What do you think are the things that hold women back at work?what could be done to improve things ?

[JennyTals]

This is actually a homework question, but I thought we could come with some good ideas, personally I think it's all fairly equal up until the point of getting pregnant and having children
Well that was my experience

Things I think hold fairness/equality back are

The huge expectations on women to not only work, but to do the lions share of the work at home with cleaning cooking shopping childcare And School stuff

Lack of childcare in workplaces like nursery's

Cost of childcare

Employers don't really like it when women take time off for mat leave and sick children etc thye might not say anything but they often don't like it
Men tend to take less sick days for poorly kids

If the children have issues the mothers tend to get blamed more

Lack of flexible working
Lack of support at home
Bias against women
Lack of assertiveness
Not being able to work extra hours

Definitely the societal expectation on mothers vs fathers. I genuinely believe that normalising more paternity leave and men working part-time should help even things up. That way, the mother is not just the default parent and the fathers need to really step up and be a more equal parent. Whether they choose to or not is a different story but at least give them the opportunity.

Definitely motherhood and true flexible working.

Bias against women. I work in male dominated industries mostly and there is a definite bias in that I had to be at least twice as good as colleagues to be considered the same.

Even if a woman hasn't had children yet or doesn't intend to have any she will be disadvantaged by the expectation that she will.

Then there's menopause....

Interestingly we have introduced substantial parental/paternity leave where i work and its definitely equalising things.
i would say a lot of those things are exacerbated by the fact that women often marry men older than themselves/who earn more than themselves so when a couple have to prioritise one person's work above another (eg who does pick ups who is primary carer) the higher earner is prioritised (eg the man) and this is magnified after mat leave(s)

Work place behaviour- traditional masculine behaviour is favoured- eg being demanding, self promotion, over estimation of talents/stretching oneself, getting angry vs upset - its not that women can't do this but to a lot of women its not natural
Old boys network

I have to be honest, after I had a kid my attention and focus went on being a mother and I lost interest in my career. I enjoyed working because of the mental stimulation and the friends I had at work but I backed away from extra responsibilities or extra hours or anything else that would get in the way of me being a parent. My husband on the other hand ramped up his work effort and became very driven, which allowed me to go part time.
I felt torn between my feminist ideals and the happiness I felt turning up school assemblies and volunteering for school excursions and canteen days. So I guess in a perfect world I would like mothers to be able to enjoy these things without having to juggling finances, but I have no idea how that would work.

Periods / menopause/ mostly male upper management who don’t understand any of it.

Reliable, affordable childcare and an understanding that mothers have to look after their children when they are sick as their children won’t be allowed at childcare or school.

-Childcare (or lack there of!)
-Medical misogyny around women’s health issues
-assumption women lose their ambition after having children

I also think there is a strange thing in this country of women not supporting women or giving them flexibility because they in turn didn’t have support. I know people through work who have had a hard time because their direct line manager took the view that as they could manage with two kids and a full time job, that every other woman could too regardless of circumstances.

Then don’t get me started on the expectation that women will shoulder all the responsibility for childcare. When I was expecting DD1, everyone expected I would go part time but not once did anyone expect DH to do that and upend his career. I work 4 days and the response was “well who will look after the children? DC will be in nursery too long every day!”. Luckily I have a supportive DH, who would have moved mountains to support what I wanted to do work wise.

Lack of flexible working

Expectation to do after work networking/team building events

Before we even enter in to a conversation around a table we are already generally measured on what we look like, how fuckable we are, how much effort we've put in to how we look, whether we have earned to right to be at the table.

Then we open our mouths....

I don’t think you’re alone with this sentiment. I have met many highly educated, driven women who just completely lost interest in pushing themselves in their careers after children. They still work hard and are good at their jobs but stay within their comfort zones when kids are young.

I work in a male industry and there’s still a big problem with stereotypes. In the last year I’ve heard that

• blondes are basic
• part timers are not valuable
• admins are not valuable
• If we wear makeup we’re asked “who are you trying to impress?”
• the assumption that there’s a husband at home earning more so women don’t need pay rises or promotions.

These comments usually came from men aged 20-27 which was disappointing. But also men in their 40s as well.

And guess what? We have a woman CEO who doesn’t give a fuck!

Yay!

I can offer an alternative view. I work for a Scandinavian company that has almost equality at the senior levels. Appears to be attributed to the following:

• cheap state run childcare introduced in the 80s/90s to enable women to get back into the workplace.
• shared parental leave over 2yrs with the mother generally taking the 1st year and the father taking the 2nd. This is really common and widely accepted.

Considering this is an engineering focussed industry, the level of women at C and C-1 level across all functions is amazing.

Funnily enough, I have the same assignment/ homework for my organisation as women do not make it to the top and do not seem interested in doing so.
I am having one to one meetings with women in the same field ( we are an international organisation), and what I found was surprising!

• 50/50 share of the chores in a partnership is ideal, but works if you are in a partnership. If you split, it is not attainable, and you have to work double.

-The fact that we are a more diverse society has increased misogyny. Some men have an embedded belief that you are there to serve.

