Attitudes at work to working mothers, particularly if part-time

[Notcontent]

Sorry - just feel like a moan and wonder if other people feel like this.

I work in a professional role, in a job that can require long hours and can also pay extremely well. I am lone parent so can’t do those long hours and so I work in a role which pays well, but not compared to most of my colleagues. I also work part time (four days a week) and obviously my pay reflects that.

But I always feel that my boss (who earns about 10 times what I do or more) and others think I am not pulling my weight. My work keeps banging on about work/life balance, etc but ultimately I feel that as a woman, with caring responsibilities, I will always be seen as not doing enough.

A few things that really annoy me about being part time

1. Comments about all my time off - which is spent looking after two toddlers so not exactly relaxing (though I do appreciate being able to spend the time with them)
2. The only thing people can think of to say to me is ‘how are the kids’. It’s actually really weird, I rarely bring them up but whenever I see someone I haven’t seen for a while that’s what they inevitably ask.

However, I think the latter is possibly the same for all mums, I did wrk full time after my first but I can’t remember if it is the same.

But I always feel that my boss (who earns about 10 times what I do or more) and others think I am not pulling my weight

I'm amazed that PPs have weighed in with advice on a situation based entirely on supposition, and attributed attitudes.

OP What do they say,what do they do that allows you to reach the conclusions you do?

I think I'm lucky in my job. I’m still very respected even though I'm part time and people just accept I'm not in the office all the time. My boss is very pro family first and job second though which I think is rare. I do definitely think it limits my chances to progress into the higher roles never seem to be suited to part time work. I think people who work part time do have to work that much harder to show they're making a worthwhile contribution. I'm constantly rushed off my feet, no time to grab a coffee or chat by the photocopier etc... I feel under pressure never to be seen as slacking off because I work reduced hours.

You need to get less apologetic about it. Regard yourself as an asset.

Not: 'I'm really so sorry everyone I need to leave now to pick up the kids'.
But: 'Right, I've done everything I need to do. See you tomorrow.'

I found that the stronger the barrier I put around part-time hours, the more people respected it. Otherwise what on earth is the point of sacrificing that salary if you are not going to give your full attention to your family when you are not being paid?

The only exception I think is if you are very highly paid, so if your FTE is £70-100k and you are lucky enough to be part-time in that kind of role then I think you do have to do some work outside your 0.6 to meet the needs of the role.

It does seem very normal for a workplace to have a workload that's too much for its employees.

I'll always remember my poor colleague who was part time in a team of 5 and had way more work than she could do in her hours and was always having to hand work over to her full time colleagues when she left at 3. From their perspective it must have felt like she was swanning off and leaving them in the shit every day. Really it was poor management.

I work 4 days in my current role and feel like I do the same amount of work as those working full time. I have to work a shorter day on one of the days and the amount of appointments I have to decline from people who know my working patterns is so disappointing. It’s like they’re trying to point out that working part time is unreasonable. But it’s like others have said - I don’t get paid for those hours so if I step in regularly (with all the childcare juggling that includes) then it’s seen as the norm.

I am only part time. My boss and the manager have both made it clear in the past that they think I don't give as much as I should. And that really, I'm of no use, despite other members of staff sticking up for me. Having my son has meant that I am no longer regarded as a valid member of staff. I only have to wait another year and I can get another job. It's what keeps me going. I was treated very differently when I was full time. I don't think any woman can prepare herself for the judgement and change in attitude when she has a family.

Of course it is to do with being a mother. Yes, part time workers of both genders are often overlooked and underworked but there remains prejudice against mothers too, so if both apply to you, you get a double whammy. Also, the overwhelming majority of part time workers are women.

This thread has made me appreciate my employer, a school that has lots of part time staff and doesn't bar us from taking on extra responsibilities or seeking promotion. There is a huge shortage of teachers though, which surely helps.

I do get e.g 'Oh could you just attend this meeting after school', on days I'm not paid to work the afternoon but I just tell them straight and find an alternative way to achieve whatever it is. I work in the evening and weekends but the remote working set up is excellent.

