Is it OK to have a career rant here?

To make you feel better, I went part time when I had my first child, then my life imploded completely and I had to stop work. Years later, after working from home, freelance, v part time etc, to my complete surprise I started to get the career I'd long since given up on back on track.

I am 47 and have been offered a full time senior role in a very prestigious organisation. I am excited and daunted to be back out there. But what I want to say is - don't give up. Never, never, never give up. We all work so much longer & have much longer working lives. It is a marathon, not a sprint & you may be overtaking them yet when they burn out.

(Sorry, have namechanged mid thread - I was/am Scarlett)

The biggest con though is surely that you can't both have it all.

Someone in the partnership has to sacrifice something for the other to have the unfettered opportunity to succeed.

It is difficult to see an example where both parents have reached the top of their respective tree. (There are obviously exceptions, but they are exceptions).

yes, but branching you are basically saying women made poor choices and deserved what they got. I always put my career first and realise children definitely don't need a parent at home to do well. That is why I am like your male colleagues and earn what they do. Women who think housework and childcare should be put above their earnings lose out - you could say more fool them and that all we really want is what men have as Miriam G said the other day. She hasn't played second fiddle to her husband and so earns more than him and the family is all the happier for it.

In other words the big con can be that small children need mother at home. Ditch the con and the world is your oyster.

Badgers it is changing, and it has got loads better in my time, and I know that the new generation of women moving up in my trade won't have the same shit my lot did - I just feel like my work is done now (like I said, I'm tired of it all).
There are more women than ever now, and I do my utmost to develop their self belief and ensure they are pushing for fairness when they need to, but at just shy of 40 with bad knees, bad hips, achilles problems and now throwing crohn's into the mix I'm ready for something new and different, I no longer enjoy my job like I used too.
I've another 20+ years of work left in me so plenty of time to start over and work at something different - I'm quite excited about starting over, it's the money I'll miss!

As for your 9 month deployments - just wow.
See, I view that sort of thing as an under the radar way of making it so untenable for a serving couple with children to continue that one of you will opt out. That way they've not sacked you for daring to reproduce, you've chosen to leave.
I'm always interested to hear of couples like the Commodore & the Commander you mentioned, how have they managed? Who has sacrificed opportunity etc? (If at all), do their kids go to boarding school? etc.

I have to say, up until the last couple of years I have loved my job, and I have absolutely no regrets at all - it's just not for me anymore.

This is a list of my contemporaries, all of whom are around the age of 40 and achieved grades of AAA or AAB etc in the early 90's.

A. Male. Russell Group University. Investment Banker and financier at v high level. Unmarried, no children.

B. Male. Russell Group University. Investment banker, now hedge funder. Married, two children. Wife was a city lawyer, briefly a partner, now almost entirely a SAHM.

C. Male. Russell Group University. Lawyer, partner in City law firm. Married, one child. Wife works PT.

D. Male. Russell Group University. Chartered accountant, director in big 4 firm. Unmarried, no children.

E. Male. Redbrick university plus Oxbridge postgrad. Lawyer, partner in city law firm. Married, two children. Wife works nearly FT but in well paid legal role, so lots of paid childcare used.

F. Male. Redbrick university. Engineer, started a tech firm which eventually became a listed company (he held director level post). Married, two children. Wife works PT.

G. Male. Russell Group University. Lawyer, partner in city law firm. Married with two children. Wife was previously a solicitor in a similar firm, now SAHM.

H. Male. Russell Group university. Chartered accountant in big 4 firm, now Finance Director in industry. Married with two children. Wife was also chartered accountant in same firm, now SAHM.

I. Female. Redbrick university. Started a tech firm. Worked PT at intermediate level in tech firm after DC1 and DC2. Married to F, above.

J. Female. Oxbridge. Lawyer. Solicitor in City law firm, returned to work PT after DC1, left before DC2. Now SAHM, DH is partner in city law firm.

K. Female. Redbrick university, plus Oxbridge postgrad. Lawyer, then became one of the few female partners in a male-heavy city law firm. Exited from there (Not forced-out, oh no ), now works as senior in-house legal. Married, no children.

L. Female. Russell Group university, lawyer. Returned to work PT after DC1, 2 and 3, but finds it difficult to get work. Employers have been supportive but there are now signs they are trying to ease her out.

