AIBU to want my mat leave plus promotion

[MiniPumpkin]

Need to post this to get some perspective or give my head a wobble.. whatever you all think ..
So been with large organisation for 10 years, promoted posts are few and far between, to put into context it has come up three times in the 10 years I’ve been there, including during my mat leave with dc1. Now on mat leave with dc2 it’s come up again. I want the job, always have and I’m pretty career driven but of course I also want my mat leave to continue. I want what I am entitled to which is my entire maternity leave. And I want promotion. If I get it they will want me back early.
I’m just sick of well, being female ? Woman’s careers are so disadvantaged if you ask me, I turned down a job (with another organisation) when ttc with dc1 as I wouldn’t get as good mat leave pay.. then of course you can’t go anywhere/leave when pregnant as you will lose the maternity pay. Now I feel I want this job but feel I will just be discriminated against, I wont get it as they will just say I didn’t do as well because they will no doubt prefer to give it to someone not on mat leave.
Not even sure of point in this post, I need somewhere to vent and get perspective. I feel like saying stuff it and just wait till my mat leave is over but who knows when the next opportunity will be and it really annoys me…

@Dexy007 So why does taking a few extra months of maternity leave, so that you take a full year instead of, say, 6-8 months, mean your less committed? Isn’t the issue you, and your failure to see the bigger picture? That employees have families and want to spend time with those families, and taking a few extra months no way questions their commitment and ability to work once their back? Your comments really are shocking, especially as a woman.

*you’re

I agree PinkWednesdays
If you take me and my colleague for example.....

I have had one 12 month maternity leave. Shared parental leave didn't exist so I couldn't share that leave. I returned full time and have continued to go above and beyond. I travel internationally and work evenings and weekends when required. I share childcare responsibilities equally with DH and due to the nature of my job he is more likely to be off with DS if he's sick.

My male colleague has obviously never taken maternity leave but he has chosen to work part time. He does consultancy work on the side which he makes clear is his priority because it pays more. He will only travel internationally on his terms and is reluctant to do evenings and weekends because it interferes with him using his football season ticket.

But according to some posters I'm the less committed employee because i took 12 months off when I had a baby....time I was legally entitled to take.

In what way JennyForeigner? The point is, if the OP read her own post, she would realise how petulant it sounded - the i want phrase was repeated several times

But according to some posters I'm the less committed employee because i took 12 months off when I had a baby....time I was legally entitled to take

Some posters need to challenge their internal misogyny, and the way in which they enforce the patriarchy.

@wtaf37 yes I do ‘want’.. what’s up with that ? I’ll do my best and won’t settle for less .., well maybe I’ll reduce my leave slightly if I was lucky enough to get this job ..

@Dexy007 you are framing all of the decisions about length of leave around whose career is perceived to be of most importance as between the two parents. In reality the decision is likely to be far more complex than that. Both parents may consider the female’s career to be more “important” (and eg plan for the man to go part time after she returns to work) but factors like the kind of birth/physical condition of the mum/whether the baby was born early and spent time in NICU/ whether the mum is breastfeeding/family finances/workplace policies/entitlements to SPL and other benefits…all of these factor into the decision too. So you cannot just look at the time a woman has taken off in isolation and draw conclusions about their commitment as a family to her job. It disgusts me that you (a) admit to doing this and (b) think it is defensible.

@Dexy007 I hope you're working hard in your organisation to;

1. close the gender pay gap in your organisation. It's this that often leads to the woman being the lower paid in a couple. For SPL it's only the leave not pay that's transferred so usually it's the unpaid portion that's shared. If a family has to do without one salary it will be the lower one.

2. ensure that SPL is paid.

But let's be honest for a minute here. If men wanted paid paternity leave for a year - they'd have it. Women fought for maternity leave when they started to enter the work force in greater numbers. Men have the platform and most of the CEOs, it would not be a hard fight.

@PinkWednesdays

But according to some posters I'm the less committed employee because i took 12 months off when I had a baby....time I was legally entitled to take

Some posters need to challenge their internal misogyny, and the way in which they enforce the patriarchy.

All of this. It isn't a choice for 99/100 couples where parents aren't both working in companies with significant non-statutory contractual rights. The complete failure of SPL is ensures partners still work, mums got to earn.

I am by a long way the majority income earner in our house. Paying our mortgage still depended on me taking mat leave.

As an employment lawyer I probably shouldn't be, but am, shocked by the views of some on this thread.

Not considering someone for a role because they are on mat leave is discrimination. Simple as that.

Anyone saying otherwise doesn't understand the law.

This includes not offering the role because the start date is during the mat leave. If OP is offered the job she doesn't have to turn it down if it is due to start during mat leave - the employer needs to wait or find temporary cover.

It seems clear that the pattern of women taking most or all the leave is in part due to the structural nature of the gender pay gap. That won't change if women continue to take all the leave. So intervention is needed to incentivise companies to provide paid SPL allowing it to be an economic option at least. It shouldn't be the burden on families to make an economically irrational decision, if we want to improve equality in our workplaces and in society.

You can't disentangle these decisions which is why arguments always descend on comment thread like this. If you removed that £ factor and women still choose to take all the leave and men are still not materially contributing to the childcare mental and practical burden beyond the mat leave then you reveal how structural this societal gender bias is. Because that is also a factor.

@TractorAndHeadphones just going back to the comments yesterday.