I have found the most oblivious colleagues are women in their 20s and early 30s who just don't get that no-one runs out the door at 4pm (to meet childcare pickup) for personal enjoyment.

I just think to myself your time will come and I do talk to receptive people (especially if they are in management) about ways to make things work better for part timers such as varying the time/day on which important meetings are held.

I do my bit, though. I ensure I check messages when I'm not there and I volunteer conspicuously for things that I can handle within my set up.

YANBU but all you can do is protect yourself and try to be more helpful to others yourself. I try to alert the teenagers I teach although I don't know if they can really 'hear' this stuff before it happens to them.

I find the workload isn’t proportionate; in my job full time staff might have 20 cases for example and on 4 days you have 16 which on the face of it seems fair but in reality I also have team meetings, a monthly one on one with my manager and monthly training I then end up with less time than everyone else.
I also don’t find that my day off is respected and that if I work on it there’s not really much recognition that it’s the equivalent of other people working on a weekend

Yep. Especially because I care for my son too so time off is not exactly a jolly.

I was made to feel like persona non grata when I returned part time (4 days). My male, childless boss went from seeing me as a key part of the team to referring to me as the part timer and excluding me from major meetings and decision making.

The entire year I was back was utterly miserable. A restructure that happened half way through saw my original role scrapped and I was sidelined into a weird niche role that I would struggle to find in another business leaving me pretty trapped with a crap role on my own in the wings.

As a result now that I’m on mat leave again I am not planning to go back.

Yep, I switched back to public sector with lower pay.

Hasn't there been a study showing that people's productivity is a lot less on their last day at work (when full time)? Iirc three days was found to be the amount of time people were most productive for.

I meant over worked above.

I agree with the points about tasks not being proportional. My teaching hours (and pay!) are pro rata but you can't pro rata a set of reports or a parents' evening. So you do more work overall proportional to your pay.

Attitude is important. I see myself as an asset and they can't have me full time, as full time teaching plus a commute is 70+ hours a week and I can't do that and parent without cracking up (I tried). So I'm looking after my employer as well as myself in the sense that I'm doing something I can handle (and saving them money, let's not forget that part).

Of course you can tell if colleagues think you're not pulling your weight. They make snipey comments and sigh when you need to rearrange things. They draw attention to when you leave the building. I've had all that in previous jobs!

I saw a quote once that sums it up for me “people expect mums to work as if they don’t have children and parent as if they don’t work”
I’m a single, part time working mum with an ex that berates me one minute for working at all then says I need to work full time in the next breath. The school always expects parents to come in for random things, work obviously aren’t thrilled when I ask to swap shifts or can’t come in.
It is hard but going to work is my sanity at the moment!

OP I used to work in a role very similar to the one you describe. Lots of working long hours, client entertaining in the evening, lots of training courses away from home. One project I worked on they paid for a taxi to take me to the client site to arrive at 6am each morning when the office opened. Lots of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at work. I did it all and got paid very well to do so.
When I went on MAT leave they gave me a career break. They called often to ask if I’d like to return. On my terms. Whatever I wanted. Part time, working from home, you name it Millie.
I didn’t go back. Why not? Because I knew I couldn’t do it now. Not part time, not with WFH, not with the flexibility they promised. I knew from experience it wasn’t possible to do that job and do it well on those terms. I had an outstanding reputation there. I didn’t want to become known as the slacker, the one who left the office while everyone else was still sat at their desks. The one who said no all the time. For me the salary they were offering wasn’t worth it.

@MaybeDoctor This is so true and excellent advice.

I try to be more factual and give less excuses these days. It has definitely helped strengthen my position and at least make me feel less apologetic about myself!

I think also to be fair some jobs are harder to do part time than others. If continuity over the week is important then it can be tricky to liaise with different people on different days especially with people who aren't very good at handovers or delegating. Rightly or wrongly I find a lot of service users do get arsey when they phone one day then phone the next and get told they can't speak to person A because they are part time. As a full timer in that situation you do get a disproportionate amount of external queries because people find it easier to liaise with someone who is there all the time rather than remembering a work pattern.

A job where more or less everything is wrapped up the same day is going to be less of an issue for someone working part time but full days.