• If you are a professional, once you have kids, it is easy for the employer/main client to pay you only per actual hour worked. That means networking and BD are off your schedule, and without them, it is more difficult to progress in your career.
• Networking and BD events generally target activities that men like: climbing, football etc. If you have a toddler at home, you are exhausted and possibly resisting the idea of doing two days of survival camp.
• Geography is destiny: where you were born matters. Again, a more diverse society means that some women do accept on the workplace behaviour that is not acceptable for most. This is because their mothers have accepted a narrative in their live that has worked as a negative example.

Please, I would love to hear from you if you have something to add.

I also think there is a strange thing in this country of women not supporting women or giving them flexibility because they in turn didn’t have support. I know people through work who have had a hard time because their direct line manager took the view that as they could manage with two kids and a full time job, that every other woman could too regardless of circumstances.

Definitely true. Funnily enough, the same women were the ones telling me that it was good I was having a boy because girls were awful.

I don’t think you’re alone with this sentiment. I have met many highly educated, driven women who just completely lost interest in pushing themselves in their careers after children. They still work hard and are good at their jobs but stay within their comfort zones when kids are young.

I wonder if there's value in employers just accepting this as a given? When I ran a business, I worked on the assumption that:

• we all needed the paycheck, and the location and skills were relevant to us
• we all wanted to do well for self-esteem and profit
• we all had rich lives outside of work
• we all enjoyed reasonable intellectual challenges at work

So aimed for a super-flexible, low-stress and high productivity environment. There were no underlying reasons for stress in the job, so why create them? Funnily enough the woman I promoted as my replacement had taken a chill few years post-kids. Why can't that just be ok?

This an observation DH made once...

When his boss was male, men were more likely to score higher on annual reports and get promoted
When his boss was female, the women got more equal scores and pushed themselves forward

He concluded that women were more ambitious when they had a female role model, and that there was less bias towards them.

He preferred the female boss BTW, he thought she had a lot better understanding of everyone.

I also think some women just don't want to go back to work after having a baby..? Not whilst their children are young at least (so up until primary school). It's then hard to get back into the workplace after having 5+ years out, confidence might be affected and depending on industry, training might be out of date etc, so it just adds to the difficulty maybe?

I've worked in male dominated industry for my whole career and my observations are.... (I've never had children in case it's relevant), that women can be discriminated against because of an expectation that they will have children. Which takes them out of work for a period of time, and potentially return with different expectations. Then add period pains, then menopause. Then add people who actually do have children.

Plus I think the fact we're different in many cases to men, and approach things differently, can be perceived to be a disadvantage.

I think that Scandinavian model of shared parental leave is absolutely the way forward in achieving better balance between the sexes.

The father taking the second year means the mother is less likely to automatically be the default parent thereafter. A full year means there is no benefit to an employer in employing men.

In my sector,definitely the old boys' network still holds sway. I'm often the only female in board meetings or senior management meetings.

Absolutely yes re children motherhood etc.

But quite honestly I think it is much more than just that. And it's often self perpetuating - industries with lots of men at the top are likely to continue to push men.

Law firms have done research on this (in their own businesses - and probably other professional services firms too) and, to their credit, are trying to fix it. For example - work allocation. Men often get the juicier, more high profile work, x1000 if the allocating partner is a man. He picks other men like him. The female lawyers might be working same hours but on smaller less high profile , less profitable, cases.

Similarly they have found performance reviews to consistently slightly bias against women - ie women overall, according to performance reviews, perform less well. Which, statistically, is unlikely.

Firms are trying to addresd this admittedly, but inbet the smaller ones dont.

then the double standards applied to woman. I have personally experienced these more times than i can count, as have most of my female friends and colleagues. eg a man can express dissatisfaction and/or a desire for more and he is assertive, proactive, ambitious. A woman does the same and she is demanding or ungrateful, needs to wait her turn etc.

Women are still somehow expected to do the "housekeeping" in many firms - organise drinks, tidy up, collect money at birthdays. Ditto pick up admin. I really hope this has changed but, for example, starting out 25 years ago in the city, when the bosses (male) didn't know how to send an email attachment or save a document it was always the junior Women who were asked to help them, never the equally junior men. We were de facto back up PAs.

Senior leaders who are Women are also often in support functions - head of hr, marketing, legal. Not part of core strategic decision making and commercials. And when they are, too often there's a "but...". See the "co-ceo" at M&S - supposedly the man and women were co heads but he was called ceo and she was called co-ceo. Not a shock when she only lasted a few years. see also eomen being promoted in to companies in serious trouble - so higher chance if failure from the start.

Women still often are paid less too. Sure, it's less blatant these days but happens a lot. Eg, a woman with less experience gets a "big" job - she gets it because the pay isn't good enough to get someone who is properly qualified (male or female). But then again, she's often set up to fail because she's not actually ready for the job OR she succeeds but is always behind on pay.

It is relentless and insidious and exhausting. Ans yes, lots of very welcome change is happening but bloody hell, we aren't there yet.

I remember watching the Wonder Woman series back in the late 1970's and it always struck me as unfair that Lynda Carter had to go back to work after saving a US Navy Aircraft Carrier from a bomb plot. In the Batman and Robin episodes they did not have to return to work and just hung out in the Bat Cave drinking beer.

From the outset assumptions about reproductive capabilities.

Then if women have children - maternity leave gap, childcare, family.

Later in life menopause, increased caring responsibilities for aging family.