I think what Xenia is saying is that women in the workplace face challenges and assumptions that men don't, usually. In my experience it's usually not open hostility, it's more subtle than that...
For example, implying to a mother returning to work after maternity leave will a) be torn apart by leaving her children, (it was hard, initially, but I was keen to get back to doing something I love) b) need a few moths to "get back into it" (I had a baby, not a labotomy, it took longer to get my email set up than it took for me to "get back into it"), c) that I was only returning to work because I HAD to, and 'wasn't that a shame that I couldn't stay home with my children' (without questioning whether this was, in fact what I wanted. It wasn't.). All of these statements were made to me, and neither would have been to a man in a similar position.
And when I resigned to start up my own business, the email from my direct boss to the company said that I was "leaving to be a full time Mum." Suffice to say there was a swift reply to the whole company informing them in no uncertain terms that this wasn't what I would be doing.
(Actually, I do feel I'm a "full time mum", I don't stop being a mum when I'm at work. I am at ALL times a mum, a designer, a wife, a human being. I think about my children constantly, even (especially) when I am not with them. He meant a SAHM, and that I wouldn't be WOH. He knew very well that this wasn't the case but chose, deliberately or unconsciously, to project his own beliefs onto my situation.)
And I think that having more women continuing with their careers is imperative to this kind of attitude become less prevalent, and I think that's important. that these kinds of assumptions/views are challenged. The fewer women there are in the workplace, then obviously the less likely that is to happen.
However I don't think the way to do this is to belittle the choices made by those who stay at home. I think it woud be enormously helpful if more flexible working practices were adopted by more companies to enable women to be effective in their jobs and be available for their children. But again, this is only going to happen with more working mothers demanding that it happen.
Or if there were more women setting up on their own, and demonstrating that flexible working doesn't mean inefficient working or a lower standard of results in any way. (This is, in part, what I'm trying to do, actually)
I think it woud be helpful if there was 'parental leave' rather than just 'maternity leave' so that the people taking the time off to be with children when they're ver young could be men or women, thereby not making assumptions about who it should be.
At the moment many women who want to return to work face an impossible choice because doing so requires more sacrifices for them as a mother and for their family and children than they are prepared to make. So I fully understand why many would choose not to.
I also understand that some women welcome and embrace the opportunity to take some time out of their job/career to stay at home to be a SAHM/home-maker/housewife/however you want to describe it.
Personally, as far as the children are concerned, I think there are pro's and cons to each way of doing it, SAHM or WOHM and that children are not particularly advantaged/disadvantage either way... I don't think that's the issue, and that trying to argue which option is best for the children is only likely to lead to conflict, and we ought not to be belittling either camp, or claiming that one kind of mothering is better than another.
But I think, necessarily, the more women who choose, or are forced by logistics or finances, to stay at home, the fewer women there will be on the workplace, and the harder it will be to force the change in working practices and models which would enable more women who would like to continue to work to do so. And I would like my daughters to have the choice, and better options than many WOHM do at the moment.
Because lets face it, the men aren't going to do it for us, are they?
db
xx