Why is society so unsupportive of high-achieving 'power mums'?

[KateMumsnet]

Nigel Farage has hurled himself into the debate about equality at work with a typically thoughtful, modern and nuanced view: City women with families are "worth less" than their male counterparts. UKIP-madness-as-usual, you think. Until you look at polling data which reveals what society really thinks about women in senior roles - and are forced to wonder whether his comments are smarter than they first look.

At a Jericho Chambers debate last week, chaired by Zoe Williams of the Guardian, the research company Populus shared a resoundingly miserable take on public views of women in top-level jobs.

Of the 2,000 people they asked, very nearly half think that our society has suffered as more women have worked out of the home. A whopping 57% agreed that 'when it comes to the work-life balance, women can't have it all, however much they may want it'.

So while many of us blithely assume that everyone sane wants broadly equal numbers of women and men at senior levels of business and government, we may not be right - especially if the women in question happen to have children.

A year ago, fed up with a corporate world of retro alpha men, I set out to interview some ‘power mums’ and ‘power dads’ about the choices they've made to get their senior jobs, for Management Today. I was looking for potential role models - but it wasn't that straightforward. Yes, the mums do generally love their jobs. But they also work long hours, miss their kids, feel quite stressed a lot of the time, feel judged at the school gate and judged at work - and most concede that they are surviving rather than thriving.

In contrast, the dads feel no social censure, express few regrets and are free from the racing mental ticker-tape of things they must remember (‘online shop, wash PE kit, plan birthday party, book haircuts, cancel swimming….’) which even the women with the most help keep on a loop. Unlike one of the dads, none of the mums has yet confessed to inventing breakfast meetings to escape the chaos of Cheerio throwing.

The response to the publication of those interviews has, if anything, been even more striking - particularly the judgement cast upon the female high-fliers by other women. On Facebook, a woman commented on a power mum with four children and a long commute: "She may be powerful but she is no mother"; an ambitious 20-something friend said: "when I read that they only see their kids two nights a week, I think 'shame on you' - and then I hate myself for thinking it".

In our frank debate last week, the self-confessed 'enlightened' CEO of Costcutter Supermarkets Group, Darcy Wilson-Rymer, was brutal on the business realities of the subject. Four-day weeks don't work - because women end up doing five days for 20% less pay, and then getting frustrated and doing something else. Job shares can work, but are not ideal at the most senior levels.

After the debate, a woman who read about it sent us an infuriated email, arguing that we were missing the point: "it's actually NOT about the Power Mums who have made it in their careers by getting up at 5am, working out, working a 10-hour day, getting back late feeling guilty and employing loads of staff to help them through. Its about the average professional woman who can work maybe 20 to 30 hours a week but who doesn't want power or even career progression”.

Which is of course brilliant for everyone it suits. But - news flash for Mr Farage - some women do want equality and power and progression. Even some who have had a baby, or two or three. And if the men work 70 hours a week and the women half that, it won't happen. Find me a FTSE-100 CEO who works 30 hours, and surely we'll find an exquisitely wrapped carriage clock ticking under their PA's desk.

We can spend all the time we like dissecting equality and discrimination, childcare options and our hours culture - but until society puts quality of life and families on a more equal footing with business needs, this is just how it is.

So until that time - unless we agree with Nigel Farage and his mates - we need to be supportive of the women who are making the sacrifices to get to the top, and ensure that those women are heard. If they are not, what hope do we have that our daughters will face less stark choices?

But who cares what people say, to your face or not. They are entitled to their opinions but surely no one makes a decision to work/stay at home on the basis on what other people think. I mean really, what is the relevance to this debate? I couldn't give two boots if other people judge me for working - it is the norm for me, my mother worked until she was 69 and so do all the females in my family, I would find it very weird not to work. I genuinely find it weird when people bring up such hearsay as if it's evidence for something, it just doesn't matter. And such opinions say more about the person holding them than anything else.

painty the figures about what women want refer to women with young DC.

The figures for women of older DC are different. Those women want to work but often cannot get back into the work place. And the time to become power mums has long since passed them by!

