Overlooked for promotion because I'm pregnant

[NotAWhaleOmeletteInSight]

Very long time poster with a new username as I couldn't get my password reset to work.

I'm on holiday at the moment but back at work in a week. I've been with my organisation for 10 years and am very experienced in my field. I have an excellent track record and performance management history etc. A couple of years ago my manager was talking about my career progression and where I could be in a year or 2, if I wanted.

Immediately after this conversation I became pregnant and now have a 1 year old. I'm back at work part time.

A role came up recently that would have been a step up for me and which I could have job shared part time. It's the sort of thing that comes up very very rarely. I expressed an interest and presented a case about how I could do it with a colleague (who also expressed an interest) as a job share. We're both part time. Management seemed very positive. A week later I found out I was pregnant again and let my boss know. I said I intended to come back again and that I was still interested in the role.

I then found out a few weeks ago that a new starter has been given the role. This was just casually announced in the morning meeting for all staff. He'll be full time. He's got 3 years experience and a similar track record to me, only less of it obviously.

Am I being unreasonable to feel overlooked because of being pregnant? I've always intended to keep working and kept in touch on my previous maternity leave. I've worked really hard for years and until my first pregnancy I felt that my career was taken seriously.

Now it's like I've hit a glass ceiling. I like the new starter and think he'll be good in the role, but I don't like how it was handled. Should I ask for an explanation when I get back or just let it go? Feel free to tell me to get a grip!

I disagree that job shares are always an issue. Both times mine have had job shares (dd1 in year 4, and ds in year R... Ds also had one of the job shares leave and a replacement) they have worked very well, and I'd regard both year's teaching as being excellent.

However there is a prejudice against them as parents. Plus there are times it doesn't work.
I think generally hod probably can work. However I don't think I'd be totally happy with a year manager shared. You see when I contact the year manager, it's something serious that needs to be dealt with quickly. I do not want to find on Wednesday that I can't speak to the person who was dealing with it until Monday. Nor do I want to have to explain an upsetting situation to a second person. Yes with a good handover that should be minimised, but also whereas to me it is. Big deal, it may be small compared to more serious matters and so not passed over.

The headship of dd1's secondary is shared. But they are both full time at the school and spend one day teaching. So they have 4 days being head each, which does work, plus they are still in the school if necessary on the 5th day.

I haven't read all the posts but I gather you are a teacher and want promotion on a job-share, part-time basis.
Through bitter experience I would say the job should definitely go to the full-time applicant; young, energetic, no family commitments, and most important of all: THERE.
I am well aware part-time teachers work hard and are committed and ambitious,(I was one myself once) but taking posts of responsibility puts a burden on full-time colleagues who need information and decisions quickly.

I spent the last few years of my career liaising with increasing numbers of part-time teachers who were unavailable half the week, had limited time after school, missed meetings about new initiatives: (I only have to work part-time, can you explain it to me now), were unable to do residential courses/visits/trips and frequently required dates of previously arranged events altering. Information and materials were not accessible, in one case being kept under lock and key unless the post-holder was there; questions had to wait several days for answers. Joint planning was a nightmare. One school had a part-time deputy, another a part-time Head; good for their careers, but not for the running of the school where the senior management team picked up most of the work to keep the school running successfully.

Job-share meant two lots of liaison, with initial arrangements frequently changed; books, materials/ paperwork etc not accessible because they were at home with the job-share; decisions contradicted 'because it hasn't been discussed with me', vital information not passed on, and the impossibility of discussing important arrangements face to face with both of them at the same time.

I don't think promotion has anything to do with having children; I never experienced discrimination because of it in any way,or saw it in my work-place, but it should have a great deal to do with working full-time. If one is ambitious, compromises have to be made.

The staff, the school and most importantly the job, deserve consideration too.

Shutthatdoor No, as I said there isn't an additional cost. We do our handover before school and during our lunchtime. We come in extremely early on that day to allow this - about 7.15. During our official working hours we're both fully occupied doing different things. It works for the school as these things are essential.

Through bitter experience I would say the job should definitely go to the full-time applicant; young, energetic, no family commitments, and most important of all: THERE
I do hope you are not involved in recruitment in your workplace, it sounds like a tribunal waiting to happen.

