Following with interest, don’t want to make too much of a reply without listening to the woman’s hour interview and reading through properly…. Which I probably won’t have time for until kids are back to school.
What I will say is that inflammatory articles pitting women against each other are not that helpful to solving the problem, which is a combination of management, childcare provision and unequal distribution of parental responsibility.
The issue with management is the main one and has been discussed and acknowledged. Some employers have better policies and ways of doing things. Unfortunately in retail and other such professions you don’t necessarily find the same standard and that needs to change.
Regards to childcare, the mass exodus of childcare providers around holiday times and particularly inadequate summer cover and emergency cover has a lot to answer for. For instance when the nativity is on the wraparound care ceases at our school as it’s expected parents will be there to collect children - for some it is not the case of attending the nativity but that if they don’t show up there is no one to collect and look after their child. While there are summer schemes and cover over Easter for example (if you have £120+ a week), at Christmas it is a virtual desert with tumble weed - not only do you have the main holiday days, for school age kids there are two weeks to cover and no where to put them unless you have family and friends to hand.
Some might say oh but this is akin to care of the elderly… but having cared for both geriatrics and children under 12, I can tell you that isn’t the case. The adults have either the opportunity to pay for care or have care funded for them and this doesn’t stop over holiday periods. For a child it is on their parents.
Finally, invariably with multiple maternity leaves, many women’s careers are put on the back burner, partners/husbands go ahead and the default position tends to be women as primary carer for offspring (though there are exceptions). This means you have the Mums, mainly, requiring all the emergency days/holiday days for their children, while Dad goes on unabated. If each parent was able to/wanted to take equal responsibility the impact of either on other workers would be less, potentially.
I think what we have to remember is that there was a time when women who got married/had children were excluded from work places (such as the civil service). Parental rights at work have been brought in to level the playing field and to facilitate the care of children while not relegating the primary carer to being tied to the kitchen sink. To abolish these rights would be a retrograde step and damaging to women as a whole.
The fact that it is women who appear to have a problem with the status quo and not the very many men who are affected by this is telling and speaks to their own issues, as far as I can read it.
My DH has worked in retail and now works in an adjacent industry that is busy at the same times. He works Xmas Eve and Boxing Day because that is how it is…. as well as most of the rest of the holidays… when he gets home he doesn’t slump on the sofa at 7pm and get to go to bed early because there is more that needs to be done. And he gets on with it.
But why should he, shouldn’t people in retail and related industries have a day off to enjoy the holidays too? The only ones who appear to be able to are those who are primary carers for children, while the rest are quite literally worked to the bone. That is unfair, and to demonise working Mums as the problem, it’s just not in touch with reality. For instance - there are virtually no women in my DH’s workplace, nor primary carers, but plenty who take the piss around Christmas. Management have solved the problem with incentives, staff absence is now next to nothing. Effective management is the key issue here.
I’m still trying to reconcile the downtrodden, exhausted lady in the DM article I read with the party girl in another DM piece a few months prior. But c’est la vie. Wish you all the best Sammy and that you feel more at piece in your new role whatever that may be.