So there is a general pattern of men proceeding to senior posts and women scaling back to make time and space for their family. But the problem is not so much the scaling back, as I do believe that young children need that time and attention from people who love them, it is the lack of structured re-entry points for those women that is the problem.

I am married to one of the men in the first part of the list (funnily enough I have better academic results than him!) and am slowly regaining some career headway - mostly because I am willing/able to play the long game and also work in a very supportive, female-dominated environment.

Yes of course it depends on the section and I agree that in some areas where if you pass exams you can get on you see less discrimination. Law and medicine although not perfect are may be examples of that now (they didn't used to be - the Victorians thought women's brains would explode if they went to university).

Yes, I hate teams. I work alone. I am the lone wolf or tiger, not in the pack although of course I was in the pack to start. Perhaps women do better alone if the pack is led by men who discriminate, although to be fair I've worked with loads of non sexist men. Women entrepreneurs do very well in the UK. More women under 40 are millionaires than men are. In some cases women not getting on within the various packs causes them to set up on their own and own rather than work for someone and then they do better than those men they left behind. It is not all hopeless.

So if you are in a team and it's hard to get to the top of it or prove you are better than the men what can you do? I only have my own example and those I've observed over 30 years of advising businesses. I was always the youngest to start as I graduated aged 20. It helped I had babies in my 20s as I had the responsibiities men in their 30s and 40s had so things in common with them where most 23 year olds have less in common with older colleagues at work. What else? I did always loads of self promotion. Even in my teens I was entering writing competitions and the like. Join those committees (in that sense I still do teams), get your name out there, get credit for what you have done. Of course this cannot apply to every job. Some have argued women have two ways of getting on and men only one - women and men have excellence which never goes amiss. Women but usually not men have "erotic capital" which some choose to use too. If we have two ways of getting on and men only one perhaps we should look on the bright side and the day will come when most team leaders and highest earners are female not male.

Tunip re clear metric for measuring success - we have that in scientific research, everything is done y impact factor here especially as none of us teach ( our research grant contracts generally ban it).

It has been shown that women need two more papers than men or a significant jump in impact factor (with otherwise the same cv) to get the same grant success rate.

"Most companies want work done by the best person. Be the best person and they tend not to care if you've one leg or are blue or red - if the customers/ clients love you and you are feted as marvelous everywhere then they will stick with you."

This just isn't true in all fields. As Tunip says not all metrics are objective. you can't make the leap from "the best person" to "the clients love you". There is a huge gap between those two things. You can be on a successful team where the client always gives your male boss or colleague credit for all your successes; you can be landed with the parts of the job that are inherently less fruitful, but someone has to do it; if you complain about things like these two things, or other similar things, you can be branded as "not a team player" or "difficult"; and so on.

Greengrow, as another poster said, I do like you and your can-do attitude but I think you are very focused on a particular kind of independence ("eat what I kill") through excellence which is inappropriate in some kinds of work, which are of necessity team-based; and the difficulty is, that a team, like a family, can easily become a structure that is designed to deliver women's energy to men to do as they like with it.

Yes, you can refuse to be exploited in a team by refusing to be in a team. But what if you like, and are good at, the sort of work that is done in teams?

Also although I bet you will find the richest people in the world don't work in teams (tho they might direct staff), I bet you will also find the poorest aren't in teams either (as they don't work at all). In other words for very many of us, making work work at all, means working in teams.

Speaking of objective metrics, two observations from me:

I work in a media company which is overwhelmingly, embarrassingly, white. The exceptions are all in our finance teams and in-house law. I hypothesise that this is because those people have passed rigorous exams that cannot be argued with.

Having been patronised, sidelined, and insulted for much of my life, I was astonished (and delighted) to find that I am shit-hot at poker. You play as an individual; aggression is rewarded, whether the people around you actually like you for it or not; discretion is equally rewarded (aggression and discretion both in the correct context). you play the game, not your opponents. There is a ton of bullshit talked about pyschology and tells and all that sort of stuff. That nonsense doesn't get you far but to the extent that anyone relies on it, it works in your favour as you look out of context and people make stupid decisions, misjudging your intelligence. It is marvellous for a few hours of your life to be in a context where no one can argue when you win; and it is an advantage to be underestimated; and it makes them look stupid, not you, when people think you are stupid.