This may go against the grain but yes I think YABU. You may well be excellent at your job but you have to see this from a very hard, business point of view. What if you had been given the promotion, they will be paying you more money only for you to leave for up to a year in a few months time, at which point they will have to fork out for maternity cover. It won't be a popular view at all, but why would any management go through the cost promoting someone they know they will have to cover? It's tough but this is why men get better pay and are more likely to get promotions. Perhaps when paternity leave matches maternity leave, so will females pay and job advancement opportunities.

P.s I'm a lady also working in the education sector

Just what I was going to say Rain! Blimey, I love how I'm suddenly old and lacking in energy now that I'm a mum

Family commitments also don't make me less committee to my work. I have a supportive dh and excellent childcare. We have to be organised as we have no local family support. I can assure you that on my working days I'm one of the first to arrive, last to leave, and full of energy, sleep or no sleep the night before.

Gosh, there's a lot of crap on here about working mums.

I do think that PT working/job shares can cause difficulties in some roles, and it is important for all of us to be honest and open about the impact that flexible working arrangements can sometimes have, but please let's not go down the route of dismissing all PT workers and/or working parents as lacking in energy or commitment! That really isn't true! And please let's not excuse employers from discriminating against women who might go on maternity leave either! It really isn't ok. FFS!

Kampeki

Personally I have no axe to grind with respect to working mums, part timers or in general job sharing.

But as I posted up thread not all positions are suitable for a job share positions and TBH IMO not all people are suitable for job sharing.

Some of the best teachers in the school where I work are part time mums, IMO secondary education in many areas is a good place for job shares and part time people but only because they are generally very organised people.

I have had some job share managers that have been very good but the industry that it was in was very structured and had very little that could go wrong.

I have worked under some very bad job shares where one middle manager was great the other was a PITA, the amount of work that one half of the job share generated was unfair on everybody.

I support flexible working for everyone but their are just some areas that are not suitable.

Rain You are comparing Apples and Pears not me. The comparison between women (or men) choosing to ask for job shares and a diasbled oerson who does not choose any of their disabilities is not a valid comparison at all and you are using it emotively. The fact that you even draw the comparison is fascinating - it matches exactly what I have been saying about my school seeing a culture of being some staff who are pregnant/ work part-time/job-share having an entitlement culture that somehow their wants have to be met and put first before the needs of everyone else including students. You absolutely demonstrate that in your response.

I am not complaining about anyone who is ill, or suggesting risk assessments should not atke place. Stop being ridiculous and exaggerating. I said the requests that come from some risk assessments are silly. A risk assessment measures risk. If something has never happened ever before, why should a woman think a school should meet her request at the cost of other people? Because that is what she wants? Suddenly she feels she can put more pressure on other people with an unreasonable request, because she is pregnant? That isn't reasonable at all.

I do think it is mad that we have to buy fans we neither need nor want. But we did it and she didn't use them because they 'blew papers around'. They are still around, unused in the caretakers' store.

We are all entitled to work life balance - not just people who have children and work part time or job share. We should not be inconvenienced for them.

Do you think all of the women on this thread who are saying how negative their experience has been of part-time and job share staff are just making it up. It seems to be worse in schools judging by the comments.

I hate that having children often means very able women go backwards in their career. The fact is that their progression, needs being met should not mean allowances are made that are not made for others nor that others should have harder work lives to suit them.

My school is great at giving women opportunities. The point I am making is that apart from 1, I don't know any who have not put pressure on the school at either a financial cost or poor exam results for classes or a timetale compromise, or more pressure/inconvenience for other staff to suit them.

Schools are about children's needs, not teachers. My school is known for having a great working environment but we have to bend over backwards to unreasonable requests to achieve that- the majority are from women who want us to adjust things to suit them because they want to work part-time or job share - never mind how it affects anyone else.

I am yet to see a man ask to work part-time or job share to spend time with his children. I am yet to see a man take time off because there are child care issues. It is always women who do it and then wonder why employers overlook them for full-time men. There is no point in equality of opportunity for part-time, job share, loa for child issues if it is always women who do it.

