I suppose this proves that women just can't stand the heat.........

I think the childcare thing is difficult. Yes, the discussion should be about childcare impacting on the careers of both parents. And I do regularly correct women who, in RL, talk about childcare costs coming off their salary.

But the reality is that women opt out of employment, or are underemployed, because of family far more often than men. Improvements to childcare could make a change to women's prospects far more quickly than we are ever likely to get a societal change such that men take the hit from poor childcare options just as often as women.

Re the single women thing, there are obviously lots of other patriarchal issues in the workplace and we shouldn't forget them.

Men with children look solid and reliable good citizens especially if they do a school pickup once a year or perhaps attend a play.

Women without children are waiting to get pregnant at the worst possible moment for a company and swan off on maternity leave leaving everyone in the lurch. Or they're unnatural ball breakers if they don't want marriage and/or kids.

I have just finished reading Shattered by Rebecca Asher which was very interesting on this and as a disclaimer - I'm another ex- City lawyer!

Having children is known to be a nightmare with childcare and juggling 2careers so a lot of very competent women are opting out before they are married and certainly before having children by choosing jobs or specialisms which are known to be comparatively family friendly rather than necessarily what they really want - e.g solicitor rather than barrister; teacher not academic etc.

Then maternity leave is so long abc the mother still has to take do much of it, that it becomes the easier default for her to continue doing most of the child stuff while the father works and gets to opt in on his terms. Even now it is transferable, take up of paternity leave is low and badly paid if that is also the main family income.

And then employers are suspicious of men asking for flexible working and it is definitely a 'less serious' marker. DH and I take it in turns to look after the children when they're ill. My work just accept it, his work grumble about how it should be my job. (DH and I do exactly the same job for different organisations).

I know what the answers should be, but they're not going to happen!

Men also have children. Why does that not affect their careers? Why is it that a woman without children still don't do as well as a man?

I don't agree that our discussing the impact of child care "has the effect of reaffirming the idea that childcare is the woman's responsibility". What's the basis for saying this?

seeker Re: your earlier comment about this turning into a thread about childcare. I find this happening often - any talk about equality eventually becomes a discussion on childcare. This has the effect of reaffirming the idea that childcare is the woman's responsibility. Isn't it interesting/depressing? In academia, I read that a study found that a single woman with no children still does not do as well on the career ladder than a married man with children. Childcare may be an issue, but it's not everything. There are more factors that we need to think about.

AP sadly I think boys' independent schools are still pumping out sufficient numbers who will take up the roles. The number of state educated partners is also lagging badly.

I used to be very against quotas thinking that it should always be the best person hired for a job. Now I have a different view. Those who are promoted to senior jobs are not necessarily the best but they are willing to sacrifice their family lives to succeed. I think there is a legitimate societal interest in saying that women should be promoted and quotas would help. Income at the highest level would probably come down but at the moment incomes are historically high. Plateau partners were not making £1m+ a year until 10 years or so ago. They're maintaining it now largely by squeezing the pyramid.

What I think will be interesting is whether there are still enough of the 'sacrifice all' types in the next couple of generations. Certainly those coming of age in this economic climate seem rather more cynical about giving that much to a firm (rather than your own business) . If it reaches a tipping g point, those people won't be numerous enough to sustain that model without at least some tweaks. I also hope that the client drive to fixed fee etc might help.

But you cannot force everyone to want a better worklife balance.

So long as there are the minority few who are prepared to sacrifice all to reach for the stars, it is hard to justify promoting those who want to adopt a saner model or who take time out during their career, ahead of the hungry ones.

It is in the AngloSaxon countries (UK, US) that people at the top of business have rockstar remuneration. In the US, you might have more female representation at the top because there is less of the flexi time/mummy track dichotomy. In other European countries, you might have more female representation at the top because there is less of a differential between the salaries at the top and bottom of the scales and therefore fewer people (typically male) having an incentive to shoot for the moon leaving others in their wake.