But that really is beside the point. Whether you want to be a power Mum or not, why on God's green earth wouldn't you, as a woman, support another woman?

Why do women only support women who live their lives like them?

It is so narrow minded. And so so bad for society.

Only on mat leave did I meet the precious moments crew,no jip at work.obviously
I don't need or seek the approbation of others on whether I work or not

"Why do women only support women who live their lives like them?"

I think that it is only human nature to not want to make sacrifices in your own life for the benefit of other people who are already in a position of relative comfort. Especially when those people think it is their due to receive support/concessions and/or they seek recognition for being a role model.

It's about not wanting to have the class meeting at 7pm every time because that what suits the working parents with nannies (who can pop in to school on the way home from work before the nanny's shift ends). It's about not having your DC's friends for sleepovers only on those nights their parents are away on business. It's about the DC who goes to Hong Kong for a week in the middle of the school term because she is accompanying her mother who is going there for work not getting into trouble at school (indeed, receiving all the work by email) but the DC whose has a SAHP getting into trouble for one Friday afternoon taken for a long weekend. Etc.

When work, and particularly "power mums", use their agenda as a trump card to get their own way and get life to revolve around them, the wider world doesn't feel very supportive.

painty I agree that women should be enabled to rejoin the workforce after having children, and I certainly supported the extension of maternity leave and would resist any attempts to shorten it.

But I think we have to be realistic about long career breaks. In some areas, being out for several years for whatever reason, will mean you're of limited value on re entry.

Bonsoir perhaps the power Mums in your vicinity endlessly ruin the lives of SAHPs ... but back in the real world....most of us are utterly untroubled by them. They almost never affect our lives.

And anyway I don't think for one nano second that this is the reason for lack of support.

The real reason is defensive narrow mindedness. A complete failure to imagine that families can raise their DC successfully in different set ups to our own. So the few women who do try to continue in their demanding positions receive endless criticism.

Small wonder that so few even try.

And while we can all shrug and say it doesn't matter, we then end up living in a society where women have almost no voice in areas that impact upon us all. So we have men running our media, our banking systems, our corporate world, our law making process...

Well if they aren't saying negative comments to my face but supposedly are saying them behind my back (I have no evidence of behind the back comments) then we just need to convert them to the advantages to families of successful parents. I am not so sure we all go around having the time to be pointing fingers and gossiping about whose choices are good or bad whether we are male or female. We just get on with life and seek to achieve our ambitions which for me were just as much about having lots of babies and enjoying breastfeeding and the like as earning a lot. Both matter a lot to me.

Few people care at all what other families do and how they organise their lives until it encroaches upon them. So I disagree that being narrow-minded has anything to do with it - most people are far too busy to care.

laura whilst other people's good opinion may not bother you (I'm a bit like that too), I still think it matters, because that general negative opinion of women in demanding positions feeds into policy at a macro level.

Nothing is done to make it easier for women to hold onto these positions because it's not considered A Good Thing.

Bonsoir what utter rot!

You make it very plain here on MN that you care very much what other mothers do and that you consider women who work when they don't need to, as utterly immoral. You've said so ad infinitum.

You may be ever so busy, but you put aside enough time to come here and give us the benefit of your views .

I don't agree at all that people don't think it is a good thing to have women (and, importantly, mothers) in positions of power.

What matters to most people is the freedom to arrange their own lives in a way that suits them. So mothers who don't want to work, or work FT, don't feel supportive of women in power who argue for policies to support FT working for all women to the detriment of policies that are supportive of other models.

What I find immoral is when families who have choices and education neglect their children.

I completely agree with word's posts.

As someone who is probably a power mum I don't need society's support but it would be lovely if some women didn't judge or make huge and silly assumptions about my children's welfare, whether I am raising them or my nanny, whether I spend any time with them or whether I pay my nanny peanuts.

Seniority, power and money gives me flexibility and choices other women don't have. I don't spend loads of time doing the mundane bits of running a house but employ a housekeeper, cleaner/ironing lady, gardener, handyman and home PA for those things. Each gets paid substantially more than NMW.