My dh has done all the things you mention in your last paragraph. I wouldn't be with a man who didn't believe in equality.
Disability, gender, pregnancy & maternity are all protected characteristics under the equality act so there is an obvious companion. Perhaps you should spend a bit of time reading it, to move away from your view that it is a false entitlement.
I don't really understand your risk assessment points. Some people are chancers in any situation. I doubt this applies more to part-time workers. I think a pg woman's concern about being hit (child or football?) is unlikely but certainly could happen. It wouldn't have bothered me in pg1 but after a few mcs I was very risk adverse so wouldn't have liked that - we don't do playground supervision anyway so it wouldn't have come up.
You do not blame people for asking for rights due to their race, disability, religion etc so why view women as being in some way spoiled? We are so often our own worst enemies.

We most certainly are. You illustrate it quite beautifully with every argument you make.
Hurrah for your husband - the only one either me, DH, MIL or FIL have ever come across with 91 years teaching between us. He is an exception. He does not counter my point. HR analysed our absence data for the last 3 years. Not one male member of staff had asked for LOA to look after their poorly child. Almost 60% of female staff with children 16 or under had. Two had had 21+ days off for that across 3 years. One had had 15 days off in two years with a son who is how 16. None of the children are seriously ill. They all have husbands but it is women who take time off. They can't expect employers to thinkmthat is OK.
Suddenly you don't understand my risk assessment point. You choose not to because it does not suit your purpose to understand it. If pregnant women wriggle out of tasks by raising things as risks that evidence shows are not risks and by doing so put pressure and additional workload on others, then they are taking advantage of a situation with no care for their colleagues. I could give you a number of examples of women in our school who have done that.
I am being critical of women who behave in the ways I have experienced and described - as it seems many others on the thread have- because they do women in general a disservice by behaving as they do. Their needs, as pregnant women or mothers, do not come before anyone else's. We should all be treated equally. A woman is not entitled to better treatment or other people's lives to be made more difficult because she has chosen to have children and wants to job-share, work part-time.

I have an 8 month old DS. My PIL live in another part of the country. My parents are dead and I am an only child. I have no other close family. DH has promised he will share any time off equally with me when DS gets poorly- which he will. I am on an SLT. We want another baby in the next couple of years.There is no way I will be promoted in the next 5 years. Two maternity leaves of a year with a year or 18 months in between. And I know I won't have the same time and energy to devote to my career and my job. However, I have made that choice. I will settle for a bit of a hiatus in my career for time with DS and any other child if we are lucky enough to have one. That is my choice. I don't think it is right for my employer or the students to accept me doing a job I have neither the time or commitment to at the moment. I made a choice- that is what women do. Race, disability is not a choice.

Why are you so sneery? I mentioned dh as you didn't know men who did this. Since I started teaching, I have always known men take time off to look after sick dcs so it seems normal to me. I always make it clear to employers that if I'm off one dat, it will be dh off the next. I've known fewer men who went p-t, in fact I can only think of 4.

I don't get the risk assessment sniping at me. You have two examples - the over-heating woman and the one who didn't want to do playground duty. Any risk assessment I've been involved with when pg was more about work stations, a stool thing appeared to raise my feet, being sure your chair could provide adequate back support. Do you think pg staff shouldn't have risk assessments?
I'm afraid your statement We should all be treated equally shows how far you still have to come in terms of knowledge of equality legislation and good practice. Try to access some good CPD if you can.
Differences of opinion are fine but your smug (I managed it so all women should) attitude and sneering remarks to me are getting up my nose.
OP, I hope you get an explanation. They didn't have to give you the job but as an applicant they did have to give you proper consideration.

Could it be actually about the other person you were going to jobshare with, not just you?

I only ask as when a manager I once turned down a job share - two mums who wanted to work 2.5 days each - not because I didn't like the idea in principle but because while one of the pair were certainly a good prospect, one wasn't quite up to scratch.

Sometimes when someone is your colleague and you're at a similar level it's hard to assess their skill level, and in the workforce, 2 peoples' skills are rarely the same. And one thing I have learnt from being promoted above my colleagues on two occasions now in my career to management is that once you go up a level in the workplace, sometimes you realise that the skills of your previous peers and how effective they are at their jobs aren't always what you thought they were, both for good and for bad.

Someone recently approached me for a job share, but I've decided to turn her down as I realise that while she seems good at her job, my previous experience is that I don't actually know that, not from a management perspective anyway. Plus, I don't think it would work in my line of work.

It could be that while you were a better prospect than the person who got the role, the other woman wasn't, and knowing that it would be your job share in the role rather than you once you had your baby may have been the issue.

