To think that on International Women's Day the last thing I need is "inspiration" from someone with wraparound childcare and a lucky career?

[toomuchtooold]

I'm not going to point to specific examples (as I don't want to get outed and fired) but I'm sure there are many of you out there today logging on to your computers, seeing the corporate intranet landing page load up and on it there is an interview with some high up in your company talking about how she got to be so successful. I'm going to guess that the article somewhere mentions

• "you can do whatever you want if you set your mind to it"
• "mentors are so important/so and so was such an inspiration to me"
• "being an example to my son/daughter"

What they never seem to mention is

• being in maybe the top 1% of earners and therefore having the means to pay for wraparound childcare
• never having been made redundant, despite often working for companies that go through restructuring on a regular basis

AIBU to think that these success stories of the highly privileged are just big business doing a bit of victim blaming, implying that we could all be captains of industry with lovely lives if ony we had a bit of aspiration and hard work, when in actual fact these interviews depict the lives of a privileged few, and most companies' business models would be bust if we all expected to be earning at that level?

andsmile exactly.

I would love to hear stories of people who have successfully struck a balance.

Good post Venus - maybe you should write a book ;)

I agree with you, OP. And a lot of people on here seem to be missing the point - though whether they are doing that deliberately or because they genuinely haven't grasped it is difficult to tell.

Here's my advice to wannabe high fliers - "have your children with someone who earns less than you and/or who wants to be a SAHD". The end.

The biggest issue to female progression is the assumption that a mother is the primary carer and will therefore fit her career around her family. "Female friendly policies" just perpetuate that bias by pushing women into roles that can be accommodated on a PT basis and those are never the most exciting, "get noticed" roles, at least in the corporate world. The best paid and most high profile jobs will never be family friendly so for women to get equal representation at board level positions, they need someone who is prepared to play second fiddle.

'AIBU to think that these success stories of the highly privileged are just big business doing a bit of victim blaming,'

Agree with OP. And what is success anyway for women. For me its not about earning big bucks. My priorities include health, family, peace of mind, getting a balance, having something to look forward to, nice friends ....etc etc

Well that's a whole other debate- i.e. how to define success. However, the fact that women are underrepresented in senior positions in the law, finance, commerce, politics, journalism, academia, education etc. impacts everyone, whether they are the woman who wants to hold that position or not.

it's not about "mega bucks" so much as who is in the positions of influence/ policy making roles.

I think YABU - clearly these sort of stories don't appeal to you for whatever reason but there are probably many junior women in your company reading the same articles and feeling that they too can get to that level - with a bit of ambition, hard work & support... it's depressing to see so many men at the top of big companies and something needs to be done to encourage women to go for it if that's what they want.

in our family DP is the senior exec & she has got there with ambition and sheer handwork & focus & support from a female & a male mentor. She didn't wake up one day at that level, oh and she certainly isn't in the 1 percent.
She has flexible working available to her because she works for a major company that offers it to all employees - so still has a lot of time with our young children.
I work too - senior-ish, but part-time partly because one of us has to if we want avoid round the clock childcare but mainly because I have different ambitions in life - and working at that level holds zero appeal for me.

You should be applauding these women not sniping at them... you can guarantee that it's been a tougher route to the top for them than for any of the men in your co.

guineapig you can characterise what I'm doing as "sniping" = a personal attack on these women but it's not, as I've argued upthread.

Firstly I argue that we could all manage on the lovely conditions of people in top jobs. I stand by that. I don't know your circumstances, don't know how big is the company your DP works at (if you're not as a household in the 1% I suspect it must be quite a small one) but for the ones I'm talking about the people in the top couple of levels of hierarchy are making money that simply takes away a massive swathe of the problems facing working families. If you can afford to live near your work and not commute, pay for a good nanny, private school and emergency childcare, life is orders of magnitude easier than if you are juggling commutes and nursery dropoffs, worrying about the quality of the childcare and crossing your fingers that nobody gets sick and brings the whole precarious system tumbling down. And I therefore doubt that their advice is going to be very interesting to me, particularly if they got successful before they had kids. I'm sure they work hard but there are an awful lot of people who work as hard for less reward.

Secondly I argue that not everybody can aspire to this life. I stand by this. It's great if there are young women in my organisation getting inspired by these articles but if they are making plans based on the idea that if they work hard enough they can make it to the most senior levels of the company and plan their personal lives from there, most of them are going to be disappointed - as are most of their male colleagues. Most of us end up in the middle or the bottom. I am interested in International Women's Day as a way of highlighting how far we have come (or not( to getting economic participation, freedom and human rights for all women in the world and in the countries we live in. The right of the fairly senior to be promoted to being very senior - just not that important to me, in itself.

Aggressive, influence in the media and politics etc is fine as far as it goes but it doesn't always translate to better chances for women generally. Look at e.g. Switzerland and I think Bangladesh and India - they have high levels of political participation of women but low female employment, particularly of mothers. Economic opportunities, cheap childcare and a low barrier to entry for new employees IME are more important in getting women into the workforce - like in the UK where things are relatively good.