I can dictate my work hours which means I try and work from home once a week. Dh or I do school drop off each day and I pick up once a week. I do get home 95% of the time to do bath and stories and have breakfast with the dcs too.

Being a senior woman with dcs means I am able to ensure my team benefit from my presence and experience. It's incredibly important to me that women who work for me are able to receive every support, particularly when they have young dcs. My PA has changed her working hours 3 times in the last 5 years. I have agreed with each one because she's amazing but also as I always say "I didn't get to my position not to support other women".

I don't need society's support, there are far better causes. Some women are too busy judging to see the truth but thankfully, their narrow-mindedness doesn't personally bother me so much, but I do think it is that judging that harms society as a whole.

Bonsoir, clearly the "power mums" (God I hate that phrase) are clearly doing a better job than they do round here if they are getting the world to revolve around them. I, by contrast, feel that everything is arranged with the assumption of a SAHP existing and that my DC are made to feel strange/pitiable because there can't always be a parent there for school stuff. I am also acutely conscious that because I cannot do playdates, coffee mornings, WI meetings, etc I am not in the "inner circle" and my DC therefore get less invitations than they would otherwise.

Maybe I need to move to your world....although actually I don't think I could take the judgement.

wordfactory. Because most of us women are bothered about the time both parents spend with their children. Even if the parents involved are not.

A nanny's love and time is not the same as a dads or mums. And never can be.

wordfactory. Agree that some women need to be in higher positions in society. But if it has to be the mainly single ones [and there are many of them], then so be it.

I agree, a nanny's love is no where near the same as a parents love. It still doesn't mean I have to be there 24/7. Also, it is easy to judge looking in from the outside without knowing specifics of how things work. Sahm is not the norm. it's a luxury only a few can afford so really most mums work.compared to most other mothers power mums have the ability to outsource household things and have more quality time with the children. Ie don't assume high earnings = always "neglected" dcs.

So commander you think society should be run by white middle class men?

That society is better for that?

Because when you start to peddle sexist crap in the guise of concern for DC, you ensure that society remains as it is.

And I'm not up for that. We've seen what happens when institutions all speak with one homogenous voice. And it aint pretty.

I'm as far from a power mum as its possible to be. Today my list of things to do includes finding a roofer, baking a cake for a charity sale at DD's school and collecting a spare tyre for KikFit. I'm typing this from my kitchen. Rock and roll it isn't .

I'm happy with that. I don't want to be a power mum.

But I'm intelligent enough to see that we need them. We need women in positions of influence. Positions that impact on all our lives in far more meaningful ways than the timing of the odd school meeting.

Wow. So much judginess. Do you direct this sort of spite at the "power dads", I wonder ?

"Because when you start to peddle sexist crap in the guise of concern for DC, you ensure that society remains as it is"

Exactly.

The day that you judge "power dads" in the same way then you might begin to get my sympathy. Until then, it's just nasty spiteful sexist judginess. Should only single men rise to positions of power as well?

Commander6 A nanny's love and time is not the same as a dads or mums. And never can be

Of course it's not the same but the evidence is that a child needs a nurturing and responsive care giver - and that doesn't need to be mum and dad.

As I said before, I think 'power mums' (aaaaargh) are actually better off than many women in that they can buy in good quality care - and that's absolutely great, it means both parents can go on using their intelligence and creativity to service the needs of capital or improve the lives of others.

But

Women in a lower earning bracket are struggling with punitive childcare costs and with childcare that isn't always very good. Who can blame them for chucking in the towel when work stress and financial demands coupled with the demands of small children make it all too much?

Also

The question is about 'mums' but really it should be about all parents/carers...reallt any sort of campaign should be aimed at men, trying to change a corporate culture which prizes presenteeism - it should be encouraging men to take parental leave, ask for flexible working etc to make the playing field level.

Where did race come into it?
Do you have a chip on your shoulder?

And some people appear not to get that a nanny's love is not the same as a parent's. So I thought it was time to mention the elephant in the room.