Another legal bod here. When I started the commonly espoused view was that women would succeed in greater numbers as the firms would need to compete for the best talent. Fast forward a goodly number of years and it hasn't happened. Firms don't need to promote the best. They only need a small number of good-enoughs who will put the work in. I agree there are now some issues with fewer people being willing to put themselves in for partnership but I don't see that leading to more women being partners. Firms won't change the long hours culture willingly and generally refuse to acknowledge out loud that this together with child care is a huge part of the problem. I worked with a company in Sweden a while back and it was amazing how openly women and men talked about their child care - usually about whose turn it was to collect the children. It was a small sample I saw but very interesting.

I think the thing with the US is you are either in or you are out. You can't go part time - pretty much unheard of, no right to ask, you'd probably lose your health insurance and your paid vacation. You take maternity leave for a very short period (and as an interesting aside, maybe this contributes to more people returning, because you don't change pace and your whole leave is spent planning your return).

What I think that means is that those who stick it out compete on a far more equal playing field (though I am under no illusions who bears the burden of nursery pick up time).

But, and it's a big but, I'd be interested to know what their attrition levels are overall - do more women leave the work force with no compromise option.

And another big but, I'm not sure I'd want to live in a society that treated people that way. I think that, long term, the solution is moving to better work life balance, not forcing everyone to hand over every waking hour and their soul to make it.

I agree with Amanda about the magic circle/City pyramid model. The real rewards go to a very lucky (usually male) few. The rest move into less demanding and lower paying jobs and the City law firms don't particularly care and might even encourage it, particularly if these people move to work for a client. But the power (international deals, silly money) go to the few who do make it.

There is no shortage of fresh blood wanting to fill partner boots. There isn't a dearth of ambitious young (often male) people who want to shoot for the moon. The rewards are there.

Why don't more women go for gold?

I work for a global US-based law firm. Funnily enough, they have a ratio of 30% female partners compared to around the woeful 13% for UK magic circle law firms. I was quite surprised to see this. From this small sample, the UK is apparently trailing behind on promoting women. The US has one of the worst benefit packages for maternity leave (my colleague returned after 3 months and that is not unusual) and flexible working. But they promote women more!

I think a more prosaic explanation is that once you have children, you gain a different sense of perspective about life, and you look at all the bllcks, office politics, absurd expectations, unreachable targets and general shte blah blah blah that goes on in workplaces especially highflying environments, and think, 'no thanks!' and you settle for less. I think women are more likely to feel like this than men - or maybe it's more acceptable for women to downshift - and it becomes a vicious circle, I dunno!

Sorry, missed a bit.

I wasn't a 'work all night' department. They can work you pretty damn hard before quality drops! What is frustrating is that there is little reward for efficiency. Whether the client is being billed on a time or a fixed fee, your annual targets are still mostly about hours recorded. The person who stays half the night looks like the model employee on paper.

I wasn't magic circle, but I was City.

There have been a lot of female law graduates for a long time now. When I was training in excess of ten years ago, there were more women than men. We all thought that things would change. That all we needed was numbers. Nope. Law firms rely on a massive pyramid. They need lots of people at the bottom to do all the volume work and a few at the top. So it doesn't matter if they lose lots of talent. In fact, the business model requires it. And the ways they measure attainment mean that they don't see the fact that often those they lose might be some of the best. So although they hand wring about female attrition levels, they have no real incentive for change.

AmandaPayne, I think law firms may well have to change their ways, not least because more than half (and rising) of the qualified graduates are women. But I have always thought that the magic circle model is designed by a select few lunatics. I accept that in a few departments like M&A it is hard to avoid burning the midnight oil, but otherwise surely the quality of (and also value for money) work suffers when it is being done by exhausted associates?

Thinking about politics in particular, I think it poses particular challenges for women with children.

Most of those women will have a working partner rather than a traditional stay at home supporter. Statistically, highly educated, ambitious women tend to marry similar men and are far less likely to have a pure 'helpmeet' partner. Politics involves long hours, significant time away from home (unless you have a London constituency) so unless you have a partner whose work is very flexible, that needs cast iron childcare. Although MPs have a decent salary, they don't have the type of high earner salary necessary to maintain the 'two nanny' set up that many, for example, banking females would be able to utilise. I'd be interesting to hear what the expectations for hours and locations are for MPs in other countries.