The OP states that there wasn't a formal interview process but it's unclear whether there was a formal announcement of the role and invitation to express an interest.
If there was, formal feedback should have been given. Communication seems to have been poor.

However since it seems the school wanted a full timer in the role they might have been better off simply appointing who they wanted - they weren't obliged to invite expressions of interest at all.

Most of us haev had bad experiences of job sharers and part timers (and a few good). It usually means some deal you're working on goes on hold for half the week r it can be great because it means you dont' have to do any work on that job for another 5 days because it's Wednesday and she doesn't work the rest of the week so you know it will go cold and the transaction will take twice as long as without that person.

Part time work is not the same as disability under the law by the way. Also there is no legal obligation to accept a job can be done part time or job shared which of course reflects the fact that many jobs cannot be done on that basis. The main person damaged by working part time is usually the man or woman doing it but if they go into it with their eyes open then and if the employer agrees then that's fair. Those who think they are entitled or God like because they are the first person in history to have a child tend to get what is coming to them. They might get 9 montsh of being fussed over but they will be on credit crunch threads in 10 years time with very little money because they got their priorities wrong when it mattered.

What Rain said.

Lulu for the record, my dh also does all the things that you've never known a man to do. When our dc was ill, we took a day off each. He's not in education. He has a fairly senior role in a male dominated private sector company, where no one questioned that he needed to look after his child who was ill.

Men are outnumbered in my workplace, but they all have children and have all, without exception, taken their share of time off when their child has been ill.

As for the risk assessments, your point seems to be that if something's never happened then it's low risk and shouldn't be pandered to. When you take school trips out, do you not think about road safety, because you've never had an accident before?

Rain You read it as smug. That's because you look for it to be so. You and women like you are why I sound 'snippy'. You try to stop any honest discussion of the way some pregnant women and some women with children behave in the work place. Your first response is to be ridiculously emotive and compare it with disability discrimnation. That is an old technique designed to be emotive and just does not wash any more. It is entirely different as I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring. You then threw in th Race card to be even more emotive. Can't you see it is just to prevent actual discussion that you do that?

Your second technique is to only pick the bits you want to use and pounce on them to try to imply I am being unreasonable. I am not. If you actually bothered to read all my posts on this thread, you would see I have given numerous examples of the unreasonable lengths we have had to go to to meet the unreasonable requests of a number if pregnant women or women who work or want to work part-time, on our staff and the impact of that on students and other staff.

You then imply I have said things that it would suit you for me to have said but at not point have I actually said. I have never said pregnant women should not have risk assessments. I have said I have dealt with a number of instances of pregnant women making reasonable requests in risk assessments. The duties on is very common - not just in my school but DH's, and both PIL. None of us has ever had a member of staff kicked in the stomach or punched in the stomach in our 4 schools but we all know of a number of instances of staff in a pregnancy risk assessment citing it as the reason they should no longer have to do a teacher duty. If it has never happened it is a low risk- because school already has good systems which mnimise risk. Just because the staff do not want to do the duty does not mean that is what should happen.

You then imply I have given one example n an attempt to minimise what I am saying. I have not. I have said a number of pregnant women in my school ask to not do duties. By a number I mean more often than not it is raised n the riask assessment. Other staff are then put under more pressure because the duty has to be done.

You ignore the validity of many of my points by not answering them. How can it be right for a school timetable to be compromised in the ways I have described earlier in the thread to meet the wants of teachers asking to teach part-time? How can it be right for other teachers to come under further pressure in any way because a teacher wants to teach part-time or job share? Why should students in any way get a poorer deal because a teacher wants to work part-time? For example be taught Chemistry or Maths by two staff instead of one, have to have two lessons of a subject in the same day, for evety child in a year group to have to have the same lesson last lesson of the day every day for a year to meet a woman's flexible working request. How can that be right? That is what we had to do. So children in Y9- the only year she did not teach- had to have English last lesson every day for a year because she wanted to go home last lesson to pick her children up from school. All the other years groups, that she wanted to teach, had to be timetabled when she was there. Ridiculous! Why should her wants have to come first. It is no wonder employers get fed up with women when those sort of demands have to be met. She has done me no favours-a woman who would like to work 4 days and have a Monday or a Friday off to have time with DS but I know how much pressure the school is already under because of flexible working.