The men tend to take the bigger higher profile projects and then pass on similar projects to their male counterparts

There is actually an HBR article which talks about this - how the best, most high profile and visible projects tend to go to men, so it is the men whose careers climb, while the women are left doing the drudge. It has been suggested that we as women have to push for the better projects, but also that men have to break this mindset.

In my experience it's an attitude thing, lots of perfectly competent woman in my workplace but they're generally the ones doing the crappy routine stuff that never gets any thanks and if you object to this your seen as a bit hormonal. The men tend to take the bigger higher profile projects and then pass on similar projects to their male counterparts so it looks like only the men are interested in the these. It's basically institutionalized thinking that woman are OK to manage the day-to-day work but you need the men for the 'big ideas'.

I was shocked that there was a 3 day conference and the senior manager had only recommended the 3 males in my team, the rest of us females with families were not even considered. One of my female colleagues is fighting to get the more higher profile work but managers are putting up all kinds of obstacles to this. It's depressing to realize that men get the most influential work because it's mostly other men with the power and influence to grant this

It would be interesting to know whether there was less sexism in careers where there's a clear metric of how well you're doing and the company's survival depends on you delivering. It's blurrier in some jobs than others.

I agree with OB. I call part time and flexi time the poisoned chalice. It is like that apple in the garden of Eden - it tempts you and seems a wonderful offering but all it means is career suicide, low pay and your husband thinks you're a pin money earner whose job does not matter and you get lumbered with more ironing at home and the children never appreciate it. You take that one drink from its cup and for many that's it - 30 years of low pay, minimum wage and very hard to get back into the job. I am not saying it should be like this but it is like this.

I was asked what to do if male managers are given better work than the woman. I am not sure. I have to find my own clients and work and I eat what I kill in that sense. I don't have anyone allocating work to me - it's 20 years since I was someone's employee. If it were my daughter asking I would say move to a different job where that does not happen. Most companies want work done by the best person. Be the best person and they tend not to care if you've one leg or are blue or red - if the customers/ clients love you and you are feted as marvelous everywhere then they will stick with you. That is ordinary companies. It may be different in different work places. I would look first at what are those "opportunities and support". Eg if it is being put on to a big account there have been a good few female City trader cases like that - big accounts handed to men (or one man - it is not always sexism it can be preference for some other reason) and not the woman - be the best. If you make 20% a year on your fund and the men make 5% it would be a strange fund which gave the best accounts to the 5 per centers.

This thread resonates with me too. Especially when it comes to the possibility of working part time. My employer would allow me to drop to part time, and indeed almost all the women at work who have school-aged (or younger) children do opt for part time. However, only a very small amount of the men in the same situation drop their hours. Why? Why is this seen as 'normal' for women but 'unusual' for men?

I've always worked full time (even when my children were small). Despite the temptation to stop to part time, I will not do so. If I were part time, I would merely end up doing the same job for less pay (I've seen how it works for my colleagues - workload is only adjusted if you drop to working less than 3 days per week). Plus, being part time really f your pension (especially if the period you are part time coincides with you being relatively young).

Scarlett, I relate to a lot that you're saying. Despite the fact that I don't see much sexism around here, the impact of having children is a different matter. I read a Commodore's CV recently who has 2 children and his wife is a serving Commander. I was amazed - how have they managed this?! It gave me hope though. DH is also serving, also doing quite well, but I'm probably only where I am because we have no DCs (yet, I hope - first RMC appointment next week, but at least part of the problem has been years of deployments keeping us apart) and I keep living in hope that changes in regulations over parental leave, which the Navy has been really quick to adopt, will help. It will still mean that only one of us can take a seagoing job at any one time though, and while I can still progress from where I am without doing much more time away, DH still really needs to do at least 2 more jobs at sea. Our deployments have just gone from 6 months to 9 months!

There's a big difference in working time practices around the organisation as well. In some areas, everyone knocks off at 1600, but in NCHQ they're all sitting around all evening doing bugger all and waiting for their boss to finish. I'm lucky as I can set the ethos in my little bit, and here we work as many hours as needed to get the job done. The hardest worker I ever had was one of the admin team who routinely worked 0930 - 1500 to fit in with childcare, but got more done in those hours than anyone else in a full day. The flexibility is there, but only in small pockets. I'm living in hope that it's spreading, and I think it is. I see more and more people with laptops and Blackberries working from home - I've really noticed it this half term week. At least we have transparent and equal pay and promotion boards are anonymous and gender-free. Reading some of the things on here I feel lucky.