Also, I think that the unpredictability of politics is probably a greater disincentive to women than men (again, I'm going to leave for the time being the issue of why women are more likely to feel the pull of time at home and the guilt if they don't see their children for the whole working week). It's hard to invest all that effort and time away when it could all go by the way every four years. it's not like if you leave a law firm and could get another job at another firm. There is nowhere else to be an MP. Again, I'm not sure how this compares to other countries.

Will keep pondering...

Agree,if you are not available at all times seen as less committed

The problem in my area (legal) was certainly that the whole system was set up to eat as much of your life as possible. Your salary is a fixed cost and you are judged by how many hours you record in a year. The chats you might have with senior partners take place when you bump into them at 7/8/9 pm, as earlier in the day they are rushing to meetings or on conference calls.

Pre-children, most men and women accepted this. I worked crazy hours. And in many ways they got crazier post-Blackberry. I once had a colleague get cross because I hadn't joined a conference call he had organised on a deal on a Sunday. A conference call he had simply notified people of by email a couple of hours earlier.

Post children, I had to carve some time back, or I would never have seen them. But even though I was earning less and working almost as much, the perception was that I wasn't on track any more. And I didn't have those key networking conversations and trips to the pub.

And if you are the boss of a firm like that, I get why you want the father who will work all hours with no boundaries and not me. So I think that the changes need not to be focused on women with children. It needs to be about people generally carving more life for themselves. Because that's the only way large numbers of women will want to play the game. (Although why mothers feel pulled towards work/life balance and men don't is a whole other post).

Interestingly, I have had two conversations with partners at law firms recently about how they have issues finding people (not women, anyone) who wants to make partnership. The rewards aren't seen as there and the path to get there is seen as too long and too unpredictable. If this genuinely becomes a succession planning issue, law firms may have to change their ways.

I agree that pressure to do the 'best' for your dcs comes from everywhere, and social media plays quite a big part of that. I personally managed to do everything I consider to be the 'best' for my dcs, including working ft from when they were small (dd1 was 13 months when I started ft uni, dd2 was 6 months when I went back to work ft).

BOTH parents need to be able to work flexibly, as flexible working for just one means that person is the one who is expected to drop everything when something crops up like dcs being ill.

Popadom - I work in a mainly female environment even up to board level. I have to say rather than how big is your cock its more back stabbing and I can't believe she did that! And for that reason I don't want to go back after ml. However we don't have a choice, fortunately we have free child care in the form of mil, but even then I have had all the ambition bitched out of me and I will be going back part time, with no enthusiasm other than finding an exit strategy

As for the lady with 11 children and a horse. I should imagine she has more benefits other than child benefit. She prob gets housing allowance, payment from the father if she is single, heating allowance, employment benefit. Etc. and just cause she has a horse doesn't mean she is spending loads of money - I should think the horse isn't shod, has 2nd hand rugs, and lives out - therefore a much reduced amount to full livery at a prestigious yard. I'm not sure what my point is. Something to do with the underlying complex circumstances to each case - 11 children and a horse living on child benefit, bit more to it than that. And, actually, assuming she has no debt, she handles her finances better than most.

Agree wholeheartedly holey
I think that's why I tell any new mum/mum to be that asks for advice how it really is as nicely as I can. I worry I'll be like one of the ones who totally sugarcoated it when I asked...and I really wish they hadn't!

I know one woman who's a total mother earth type, loves it, bfed her Dc til he was 2, stayed home and was happy to never go out...and good for her. She was happy. But it's not one size fits all & it's hard to fight that when you're a knackered new parent at first, alongside all the workplace issues, money issues etc.

My work is very flexible. The trouble is that dc are not flexible. They need a lot of attention and get sick at inconvenient times.

The work still has to be done and slogging away in the evenings and weekends is not healthy.