I have sympathy for women with children. I am one and apart from DH have no help or support. That was my choice so I am not going to moan about it.
And yes, I do think there are pregnant women who are poorly and that affects their work and they are very upset by that, and I see many who have a mindset that they get on and deal with the day to day things pregnancy brings, but I also think there are pregnant women who are off at the drop of a hat and think being pregnant is a cause for the whole of whatever institution they work for to meet their every whim. DH had one at his last school just before the summer who announced she was very tired after lunch and would it be alright if she had a lie down in the medical room for half an hour and someone else could take her class every afternoon. We have a receptionist who thinks the child -free admin staff should do the hours she does not want to do because she likes to start later to take her children to school. So they always start at 8 and she starts at 10.00am - they always deal with the rush of parents and parcels and queries and vistors and she arrives when it is quiet. And yes, they are fed up with hearing her say she can't possibly do an earlier shift, ever. She takes their choice away.

Your stance of no one is allowed to speak the truth as they have seen it, no one is allowed to express an opinion that is critical of pregnant women or the impact that women with families who want to have flexible working can often have in a school-in my case- does women no favours. You are pretending the issues don't exist and that I am the unreasonable one. If you read the thread many posters have said similar things although the exact examples may be different.

The issues do exist and it is time we were open and honest about them as women and stopped hiding behind the ridiculous stance that flexible workng is always great and the requests of any women who wishes to work flexibly should always be met whatever the impact in others and anyone who suggests otherwise is discriminatory.

Anyway, I am off to take Ds for a walk and I won't return to the thread. I can't bear to read anything else by you Rain. You live in a fantasy world TBH.

I think you need to take your pregnancy out of the equation for now, and look at why else they may not have given you the job share role. Two senior teachers wanting a job share HOD role is more expensive than one less senior teacher doing the role. When I got my first teaching job, the principal said 'why should I hire you?' and I said 'because I've got twenty years work experience and I'll be on a grad salary. I'm cheap!' I got the job over more senior teachers, and whilst it was not the main factor in my hiring, budget is always a consideration, and if they can get what they need and save a bit of money, then they're going to do that.

When I made my post-maternity leave request for part time hours, my Headteacher made it crystal clear to me that my request would only be considered on the basis of 'benefit to the school', I got the amount of hours I wanted but not the days and I had to deal with a complete change in role!

Two years later the school requested to change my days (to the days I originally wanted) which, wasn't ideal for me (set nursery days etc) I was able to accommodate the change because, rightly or wrongly, I feel the school is 'doing me a favour' by enabling my part time status until such time as I am able to go full time again.

Incidentally, whilst I was on maternity leave, a junior colleague to me got given the middle management role I wanted (and was working towards via performance management targets, so definitely 'known' that I wanted the role etc) no advertising, consultation or interview process (I would most certainly have gone for it). I definitely felt that this was due to her being young, single and childless as opposed to me as a newlywed with newborn (this was prior to my part time request which I likely wouldn't have made had I got the new role).

The role has now come up again (young, single, childless occupant since married with baby, went part time before pregnant again and leaving altogether!). I have expressed an interest in it but told it is unavailable due to my part time hours but that they (& I) can reconsider the role and my working hours before the next academic year so who knows? (role currently being unwillingly covered by another teacher who is desperate for me to take it over!).

Part time work is not the same as disability under the law by the way That is correct, it is sex that is protected not p-t work, but as the majority of p-t workers are female there is often protection under the act.
Those who think they are entitled or God like because they are the first person in history to have a child tend to get what is coming to them. Of ffs. I am used to your posts after many years but that is just nasty. "Priorities" are very personal as well and many women will value time at home as being as important as making lots of money (I am not referring to financial security here).

All I mean is that we reap what we sow. If you do 40 hours of surgery as a young doctor rather than 80 you will on the whole not be as good. So by all means go part time but don't expect it not to affect the amount of experience you have.

Lulu you are massively over-invested in my posts
I do not have to answer every point you've posted - off course some employees take the piss, that is not news! And you have clearly dealt with some right chancers. But men do it as well as women, and full-time workers as well as part-time. A lot of the issues you are under pressure about are performance issues rather than equality ones. Some people cheat the benefits system: that doesn't mean benefits are a bad idea.

There is nothing emotive in comparing women with disabled people or BME people - they all have characteristics that are protected under the equality act. That is the point I have made repeatedly; not that there experiences are identical.

Janet that is a much more reasonable way to put it!