What I meant by “penalised” was suffer consequences based purely on the fact they had taken leave. So if a new project required experience of xyz and a woman didn’t have experience of x because her team did that while she was on leave, fair enough not to give her the role. But it is not fair enough if a project requires experience of y and z, which she has, but her employer considers her less committed than someone else in her team purely because she took her mat leave entitlement, and so offers the role to someone else on that basis.

In other words, maternity leave should be neither here nor there, candidates should ge evaluated in terms of the experience they have and the attributes they bring to any role, on a level playing field with others in their team.

But it is not fair enough if a project requires experience of y and z, which she has, but her employer considers her less committed than someone else in her team purely because she took her mat leave entitlement, and so offers the role to someone else on that basis.

Exactly. Yet this is what one particular poster was advocating.
Automatically assuming that women who have taken maternity leave are less committed employees and making recruitment decisions based on that assumption is discrimination.

Even if there's a slight shortfall for say, 3 months that the father takes, I think that's more than compensated for by the fact the father has that fantastic 1:1 time truly knowing what looking after a child is like
bwahahaha!
If men wanted this, it would have been happening as the norm for years. They can SEE what looking after a child is like. The alternative is more attractive.

[quote Jujujuly]@TractorAndHeadphones just going back to the comments yesterday.

What I meant by “penalised” was suffer consequences based purely on the fact they had taken leave. So if a new project required experience of xyz and a woman didn’t have experience of x because her team did that while she was on leave, fair enough not to give her the role. But it is not fair enough if a project requires experience of y and z, which she has, but her employer considers her less committed than someone else in her team purely because she took her mat leave entitlement, and so offers the role to someone else on that basis.

In other words, maternity leave should be neither here nor there, candidates should ge evaluated in terms of the experience they have and the attributes they bring to any role, on a level playing field with others in their team.[/quote]
Ah yea fair enough - was referring to a PP about advancing more slowly

@SpinsForGin

But it is not fair enough if a project requires experience of y and z, which she has, but her employer considers her less committed than someone else in her team purely because she took her mat leave entitlement, and so offers the role to someone else on that basis.

Exactly. Yet this is what one particular poster was advocating.
Automatically assuming that women who have taken maternity leave are less committed employees and making recruitment decisions based on that assumption is discrimination.

Exactly! In a 40+ year career what’s a few years of mat leave? If people have managed to deliver work of a certain standard they’re clearly capable. Companies are employing people who reproduce not robots and our sole life purpose isn’t to be human resources it’s to be human beings

@wtaf37

In what way JennyForeigner? The point is, if the OP read her own post, she would realise how petulant it sounded - the i want phrase was repeated several times

What's wrong with wanting stuff for yourself?

A career tends to last 40 years. Two years out is a drop in the ocean

It is in the scheme of a whole career. But how many women stay 40 years in the same job? I've only been in jobs for up to five years. If I spent two year on mat leave in a job I was only in for 3 years they might rightly feel that they didn't get much out of me. And of course many women have more than two children.

@ColinTheKoala

A career tends to last 40 years. Two years out is a drop in the ocean

It is in the scheme of a whole career. But how many women stay 40 years in the same job? I've only been in jobs for up to five years. If I spent two year on mat leave in a job I was only in for 3 years they might rightly feel that they didn't get much out of me. And of course many women have more than two children.

So what is the answer to that? Don't employ women? What about someone who gets ill? Or what about people who move from job to job frequently?

It's actually quite common for people stay stay in the same organisation for long periods of time and women are more likely to stay in jobs/with organisations for longer anyway.

@ColinTheKoala

A career tends to last 40 years. Two years out is a drop in the ocean

It is in the scheme of a whole career. But how many women stay 40 years in the same job? I've only been in jobs for up to five years. If I spent two year on mat leave in a job I was only in for 3 years they might rightly feel that they didn't get much out of me. And of course many women have more than two children.

By that logic the company should also feel hard done by if someone only stayed a year

Also to add -
If you join and then get pregnant you’d have been there for 9 months. And even if you got pregnant immediately after you’d have less than 2 years total leave (as they’d overlap). Otherwise you’d be back in the office with at least 9 more months to go. That’s 1.5 years.
As pp said people could join and go on long term sick, or just leave after less than a year.
That’s just general employee turnover

And you think companies don’t feel hard done by when that happens?

I think I’ve been quite negative re discrimination, it’s terrible but I feel if they don’t want you they will just adjust the scorers to say you didn’t do as well as x. Anyway I won’t know if I don’t try!

Exactly. TBH, all your posts have been about what you think will happen or how you feel you will be treated. You haven’t even applied yet - you’ve decided you’ll be discriminated against based on assumptions. You also say there are around 100 applications every time one of these promotions comes up. Even if you don’t get it, there will be 98 other people who also don’t get it - and surely they can’t all be on maternity leave.

Most men won’t take parental leave because they lack the skill or interest to care for small children. In many workplaces, men don’t feel comfortable asking for shared leave. It’s misogynistic, but ideology tends to triumph biology.
I’m an American, where such generous leave is practically mythological. I understand the Equality Act prevents discrimination on the basis of maternity leave, but it’s very expensive for a company to offer someone a position they will take up in a few months’ time and have to find cover. It behooves an employer to run his firm to the limit of the law.

Careers give you money, but won’t love you.

@Ericaequites sorry but what are you saying. Men aren’t good at it so women should suck up all the childcare and screw their careers, and that’s fine because their careers “won’t love them”. That is ridiculous. The US position re parental leave is shameful, not some kind of gold standard. There needs to be a cultural change to encourage men to take up leave because only then will it truly become “accepted” in the working world. A defeatist attitude that men simply aren’t into it so why bother trying helps no one.