I work in a very female dominated sphere but far from this meaning sexism is cancelled out it's seems worse. Men are seen as a novelty and penis=great thing regardless of ability because of that novelty. I am at the point in my career now where I'm making headway into senior management from being a middle manager for the past 4 years (had DC2 during that time) and it is a real fight, I'm having to prove myself above and beyond male colleagues because, well because penis it appears, ineffectual men find promotion easier than hardworking, dedicated women.

I am fighting and will fight as I'm bloody good at my profession and I will not be sidelined. However, it is tiring to always be fighting and some days I do think "why am I bothering" luckily these don't last long.

On another note, I managed to out-argue one of the most outspoken male managers today. This is not going to be good for me...

I am not suggesting it is easy particularly in big companies. There is no magic solution. What women could do that men do more includes:

1. Ask for more pay than you are offered and work hard on that.
2. Tell everyone how brilliant you are.
3. Move move move - in many jobs those who keep moving to get higher pay even if it means across the country ( my husband moved hundreds of miles and sold his house for my career in London), even if it means you are not close to mother any more - be brave, take risks.

Even then it is difficult of course.

on pay one of my daughters got a rise to over £100k this year in her 20s. That was a lot more than her colleagues male and female at the same level. I presume she pushed and asked for it and works harder than they do and is better. The other one who did discuss her pay aims at length with me last year pushed much more than any man around her for more pay, gave her boss comparable pay elsewhere, force the HR department to do research on comparable pay in similar roles, asked for her rise half way through the year and then still pushed for the usual annual rise and got a £20k rise from a fairly low starting point - now up to about £55k including bonus. In other words she took my advice. Now another part of my advice was also find another job elsewhere and show your boss you have this other offer at a higher rate but that is harder to do as you have to find someone else to hire you and the company you are at has to really want you. Their brother who has graduated is currently a post man. I have no problems with that either. The last thing I want is children who are clones and his aims are different from those of his ambitious sisters. meanwhile I hope my years from 50 - 60 with fewer obligations as the younger children will be getting easier should be the best of my life in terms of maximising earnings and working as I choose - it will be a wonderful decade of earning a lot and freedom to develop my business as I choose.

The fact I am happy and successful and have done well of course annoys a lot of people but it does not mean I do not appreciate the difficulties a lot of women have. I would say I have spent 30 years trying to eradicate sexism where I can. I had two people on a course recently who were women and the rest were men - sometimes it is 50/50 and sometimes mostly women. Anyway those two didn't say a word all day. Why? Did they not have views? Why did the men speak and not the women. I am not saying that is typical - lots of women lawyers often have views to express but it is an example of how women should push themselves forward more, shout from the rooftops how good they are, do all that personal publicity. Sell your own brand as it were.

I still remain of the view that having a non sexist marriage is one of the things that helps most. If you know that your other half is the one who rushes home to collect children or you alternate life is a lot easier.

Heh - Irene x post. I would say that women are socialised not to pursue power as an end goal in itself ("as long as I'm doing interesting work it's ok") which is really limiting.

Having the power to shape and change an organisation is why it's more fun being a leader and it's a shame that more women don't pursue it.

Ugh. This thread resonates. I have a senior job in a team where I am both the youngest (by more than a decade) and the ONLY woman at management level. I've just changed role to a significantly bigger, more challenging job and my company has just told me they won't be increasing my pay (after they'd already announced my appointment )

Meanwhile all my male colleagues have had their new packages stitched up ages ago.

I am going to have to go and fight it but will have to make a real bitch of myself and I am starting to deeply resent the fact I am treated like shit because I am expected to meekly accept whatever is given to me. It's like I should be grateful to be given the experience of, erm, more work. And everywhere I look it's the same - big swinging dicks supported by meek women doing the actual work and getting paid 50% of what their "boss" is.

I am not going to put up with it and will leave if it's not resolve, but really it shouldn't come to that.

(I am a regional CEO btw so really you think this nonsense shouldn't be happening by now.)

(Sorry, long rant!)