IceBeing It's your kind of behaviour that can kill the chances of other women, not mine, simply because your argument is so illogical that it gives ammunition to the misogynists that think that baby-rearing turns women's brains to mush.
Right now, your argument reminds me of a small child stamping its feet and saying "there's no point trying because I can't do it anyway" and "it's not fair" with very little evidence of any fact-based argument to back the position up, or indeed, little clear evidence that you fully understand the process.
A few examples that leap out are:
- The "sum" that you talk about the promotions meetings using - you don't appear to be clear as to how that works. So, if, for example, the equation considers the last 3 years in totality, and makes no adjustment for a period of maternity leave, then, yes, there might be a case for discrimination to be made. If, on the other hand, it treats periods immediately before an after maternity as continuous, ie removing a period where you cannot earn "points" from consideration, then where is the discrimination. You would need to be very clear on the mechanism for the "sum"
- Talking about not comparing candidates only makes sense in a situation where the number of positions open for promotion are not limited - ie everyone who meets the minimum criteria can gain promotion. In a context where number of positions open for promotion are limited, of course you compare candidates - it is simply not "real world" to think otherwise. Likewise, there is nothing illegal in doing so.
- You want dispensation granted as a result of personal circumstances, but are not prepared to disclose what the circumstances are. Everyone, regardless of age, gender, or reproductive status, has to declare the circumstance which they believe grants them dispensation, and have to evidence that circumstance. There is nothing "gendered" about such behaviour - men get highly embarrassing illnesses too, you know. I'm not sure why you think any employer should just be expected to take someone's word as fact in such matters. If you know of any who do, please let me know, because I quite fancy having next Tuesday off without having to give any reason or having to take it as holiday.
- Saying that nobody expects to be out of commission for 2 years as a result of having a baby is simply not true. Many women have reasons for knowing they would have a hard time conceiving, requiring treatment which is hugely invasive, and then have an extremely hard pregnancy (Hyperemesis to 7 months, oh I remember that well). And many women are then off for a year afterwards on maternity leave. Your reasons for being work limited for 2 years may have been different, but the reality of career interruption can hardly have been a surprise. Being limited in work delivery for 2 years is a fact for many women that anyone with a brain and serious career ambitions needs to consider as a possibility as a possibility, rather than being "oh whoops" about the fact that it happens. It's called family planning for a reason.
- You seem to be constructing an argument that lack of attendance at conferences means that promotion cannot be secured. Yet I see nothing in the information given that says this is true. Are you saying that someone who attends 2 conferences a year and publishes 2 papers would automatically gain promotion over someone who published 6 papers, 12 articles and 4 book chapters? If so, then you might have a case from a legal standpoint if you could palpably demonstrate that the papers etc carried equal to more weight to the conferences. But you aren't arguing that with any great clarity. And if you don't know, then shouldn't you have found out before having children so that you could adjust your situation accordingly? The adjustment has to be made on both the side of the employer and the employee.
Your argument is not advancing the cause of women. Woolly thinking and "wah wah wah, treat me as special because I'm a woman, and it doesn't matter that I haven't fulfilled any of the criteria, I had a baby, so iIshould get that promotion" is what keeps us down.
As does every woman who doesn't go for promotion after having a baby - because men use it to argue that the investment in the early stages of a woman's career isn't worth it because they "go soft" as soon as they spawn. Do you have a partner? What are they doing to ensure the burden of sacrifice, if needed, is shared? Your post is all about you - and I have vastly more sympathy with LPs who may have far fewer choices than people with partners.
If you're not interested in promotion, then stop stirring the pot, and let those of us who are serious about our careers focus on doing what we need to do to ensure that having a baby doesn't disqualify us from success.
And as for me being
lucky I can assure you that luck had very little to do with the career and family rearing decisions I made that have allowed me to travel with a nanny (or leave DD with DH whilst I travel). I made choices, and very considered ones:
- By the time I was 16, I was already thinking about what careers I wanted to do in the context of how family friendly the job might be able to be in years to come. So I didn't purse my dream career on the basis of unavoidable lack of family flexibility, and another one on the basis that it would never pay enough to give me the family/work management options that I knew were needed to be able to work post-family
- I spent earlier years in my job taking less attractive and often lower paid jobs simply because I could see how they could advance me up the ladder faster. Walk to work through armed checkpoints? Yes, done that. Had to evacuate the office because an armed battle involving police and army was raging less than a mile down the road and heading your way faster than you can run? Yup, that too. These jobs got me to the "golden position" I'm in now about 6-8 years before any of my UK-bound colleagues are even going to get close.
- Delaying having a family until I'd got to the "golden position" - even though I understood what this meant for my chances of having the large family that I sometimes craved.
- Limiting my family to 1 DC because its a lot easier to do it all when you only have 1 to do it for.
- Never accepting anything other than absolute co-parenting from my DH. We each took a years career break (saved for over a 10 year period, yes, you read that right, 10 years), which meant we could avoid long hours of childcare when DD was very young. We run our lives like a military operation to ensure that one of us is home every day by 5.30 to ensure that we have post-school quality time with DD. I get out of bed at 4.30 every morning to get shit done so that I can spend morning routine with DD. It's been hard, but we made choices to get to this status in our careers, and neither of us has had to "give up" anything other than perhaps our own hobby time and maybe a small amount of sanity in order to maintain them post children. Why couldn't your DH look after your child whilst you travelled? Is he not competent as a parent?
- Disclosing pregnancy related illness early on with a proactive plan of management already mapped out. Turned out to be a shit plan, but demonstrating that i had one and didn't just expect my employer to pick up the pieces won me a lot of friends and a lot of leeway when the HG hit like a steam train.
- Disclosing a very serious, very intimate, potentially life limiting illness to my employer in exactly the same way.
Very few of us have no choices. Just don't expect a Get Out of Jail Free card when those choices turned out not to be the best ones. I've made some shit choices, but I didn't expect anyone but me and DH to sort them out.
There are probably a 1,000,000 reasons why gender bias is holding women in academia back. Nothing you've written shows evidence of it in this instance. Construct a better argument, for the sake of all women who do want to get ahead, because half arsed nonsense just does us all a disservice.
