[2] Let's talk about: women's issues in the work place

I was one of a team of six - five men, and me. I had the most sector-specific knowledge out of the six of us, transferring into the team from a department which was immersed in sector knowledge, whereas the others had come in via other routes. I discovered by chance several months in that I was nonetheless the lowest paid by several £k.

I took this further with both my direct boss and HR, with evidence of good performance (excellent appraisal, positive feedback from colleagues and clients, trusted with high profile projects etc). Somewhat grudgingly, I was awarded a pay rise.

Shortly afterwards, I was made redundant mid-project...the only one out of the team of six to be let go

You either need predictability^^ or a very high degree of flexibility.

Predictability of shifts and working hours should be something that we try and make happen across the board, it would be so much better for so many people.

Anyone working in HR or in any managerial capacity can help other women, carers, lone parents and disabled people by bringing this up as an issue where they work.
Many people need a contract with fixed hours and pay, with overtime being voluntary and that you have to opt in to. This should be the starting contract for every new member of staff, especially on the lower rates of pay.

As and when contracts discriminate against groups of people, some of who have protected characteristics.
Any workplace that refuses to acknowledge the issue or offer these contracts may as well be actively trying to weed these groups of people out of their workplace. We can't even apply for those jobs.

And not just things like childcare, but also taking a class, or volunteer work, playing on a team.

Yes this is also true. I remember DH really wanted to do an evening course for a DIY skill but because he'd only be able to go every other week there was no way the college could accommodate it, and his work are entirely inflexible about their shifts, even though they are unsociable hours.

In a way, longer opening hours can be good, as an example, when I was a student those sort of jobs later in the evening (shops/call centres/etc) were great because you could do them after classes finished, then head out after work at eg 10pm to meet your friends in the pub/club. That suits a young, single person. You can accommodate previous staff during normal hours, then different staff at a stage of life where later hours suit them.

But there comes a time where work needs to fit around other responsibilities, what suits a 21 year old single person won't suit someone with a family, or even just a partnewho works different hours so you never see each other. And nobody "lives to work", and we should never expect it because that's not a desirable life anyone should want or expect for their employees. We need people to have balanced lives.

Predictability of shifts and working hours should be something that we try and make happen across the board, it would be so much better for so many people. And not just things like childcare, but also taking a class, or volunteer work, playing on a team...

Along the same lines I'm inclined to think that the shift that has happened in many places to having shops open at all times has not been of much benefit to workers in most instances, it hasn't really meant people are better off because they have more shifts available.

This thread is eye-opening for the insidiousness of sex discrimination, both blatant direct, and indirect, in relation to women in work.

I would like to see a move across the board to more flexible working being the norm, not the exception, where it can be accommodated. And for jobs where that's not possible, eg jobs where you really need to be there at certain times, then predictability of shifts which accommodate children should be a minimum expectation. I would also like to see a 4 day week being more standard.

I've made things work, but it has been such a struggle.

I'm a single parent and my eldest is autistic with specific learning difficulties.

Childcare for those with special needs seems particularly difficult. Fortunately I was able to have the children share bedrooms and have aupairs. This was the cheapest option and meant that there was some continuity of care, as they tended to change annually. I had aupairs for the best part of 10 years.

Flexible working - where the fuck is it? None of the employers I've worked for have had flexible working.

I had to take a career step down, as there is no way I could have carried on in the role I had as a single parent. Consequently, my ex-H who earned about the same as I did when we first had the children, now earns 5 times what I do and yet I'll give you one guess who has raised our children and pays the lions share!

In the workplace, I feel like I have "MUM" tattooed on my forehead. It seems to be fine for my male boss to regularly leave early or come in late because he's done school drop offs or pick ups or WFH because one of his kids is sick, but all the female staff seem to be watched like hawks for this kind of thing & permission is denied or they are forced to take leave. It seems really unfair and yet there doesn't feel like there is a way of challenging it either.

As for sitting in meetings and listening to mansplaining and views from the age of dinosaurs as to women's competence and so on - I could probably write a book, not to mention inappropriate sexual comments, touching and so on. However, on the plus side I have definitely seen that stuff diminish, as the older generation retires.