In any case the team and workload being managed well makes all the difference and a robust handover system also helps.

Quite prepared to be flamed for this but the only thing I've noticed in my previous work place (banking), one full time staff member was constantly away, which added to the workload of other staff.

She had 2 DC and they were forever ill. No SN or any other medical disabilities.

Our Manager then would get grumpy because the part timers weren't prepared to stay back to cover for her.

(I worked full time) but I continually had to point out to our Manager that part timers were part timers for a reason. They had small DC or other commitments on the days they didn't work. Plus, they were only paid for the hours they were employed.

referring to me as the part timer

I think it's this sort of behaviour that sets the tone for how part time workers are treated in the workplace. Snide jokes and comments, it's so unprofessional but also shows how a lot of managers really feel about part time staff (and also flexible working in some cases).

I worked for a manager who was recruiting for a senior position in financial services. He openly told the team he had ruled out a female candidate who wanted to work four days a week. I was appalled. Basically, he was a workaholic who thought anyone working less than 60 hours a week was slacking. His own prejudices were apparent and it was also a warning shot that our roles couldn’t be done part time. He was such a bad manager and his views cascaded down to the team. At the point I left that team, most of the other women on the team had also found new jobs, the only two left were his favourites (who also loved working long hours).

I think we need to stop fetishizing 40+ hours a week as the gold standard of work. I have recently been thinking about whether redefining "full time hours" would work. Lets say we said changed it to 30 hours a week.
Then a typicall 5 day a week job could be advertised as FTE + 7 hours instead. It might start to change mindsets. I'm sure lots of people will say why it can't be done though.

The problem is that the workplace we work in is the same workplace that was set up by men for men, when women were at home fully responsible for all things domestic. Women can only get on in work if they act like men.

We need to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it with women fully equal to men, not just as people who've been shoehorned in and then the system endlessly fiddled and tweaked.

This is why I'm so sceptical of such things as shared parental leave - I am not convinced that telling ourselves that fathers are always the same as mothers at all stages of a child's life is helpful to women. In the newborn days they certainly are not. Men and women are equal but different and denying that doesn't help women. 30 years after the Equal Pay Act women are still paid less than men and still carry the bulk of domestic and caring responsibilities. Doesn't sound terribly equal to me.

I work part-time, I ended up moving to a much lower paid job. The job is great. Interesting but fairly non pressurised.
I suspect the issue OP is that in jobs where full-time workers are working over their contracted hours, then a part-time worker sticking to their hours is not pulling their weight.

I am a very senior manager, and was long ago converted to the benefits of flexible working - part time, flexible hours, working from home etc. A significant proportion of my senior managers work a form of either part time or compressed hours - both male and female. The result? An engaged, flexible team who are really committed. Organisations who can’t see this are really shortsighted.

I once held a senior position for a company that makes the pink lotion in pink baby bottles. You might be fooled for thinking that this ought to be a family friendly company? I went back to work after having my DC part time. Then after doing the part-time job for two years I requested to return to my full-time job as I realise that the company was getting a bloody good deal out of me. Request was blankly refused, so I ended up quitting. All of these decisions unfortunately were made by senior females within the business who did not have kids themselves. My own hard experience of corporate sisterhood is zilch I'm afraid. Every woman for herself.

I just think to myself your time will come

I actually remember thinking that MY time would come, when I was in my twenties and everyone apart from me arrived at work late and left early.

One person in my team (all of us on full time hours but working ‘flexibly’) would arrive at 10, leave at 3 and never be heard from out of hours.

Her boundaries created a massive amount of work for me - and bed/bath time was obviously out too so anything that happened between 3-7 I had to do - some of that being outside of my working hours, ironically.

Management felt they had no way to address this. I do remember resenting it.

Now I have children of my own and understand how flexible working ACTUALLY works, I can see that in my situation no one knew how to manage it properly and people took advantage of the system.

In the UK workplace I find that our sense of what people should be able to do and the actual execution of how work then is carried out in fairness to all team members are often mismatched. If you work somewhere where it’s balanced, it’s the dream.

Flexible working is great and at good companies (and under great bosses) where it is understood properly it works.