobs that actually required similar levels of skills. Many women since have won equal pay claims, some backdated years including school dinner ladies, hospital and factory workers.
    (Some people still seem to think that heavy lifting and digging is “worth more” than hanging out in a warm classroom with a bunch of snotty 5 year olds… despite the fact that the latter is sometimes like an exercise in germ warfare)
  • Equal rights for part-time workers, better rights for agency workers: nearly half of British women workers work part-time, four in five of the part-time workforce, and about 5 million women. In the past, many women lost out but since July 2000 part-time workers have had equal rights to pro-rata paid leave, pensions, maternity rights, access to training and other company perks and benefits.
    (Jolly good thing too. Ridiculous to assume that people are less capable and less clever if they have other responsibilities outside the workplace – unless the hidden job criteria is soul-selling and working all the hours God sends to the glory of the company?)
    And via the Agency Workers legislation, temporary workers have more clearly defined rights too (UK rules set out here).
  • Minimum wage: love it or hate it, there’s no denying that when the UK opted into the European Social Chapter the biggest winners were those on the lowest pay, for whom the basic rights it guaranteed brought about the minimum wage. This is particularly important for women – 70% of low paid British workers are women (including a disproportionate number working part-time hours) and over a million British women have since benefited.
  • Equal rights to a pension: Pensioner poverty is a real problem for women, many of whom were excluded from company pension schemes because they worked part-time or had career breaks to have children. EU laws prevent pension discrimination and guarantee equal rights for all to social security benefits.

2) Better rights for women as parents

  • Maternity rights: About 70,000 women have babies in Britain each year, and that number is growing. The EU sets a baseline of a year working for an employer in order to get maternity rights (but UK law is actually better and the directgov website has a fantastic calculator setting out the minimum requirements in the UK).
  • Parental leave: Since 2002, a new EU law means that any parent with children under 5 has the right to a minimum of 13 weeks parental leave to be taken whenever they choose over the 5 year period. That extends to 18 weeks for any parent of a disabled child under 18.
    (This is ideal if you have an ill child – though I wonder what would happen if just before a child hits 5 all parents who have not used the 13 weeks unpaid leave actually took the time to go once-in-a-lifetime travelling or similar? Seems a great opportunity, but is it even possible?)
  • Right to return to work: I take this so much for granted that the idea that this is a new element of maternity rights law is shocking. Discrimination against pregnant women is outlawed (doesn’t mean it is not still happening though) and, importantly now, particularly in the recession, a woman’s job (but not her specific post) must be held open so she can return to a post without loss of pay or status. Many older women will remember the days when getting pregnant meant losing your job (heck, there are people that remember when as a woman you had to leave the Foreign Office when you got married! And if you read any of the Jilly Cooper short stories from the 1970s you’ll see that it was a cultural expectation among the middle classes even if it wasn’t a requirement). EU laws have put paid to that.
  • Paid holidays and a shorter working week: Since 2000, workers have been given the automatic right to 4 weeks paid annual holiday, and a guaranteed at least one day off per week (which was not a given for part-time workers in sectors such as cleaning, who often only got one day off every fortnight). (How on earth do people function on less than 4 weeks holiday a year? I know it’s only 2 weeks in the USA, but when do working parents get to see their kids? And who looks after the children in the school holidays?)
    And under the Working Time Directive, employees can no longer be obliged to work more than 48 hours per week, are guaranteed breaks and night shifts are restricted to 8 hours. Despite the right to work shorter British workers work the longest hours in Europe. One in eight mothers work more than 40 hours a week, 30% of fathers more than 48 hours, taking its toll on family life.

3) Protecting women

  • Protection: the EU is working on legislation against Female Genital Mutilation, and Gender Based Violence as well as combating human trafficking (which is the fastest-growing criminal activity in comparison to other forms of organised crime).
  • International protection: by working together on relations with third countries, in EU foreign policy and within international organisations, the EU Member States can help women in developing countries too.