The whole system sucks in my personal opinion and I feel like I am trying to make the best of it and endlessly compromise one way or another just to keep my head above water.

At various points in my company's history of mergers and acquisitions the policy has been no WFH but that's been applied to people wanting to move to it, not to those like me already doing it. Im not sure, but that sort of change in conditions might amount to constructive dismissal, and also potentially indirect sex discrimination.

I work in a male dominated tech job. For 7 years I've managed to keep my role because they allowed flexible working and WFH. A new senior leader was appointed and he is looking to stop WFH. I will have to choose between my daughter or my job. I could cut my hours. I could look for another role.

It is very boys club, a lot of ex military. In the last 4 meetings I was asked my opinion after my male counterpart. There is no female senior leader in our large team. I have no one to seek out as a mentor. I dont always feel comfortable in the jokey male group.

They use the fact that the most senior person over all departmemts is female as proof that they are equal opportunities, as if all other women are at fault for not achieving.

The men are parents, but it doesnt seem to bother them as much.

I've been told I need more presence. Need to be more assertive. I think I am assertive. I'm not loud. Or aggressive. My opinion if different is seen as arguing.

I'm also very petite and 'girly' looking which makes it even harder.

I have so many direct examples from a decade plus ago that just adds to the distrust I feel of my colleagues.

My sense is that there is a need to recognise that life requires people to do other things than paid work, and the goal of having all adults between about 20 and 65 in paid work is not reasonable

Was there not some Mexican telecoms billionaire who suggested everyone moving to a three day week with a slightly longer (10 hour) working day?

I have long thought that would be the ideal. Mum can work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Dad Thursday, Friday, Saturday, everyone can have Sunday off together. Single parent households only have to ask grandparents/pay for childcare for three days rather than five.

Obviously there will always be some jobs that need to cover 24/7 but for most of us why fixate on the five on, two off pattern? It doesn't have to be set in stone.

My career absolutely stalled when I got into my 30s because I didn't have children. I have since realised that childless women in the prime childbearing years are treated like ticking time bombs by employers. It didn't get worse once I had children really - except that I could no longer do the regularly scheduled 6pm meetings or breakfast briefings so was considered unsuitable for promotion.

Many workplaces have cultures which are incompatible with caring responsibilities and those fall overwhelmingly onto women's shoulders. Until they address that, all the 'family friendly' policies in the world won't make a difference

I my experience of bosses who absolutely hate part time workers, but there are also a few who positively prefer to employ women with kids part time if there is that option and will make a point of it. (Sounds good right)

But as they will tell you, this preference is because they get as much or more output out of those part time workers, as they do from the full timers, and all on only a PT salary.
Plus they will tell you that they get more experience and reliability from the female PTers, so the employer doesn’t have to bother spending on training and developing them. Plus they won’t leave whatever you ask them to do, pretty much, because they need the PT job and everyone knows these are hard to find.

For a good quality of like a family with two adults and two kids can probably reasonably work one full time job when the kids are small and add another half-time job when they are a bit older.

Or both work PT.

A colleague was asked what her plans were for a family when going for a promotion, she said she felt very uncomfortable answering the questions. She did get the promotion at least but the group she works in is predominantly male. I wonder why? She didn't complain.

There was a senior manager at work who liked to give female employees a hug. It was patronising rather than sexual harrassment but he never did it to men funnily enough. Everyone knew he did it but no-one complained. Retired now thankfully.

I was told by a young whizzkid that mothers in their 40s lacked ambition when I applied for a job working in his dept. Obviously I didn't report him because who needs to take that shitstorm on, got a promotion in another dept.

Years ago I was given a sideways move into another dept when I got pregnant with DD2 (close gap between my eldest 2) because my then boss was so pissed off about me getting pregnant. Luckily my new boss was much better so it was a good thing for me but it could easilyhave not been.

