Good letter about female lawyers in The Times today - this balances the sad story about the SJB partner who died

[pasturesnew]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6735283.ece

Sir, Vanessa Lloyd Platt (?The stress and strain of being a female lawyer?, times2, July 30) may think women lawyers with children are overly burdened, but in practice that is not so. We earn decent money, can pay for domestic help with cleaning and laundry, have the sense and financial power to ensure that we do not marry sexist men or tolerate inequalities at home, have much more control over our lives than if we worked on a factory production line and have intellectually satisfying and fascinating work.

In my 25th year as a lawyer, and a mother of five with two daughters going into the profession, I have always worked full time and consistently it has been fun both when I worked in a leading City firm and now with my own law firm. Nothing is as stressful as being at home with three children under 5 all day.

Successful lawyers have money, choice, power and control and it is lack of these that causes most stress. Pity the mother on the minimum wage queueing for a bus at 5am to clean for a living, not the privileged few. If we do not like the heat we can always get out of the kitchen.

But MollieO, there are lots of ways in which a lawyer can achieve success that don't fall within the traditional partnership mould and if the hours are too long for working mother guilt, walking away is hardly the only option.

There are lots of choices between mummy/no job and City/MC lawyer which still earn a very very decent living, eg working for a high street law firm like georgimama (congrats on qualifying BTW) or in my case, business support in a London law firm.

The important thing, as violethill says, is having the choice to begin with, because of the investment in sterling professional qualifications and experience made upfront.

The article by Vanessa Lloyd Platt, to which the letter is a response, is here.

I understand the need to respond to the article which was nothing more than a lengthy piece of handwringing.

I'm not sure it's valid to criticise the letter for missing the point about Ms Bailey, for the simple reason that the letter wasn't about Ms Bailey.

The letter was telling us to buck up and get on with things. Which would be fine on a hockey pitch, but you'd expect a little more insight and subtlety from a letter printed in the Times.

Completely agree with Blueshoes and would say that it depends on your view of success. If to be a successful lawyer in your own view you have to make partner, or earn above a certain level, you will have to factor this into your decision whether or not (and when) to have children.

Personally, I'm both a qualified solicitor and barrister (long story), practised in a city firm until DD was born, decided I didn't want the travelling or the pressure to work 60+ hours per week and that the additional work involved in obtaining and being a partner wasn't worth it for me. I now work a 35 hour week in house with a substantial pay cut but can work from home and have holiday. There are plenty of options when you have the professional qualifications and I found the original article's failure to acknowledge that was deeply irritating.

So basically if you are female and want children you have to choose between that and being a partner? A choice no man I know has ever had to make. I don't work in private practice and have a work/life balance. However the pay off is a less rewarding career both in interest and remuneration. Not all women want to make those kind of compromises.

Somtimes I worry that women at work bring a glass ceiling down on their own heads before it's actually there e.g. some 60 hour a week jobs might actually be doable in 45 hours a week if you're in a position senior enough to change client lunches to conference calls, client meetings to e-mail exchanges, not go to pointless internal meetings, delegate to a trustworthy assistant or junior etc.

I agree with Fayrazzled that I'd like any daughter of mine to reach for the stars first and then cut back if it doesn't work out, rather than make the choice in advance based on assumptions and stereotypes of jobs that might turn out not to be true.

I certainly used to work late a lot when I was a new graduate and now I regularly tell the "babies" in my office to go home earlier than they otherwise would as I can see that it really will be OK if they do!

I think you're wrong. Partly because my current job is infinitely more interesting than the paper shuffling I was doing in the city law firm but also because I said quite clearly in my post that if you want to be a partner and have children it is something you have to factor in to any career choices you make.

For example, many women at my former firm would get pregnant immediately after making partner. They calculated when it was likely to happen and decided from there if they were willing to take the risk that they might have more difficulty conceiving than in their 20s. Others had children early so they were in school by the time the partnership rounds came up.

The important thing about having a professional qualification is that it gives you options to decide what you want to do.

I also don't see that the only measure of professional success is partnership/ Q.C. For some people that may be right, for others it isn't.

Also, I don't think you're right to say that man don't have to choose. it may be because I was in property that many men did indeed have to choose between partnership and family life and most chose family life but to say it isn't something that occurs to men just isn't right.

Sorry, comment to MollieO and cross posted.

Also your working hours can be extended greatly by your commute. You don't have to live in a chocolate box cottage to have a nice family life, obv. but oddly many City types seem to think this is the case. I would far rather have a shortish commute and live in a full-on urban part of London where the cost of homes and commuting is actually cheaper then in many commuter towns. Cost of living in other ways is cheaper too e.g. there is a Lidl and a Peacocks nearby rather than only being able to use Waitrose and Boden.