4) Combating the Gender Pay Gap

If you are a fan of bus campaigns, then you might have noticed the Gender Pay Gap campaign on the buses in capital cities across the EU. But what’s it all about?
One measurement of whether equality has been achieved is the gender pay gap, that is the difference between the average pay of women and the average pay of men.
The gender pay gap can be contentious when discussed with some businesses, so it needs to be remembered that it is a crude tool and the contributing factors are (in the words of the Women and Work Commission in the UK) “complex and multi-faceted”.
But if anyone tries to tell you it only exists because women take time out of the labour market to have children or to work part-time (and that part-time jobs “ought” to be lower paid as part of a lifestyle choice being made), then its worth noting that the National Equality Panel report out this year said that new graduates in the same subject from the same university experience a statistically significant gender pay gap within three years of graduation.
So the EU has also launched a gender pay gap calculator so you can measure the inequality where you work (the UK Government Equality Office has had a methodology on their website for a year).
The new Women’s Charter promises a number of measures, legislative and non-legislative, to tackle the gender pay gap – no idea what these will actually be (but it’s worth keeping an eye on this to ensure that the measures are about valuing women and men equally, because if the drive to get the headline figure down starts to become the end in itself then we could end up with daft ideas like restricting access to part-time work which would be to the detriment of women who would lose the ability to organise their family life as they would wish…)

So the EU has actually done quite a lot to the benefit of women.
And, as the Women’s Charter indicates, there’s still more that can be done.
I come from a Member State that is at the forefront of women’s equality, even if we’re a bit embarrassed to talk about it in those terms. And even here, women are still not able to live the fulfilled lives that they should be able to if we were truly free to balance our working lives and families lives as we wished without constraints forced on us by others (e.g. availability of childcare).

So a very happy International Women’s Day to you.
And, as it is a women’s day and we’re free to do things our way, an air kiss on both cheeks and a gentle hug to each and every one of you.

Confessions of a partial polyglot political mummy blogger…

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untitled

Um, bit embarrassing this.

I’ve been wondering why, in amongst the spam I get from various Russians offering me photos of Miley Cyrus, why I keep getting hits on my blog from www.google.de and in particular from http://maedchenmannschaft.net .  I had a look at the site, but couldn’t see any reason why a site that was apparently called “makeover team” would have any interest in my blog on politics, parenting, women’s issues, faith etc. so I deleted the trackback as a spam thing.  Oops.

I don’t speak German, but there’s a good reason for this, honest. 
When I was at school, languages were still compulsory (nowadays they are introduced in primary school but are optional after age 14 which of course has led to a decline in the number of Brits good at languages).  However, my school had 4-form entry and decreed that two forms would learn French, Latin and Spanish and two French, Latin and German. 
My thirteen year old self thought about this: I was good at French and felt at home in France, and as my Mum grew up in Germany (sort of, it’s a long story) and we’d always had German christmas foods at home – lebkuchen, stollen, that sort of thing (God bless Lidl for giving us an easy source of them this year) so learning German looked like a sensible, logical step. 80 million native speakers, nice climate, not too far from home… so I chose Spanish. 
I looked at the total number of speakers worldwide (452,480,979 apparently), the fact that practically the whole continent of South America speaks it and calculated that if I was going into the world of business I’d be best off learning Spanish.  Besides, Spanish is a romance language, like French, and therefore relatively easy to pick up if you’ve learned one…

At university I got to live in Barcelona to study (in an Erasmus group, which meant that actually I was learning Spanish in a group with French and German students) and was allocated a Spanish student to “buddy” me (she prefered to speak Catalan, of course, this being Barcelona). 
I got to spend a big chunk of time in Basel, Switzerland, because my boyfriend at the time was doing his language placement there, and because he was working I got to pick up some German language (which when I use it now, makes native German speakers laugh becasue apparently I speak a few words not of German but of Schweiz Deutch, which is rather like a German saying they speak a few words of English and coming out with Geordie…) 
I’ve bought two CD-based German courses (intended to use while breastfeeding at night but a DVD would’ve been better).  I’ve been to Germany on more occasions than I’ve been to Spain, but I still can’t really do more than ask my way to the U-bahn station and buy 500g of ham.  Oh and apologise in Swiss German for barely speaking German… 
But despite all this, somehow I’ve just never got around to learning German properly, although I’ve picked up restaurant Italian and Simpsons/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer-subtitle Dutch in the meantime… 

But as the references keep coming from that same website, I did a bit of investigation and played with translating the webpage that apparetnly mentioned me.  Here, coutrsey of Google Translate is why I keep getting links from http://maedchenmannschaft.net/jetzt-vorschlagen-die-bloggerin-des-jahres/:

Jetzt vorschlagen: Die Bloggerin des Jahres von Susanne

bloggermaedchen09Es gibt so viele tolle und wichtige Blogs von Frauen, wir selbst kommen gar nicht hinterher, sie euch alle vorzustellen. Und weil bloggende Frauen noch immer viel zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, es aber mehr als genug Perlen in der weiblichen Blogosphäre gibt, wählen wir 2009 zum ersten Mal das Bloggermädchen des Jahres.
Ab sofort und bis zum 31. Dezember 2009, 18:00 Uhr könnt ihr hier in den Kommentaren eure Lieblingsbloggerin vorschlagen (einmal reicht), sehr gern mit einer kurzen Begründung, warum ihr Blog so toll ist. Die Abstimmung über das Bloggermädchen des Jahres 2009 läuft anschließend vom 2. bis zum 31. Januar.
Viel Spaß! Eure Mädchenmannschaft

There are so many great and important blogs by women, we did not even come afterward, introducing you to them all.
And because blogging women still receive far too little attention, however, there are more than enough gems in the female blogosphere, we choose 2009 for the first time Girl blogger of the year.
Effective immediately and until 31 December 2009, 18:00 Clock can suggest it here in the comments your favorite blogger (once is sufficient), very happy with a brief explanation of why her blog is so great. The vote on the Blogger Girls of 2009, then runs of 2 31 January.
Enjoy! Your girls team

And here’s the link to me, courtesy of Euroblogger Julien Frisch:

Julien Frisch sagt:
9. Dezember 2009 um 00:24
Ich weiß nicht, ob ihr auch englischsprachige Blogs akzeptiert, aber ich würde Bit more complicated… vorschlagen.
Die Autorin Jo ist Mutter und bezeichnet sich daher gerne als “Mummy blogger”, schreibt einen tollen Mix aus persönlichen und politischen Beiträgen – und wenn sie twittert mischen sich oft politische Tweets mit Anmerkungen zu ihrem kleinen Kind.
Letzte Woche hat sie erst ihren Sohn in den Schlaf gelesen und dann als eine von wenigen Frauen am ersten Skype-Wave-Twitter Eurobloggertreffen mit Bloggern aus ganz Europa teilgenommen.
Ein tolles Profil! 

Julien Frisch said:
9. December 2009, at 00:24
I do not know if she accepted English-language blogs, but I would suggest bit more complicated ….
The author Jo is a mother and is therefore happy to refer to herself as a “Mummy blogger,” she writes a great mix of personal and political contributions – and if she twitters her tweets often mingle with political comments about her small child.
Last week she read only her son to sleep and then took part as one of the few women on the first Skype-Wave tweet blogger meeting with bloggers from all over Europe.
A great profile!

 Thanks Julien for the nomination!  It’s lovely to read how others read my stuff, and it’s true, I’m more a mummy tweeter than a mummy blogger (partly because I try to guard my son’s privacy a bit which is easier to do in 140 characters than a long blogpost). 
But I want to show that female bloggers, even though motherhood is a massive part of a woman’s life, don’t lose their ability to have interesting thoughts on wider issues too.  Why shouldn’t I combine the two?  My son thinks it’s perfectly normal that Daddy does the shopping on line but Mummy writes, talks to people and can make the compter play his favorite songs from Cbeebies. 
I desperately wanted to be part of Joe Litobarski’s Euroblogger’s meet up even though it clashed with my son’s bedtime -and let’s face it, if someone like me doesn’t get involved how will the experience I’ve got of work, politics and life and the ideas I want to be able to share and debate get out there?  Life doesn’t stop when you’re a women that’s got kids, it changes and you have as much place and as much right to have views as everyone who doesn’t, or is a man, or has children that sleep…

You may or may not know that the subject of the Eurobloggers discussion was the problem of the fact that we all blog in different languages.  There are various ways of dealing with this, from amchine to manual translation, but I’ve added a tool to the right sidebar (go on, take a look) so you can, if you like read my site in German.  Happy reading!

And finally, this post has taken ages to write because my son refused to settle to sleep so we’ve had stories, two different pairs of pajamas, a baby doll that needed a nappy change and a refill of milk.  That’s why there’s not so many women mummyblogging who get to spend time on other issues… it really is a full-time job and there’s no 39 hour week legislation in force for this job…

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.