Louise Mensch resigns...

[propercharlie]

too hard to balance famaily life :(

Anyway it's no probs I have garnered the info from MN anyway and the answer is such a huge industry I hardly think the problem of "outing" is pertinent

For what it's worth, my surgery consultant believes that women with children can not be good surgeons because they often ask to go part-time and he doesn't believe you can gain the experience part-time.

Then we get Osborne about this on TV saying women should put families first. It is all very very sexist and it is a knife in the career prospects of every women every time one gives up work like this. it is very bad for women.

So her first husband is American and does most of the childcare in Corby where the children are based and live and they are under 10. Her second husband is a very rich American who is old enough to be her father (bet the children won't like that). If the children's father does most of the childcare they can stay here and she can be with ageing loverboy in NY. Perhaps the ex husband is keen to move to the US anyway which might be behind this too.

It was always very strange that she married so quickly and ni secret and yet did not live with her husband or he with her. As ever ever a woman marrying up. How many women on this thread earn 10x what their husband does or even double?

I did (before starting retraining to ensure I do so again )

I cant beleive the live in Corby it is soooooooooo horrible there really depressing and run down Im really surprised her rich husband has put up with it for this long

misses point of thread

nice informed post there broody

Ahem.
Do I need to link to a talk guidelines reminder?
Surely not?
Thanks
MNHQ

clemette yes that is a big problem.

From talking to people I know, and there was a prog on the telly, about female consultants. the people on the telly said that for women it was either career or kids and that was more or less that. My family know one woman consultant with quite a few children but she is rare and considered by all and sundry to be exceptionally talented / focussed etc etc. I have been told that many women go into general practice because this is the area which is most lucrative + possibility for part time work etc.

There needs to be change in so many industries still, I think for those working in more "family friendly" roles it feels like job done but we are miles off.

She has been married to Peter Mensch for not much more than a year. What she really meant by her statement is not that she can't make family life work, but that she can't make family life work now she has a husband who lives in the USA.

I can't help but feel she's a bit of a surrendered wife, giving up her life for her new man. Uprooting her children from their schools and lives. Is she removing them from their father or does he also live in the USA?

My industry for eg did not countenance part-time after mat leave. It felt like a great industry and I progressed well until I started a family. For various reasons I did not want to work full time at that stage and so that was it, out.

The organisation was full of bright young people out of uni etc and who had risen from other organisations and it was all terribly wonderful until you looked and realised that past middle management there was one woman and at director level none. And I don't think in that industry I have ever worked for a co with a female director.

Thing is of course that many / most girls / women don't think about it until it happens to them - the family stuff - and it is a terrible shock when it goes pear shaped. Which is why I think that knowing what industries and what roles are going to be appropriate for someone who wants a career but maybe not to have to get there through being "one of the boys" 24/7 is important for women and parents and careers people and so on. So that girls and women can choose whether or not they want to take their talent into a field where they are going to have to fight tooth and nail and be put down the whole time and all the rest of it. or not. I would choose not, personally, I'm not the pioneering type!

And so while Louise Mencsh may well have other reasons for quitting - I think that the reaction to her quitting is interesting. Showing that many women even feel that other women must not show the "weakness" of admitting they have a family. It's a bit sad and shows how little we have progressed really.

Sardine - my take on the original post was not that there was anything wrong with Mensch saying her resignation was due to family reasons but the way the media were likely to try and spin that to 'prove' that women MPs can't hack it. Propercharlie said Whatever you think of her, I'm dreading the "look ladies, told you! You cant have it all" nonsense that is about to hit the media...

I think the speculation that 'family reasons' might be a rather simplistic term for her actual reason for resigning is inevitable for a politician given the long history of people 'spending more time with their families', i.e. being politely fired.

If she was resigning for family reasons my reaction would be different.
But she isn't. At best she is resigning to be with her husband; most likely she is following the money and the prestige and fancies New York more than Corby.

trib it was stated on the thread by one person in particular that it was not the media reaction they were concerned about but the reaction of men at work.

I agree about the media reaction but I think the reaction will be different from different sections of the media (another view that went down like a lead balloon )

fancies New York more than Corby?!

"When one is tired of Corby, one is tired of life".

Fact.

Ha ha ha @ 'tired of Corby, tired of life'

She is ambitious, fiercely intelligent and eloquent. Shame on the people knocking her based on a few soundbites.
There must be something better in the pipeline for her, which is a shame as I liked having her in the Tory ranks. I couldn't picture her as a 'surrendered wife'.

Agree she gives Working mothers a bad name especially when she had to leave the Murdoch case early to pick up her kids. Jeez you'd thought she could afford some emergency childcare on that occasion.

Well maybe if she goes to work in the media some kind sole will teach her how not to have every photo portrait she sits for turn our looking as if she is about to fellate someone.

I wonder if, when people quit their jobs to be stay at home mums, or decide not to go back after maternity leave, there is this much contempt for them, with snidy comments about rich husbands and surrendered wives?

Is New York ready for her.

dunno about NY being ready for her, but Corby is partying