Interestingly in the City many professional services firms have now imposed a 4 day week to retain good staff through the downturn rather than to lose them to redundancies and then struggle to make the numbers back up e.g. KPMG and Norton Rose have both done this recently. I wonder how both male and female employees will respond to being told to come back and work 60 hour weeks when the recession is up, I suspect the answer will be, actually, that's not necessary, I can do my job quite well in less time and often from home thanks.

I have been full time at home with 3 kids under 5 and it is FAR less stressful than my paid job

fayrazzled, I wasn't meaning you specifically but I think there is starting to be a general insinuation about full time working.

These threads always go the same way tbh and it's all about personal experience. For some being at home is stressful, for some it's a joy and it very much depends on your job and your enjoyment of your job. This is one area where you can't extrapolate your experience to everyone else.

My job started off as part time and was a total nightmare. I'm full time now (and have been for several years) and the job is far more manageable than it was beforehand.

In some jobs, part-time working is not feasible or if it is, it's a ruse whereby they agree to part-time but just squash the same amount of work into fewer days.

Once your children are at full time school, they undoubtedly do clubs after school and end up not being at home and ready to relax till about 6/7 anyway. Working full time once they are that age doesn't feel a compromise at all tbh. The biggest hassle I still believe is getting the childcare right so that everyone is happy and settled!

In the end, it's what's important to you as a person in the realm of how your family works. In the current economic climate, I know many many people who are just relieved to have jobs.

"You don't have to live in a chocolate box cottage to have a nice family life, obv. but oddly many City types seem to think this is the case."

This is so true. It is such an English thing to believe that family life has to be better in a village or country town. While that might have been true in the past when there was one commuting breadwinner per family, when there are two commuting breadwinning parents it seems like utter madness.

Here in Paris no-one in senior jobs commutes! Commuting is for those who cannot afford to live in central Paris. Lots of working parents at my DD's school have lunch with their children or drop by the park to see them after school before returning to the office, and children are always dropped by their parents in the morning. Family life can be good that way, too!

I agree with Susan Singleton to an extent (and yes, I recognise the profile!) in that I find working full time as a lawyer and mum of 2 to be be less stressful than staying at home.

Having said that, although I live not a million miles from her, I am an in house lawyer on a comfortable salary - but home every night (after an hour's commute) to see the boys - so the lifestyle is somewhat different!

I noticed that the boss of my team in France did this BonsoirAnna and it seemed like a very sensible arrangement. Had a business trip to Paris not long ago and she very kindly had the team round to dinner at her gorgeous central flat. Her DH is also v high powered and their kids were delightful.

I think that there are some statistics about senior women in Europe which show that we have more of a glass ceiling in the UK than in other EU countries including Spain and Italy where you might think that women were thought of in more domestic roles.

A while ago, a lot of my clients were English, German and American bankers and I remember meeting several very senior bankers from France, Spain, and Italy who were women with families.

Maybe there are more views on family life and work which are peculiar to the English than we think, since our media is more familiar with the US than with our continental neighbours?

Bring on compulsory adoption of the Working Time Directive! The recession might be a good time to do this.

I grew up in a commuter household and accepted unthinkingly that a long journey to work (or school) was normal.

Since living and working and having children at school in Paris, I have become a complete convert to the idea of living as close as possible to work and school. Travel is such a horrendous waste of time when you could be with your family instead - and being able to see your partner/children for the meals, errands etc during the working/school week is fabulous.

Interesting Anna, we are contemplating returning to living in a city in a couple of years for all those reasons - less time commuting, less expense in do so, more actual time at home rather than in a car, closer to facilities for children etc. I'm glad this model of life works in practice. Living in the country with children is incredibly limiting - we are constantly driving somewhere and I am completely sick of it.

It works well for us because we are able to live in an area with a lot of amenities (shops on the doorstep, lovely park, great buses, swimming pool, tennis courts within view of the apartment) and school very near by. Everyone gets around on foot, too, so you are forever bumping into people when out and about in the neighbourhood.

The big downside is not having a private garden, especially in summer and at the weekends.

We sold up and moved back to the city centre last year! It was the best thing we ever did. Commuting is a complete waste of time and since our kids were doing the journey with us, unfair on them. I have 10 minute drive to work and DP cycles to his work some mornings. There is a park 1 min away, shops, schools, library, cafes etc. We are a 5 min walk from the Shore and 10 minutes from the beach!! Its absolutely brilliant and so great for the kids. I would never live anwhere that meant I had to spend a 2 hour round trip commuting every day.