I do think a lot of sexism is unreported because no-one wants to rock the boat and be branded a trouble maker. At work some depts have women throughout the management structure and others don't. Sometimes it changes as soon as an individual retires. We are now 50% female and things have improved a lot in the time I've been there (although most of the examples I list above have been in the last 5 years). A colleague was the first person at work to return after having a baby (this was in the 80s), she said they put her in an office on her own on her first day back and said 'we'll understand if you can't cope!'. So we have come a long way.

Great posts Goosefoot and Grabthar. Agree with all your points.

I too love being a SAHM even though it is definitely more physically demanding and full on than my previous well renumerated graduate job. Much more fulfilling in every way too. For us, it just doesn't make sense for me to work financially - would end up costing us money - as we don't get State help (other than tax breaks on childcare, but they're not enough to sway the equation towards profit).

At the moment it seems the State in this country at least doesn't value the work of parenting at all. The state will pay childcare fees for those on low incomes, but will not give the exact same amount of money to those parents so that they can provide the childcare themselves while the children are pre-school age. Which seems utterly mad. So you have parents going back to work doing menial jobs they don't want to do and their children going to nursery for very long hours and no politicians ever seem to question whether this is actually the optimum thing for child health and wellbeing (not to mention the health and wellbeing of the parents). And yet they say the years before 3 are the most important for a child.

Seems utter madness really.

Or how about two half time jobs when the kids are small and both increase a bit when the kids are older?

For sure, I was thinking in terms of one and half units, if that makes sense.

Practically right now things like benefits play into it. And then so will things like the type of job or career, even in an ideal situation some types of work may not be so suited to part time, or if a family has more children than usual it will mean different sorts of choices, and so on.

But in terms of renumeration, I think a situation where we expect one or one and a half "jobs" to provide the income for a regular sized family, that's really a much better plan. It would be tight but doable for most single parents, people where both parents work because of more demanding careers could afford good quality childcare, and there would be more flexibility in families when making decisions about things like eldercare, or when facing other problems that mean someone can't work.

I'm not sure how it would be accomplished though. It was an unintended effect of the two income family becoming the norm that basic costs went up to reflect that. I suppose something might be accomplished just be emphasising the value of unpaid kinds of works instead of constantly trying to push all adults into employment.

For a good quality of like a family with two adults and two kids can probably reasonably work one full time job when the kids are small and add another half-time job when they are a bit older.

Or how about two half time jobs when the kids are small and both increase a bit when the kids are older?

With increased mechanisation etc, I'd have thought that it should have become possible for everyone to have a better work-life balance.

...and then, basically, I was about to reiterate pretty much what grabthar said in the second para of previous post.

The increased intensity of childcare is also an issue IMO. The change where many kids now cannot walk home from school creates a huge childcare burden.

The childcare issues question is huge. My sense is that a lot of the public discussion about it circles around the real issue, which is that seems like we would really like to be able to avoid the question, that we don't consider childcare, or eldercare, or care of the disabled, really significant valuable work. It's like a buck constantly being passed, to grandmothers, to paid childcare workers, to nannies brought from other countries.

I sometimes feel that as a society what we'd really like is to for children to just grow up on their own.
My sense is that there is a need to recognise that life requires people to do other things than paid work, and the goal of having all adults between about 20 and 65 in paid work is not reasonable. For a good quality of like a family with two adults and two kids can probably reasonably work one full time job when the kids are small and add another half-time job when they are a bit older. When they work more there will likely be a need to pay for help of some kind, or have a diminished quality of life and little capacity to deal with emergencies or life changes like a child who becomes in need of nursing care.

With two DC’s, my issue is that I’m hindered in terms of career progression, as the main carer. Basically been stalled for last 5 years. Can’t increase PT to FT, can’t do residential training/ prof development, can’t look for jobs at other institutions (academic) due to increased commuting, cant attend ‘after work’ seminars/ research groups, can’t stay up til midnight working anymore.....
(But realise this is very much tempered by the benefits of the flexibility of an academic role).
So, not actual discrimination as some of these awful posts depict, but this is my current experience and frustration, which is a big issue for me.