Mothers are being discriminated against by unsympathetic bosses and resentful colleagues, Ailish Connellyreports
I was out shopping the other day when I bumped into a friend, as you do in Dunnes, and we got talking. I hadn't seen her in quite a while because the last I had heard was that she had married and had a new baby and here she was in front of me with her gorgeous one-year-old daughter, who was busy trying to somersault backwards out of the cart.
It was when I asked her how she was managing with her job and the baby, her newly refurbished home and the general juggle that is every day that her face crumpled, tears threatened and she raged at me that "actually I'm now self-employed". Self-employed? I thought that she was a big hit in her big job.
It turned out she was now self-employed because her delightful ex-employers had sidelined her swiftly when they heard of her pregnancy, had treated her like her brain had suddenly evaporated and had eventually manoeuvred her out the door. No bonus, no redundancy, just good luck now, see ya around, sayonara, and don't call us, we'll call you.
This was a few months after she had had an outstanding evaluation with the promise of a large bonus because she had worked her rear off 16 and 18 hours a day as an account director of a PR agency.
But then she had committed the cardinal sin. She got pregnant, how dare she, seeing as she was married and in her 30s, but with maternity leave and the not being available 18 hours a day afterwards for the ego-maniacs that she worked for, she couldn't be a productive member of staff any longer, now could she?
There was nothing overtly illegal about the company's treatment of her, but they had made it impossible for her to continue working there, by subtly changing her job description, by isolating her, by giving her work heretofore considered to be for junior staff members and by their macho-lad, gender-biased, smart-alecky behaviour towards her.
She explained to me that she had felt so betrayed and so used that her confidence in her abilities was shattered. But she was thrilled with her new baby and slowly other work had come in and it suited her better. Despite her wishes she is now freelance and maybe it is better to let bygones be bygones so she will do no more about it.
I left our encounter feeling slightly cheated on her behalf and in the subsequent days when I asked other women if they had similar experiences of the work/motherhood imbalance the floodgates opened.
One woman told me she had worked in a former health board, where the annual budget didn't include provision for women going on maternity leave. So off you went to have your baby and your work was waiting for you upon your return, because there was nobody else to pick up the slack.
The office staff lived in perpetual dread of someone announcing a happy forthcoming event because they were expected to somehow make do and were made to feel inadequate if they couldn't make do. Why would I not be surprised if the situation hasn't altered one tiny bit?
Another woman told me how she had returned to her job after her maternity leave to find her office occupied by someone else, all her stuff moved and her computer commandeered by her previous "junior".
She got her office back by digging her executive heels in and fighting for it. The change in attitude towards her in her workplace wasn't hard to detect. And it wasn't terribly positive. She was now a Mum and she could pay for having a life outside the office by having her position in the company undermined.
Before she had her baby, while she had never been a "lad" by virtue of biology, she had at least networked and observed some of the office traditions and involved herself in some of the politics. It was, she reasoned, part of the job.
That changes when you have a tiny dependant. You just don't have the time. Neither do you have time for the golf outings and deal-making sessions. Now she was totally out of the loop. She left that workplace as soon as she could.
There were tales of missed promotion opportunities and stalled salary increases, of demotion, of simmering co-worker resentment because the mums couldn't always stay late or had to cancel meetings suddenly due to illnesses or other family crises. And female bosses, whether they were parents or not, weren't any more sympathetic.
I'm not saying that working mothers should get special treatment but a bit of humane understanding wouldn't go amiss. If it's made too difficult for them to work, mothers leave paid employment. If we want the productivity of women in our economy, we need to have family-friendly work environments.
Even those who couldn't blame a family-unfriendly workplace had their stories of woe. I heard how a woman had resumed her freelance job three weeks after the birth of her child. Three weeks, when she was barely functioning again as a separate human being, when the stitches had just about healed. Her breastfeeding routine went out the window. She needed the money.
There is more than just a glass ceiling operating against mothers who choose or want to work outside the home. There is also a revolving front door and you can keep heading towards the out direction if you plan on having kids. Not in all organisations of course, many promote work/life balance and actively assist the participation of women in the workplace.
But there are societal barriers both covert and overt that affect women's advancement, while the notion of workplace advancement for mammies is in general, of "roll around the floor in merriment" proportions.
The Government can bring in equality legislation till the cows come home but it's much harder to tackle the cultural and financial issues that truly power people's existences. Girls do better in school and college, then have to work harder than their male counterparts to prove themselves to their (usually male) bosses.
Then when they have established themselves they get shunted aside in their 30s, because they have the bare-faced cheek to follow their biological raison d'être and have a child.
Not everyone can afford or wants to follow what the Americans call the "opt-out revolution" and leave their jobs to puree aduki beans for their darlings. But if a woman does decide to work after childbirth she should be saluted and encouraged.
After all, the big daddy won't be fielding snide comments and be expected to leave his job, will he?