I work in IT, so it's very male dominated, in fact I don't work with any other women and only see one very occasionally as part of my role. I took a career break for 8 years after having DC2, and had another two children. I returned to work a year ago for an entirely different company, but same sort of role. Not for the money, but because I was utterly depressed, lonely and losing all sense of my own identity and self worth.
Since returning to work I've got a lot of my self esteem back, I find the children a lot less stressful and I'm nowhere near as lonely. Except I don't want to be working full time, at least for the next year or so. I want a four day week until my youngest (3) starts school in September next year. So it's not a forever request and as I've been here over a year I'd like to think I'm not taking the p* by asking.
Unfortunately my team is entirely male, mostly under 30 (no parents, no understanding or interest in children) and only my manager is older and he does not have children although I think he wanted to. He is not very tolerant at all of any requests related to working from home or anything outside of core hours. I make very, very, very few requests like this, maybe 3-4 in the last year, others make a lot more which he randomly grants depending on his mood. He wants everyone in the office, all the time.
Other managers in the company are a lot more flexible - some teams I meet up with work from home half the week if they need to or have reduced hours. Trouble is, I don't have the skills (or even close, it's not transferable without an entirely new degree!) for those other teams as it's a different sort of IT - my team is the only one that uses my particular skills.
Personally I think I could do my job in a four day week. My boss will disagree on principle. I can't do compressed hours because of the limitations of childcare (or I can't compress them enough to still do 37.5.. maybe 34) or I'd not see the children in the evenings then which defeats the purpose.
It's a large company (~1000 employees) so a reasonably sized HR department. They know my manager well as he's been with the company forever. Would they respect my confidentiality if I went to them for advice? Is there anything I should be careful not to say when talking to HR?
Has anyone been through something similar in a male dominated environment?
Thanks for reading!
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Wanting to reduce hours in very male/non-parent-friendly company
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LeftoverCrabsticks · 28/02/2017 14:14
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