Parliamentary committee wants your views on issues faced by working women

[FrancesMumsnet]

The House of Commons' Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into Women in the Workplace. The Committee is examining what steps are being taken to tackle workplace gender inequality, and what more should be done.

The Committee is keen to hear Mumsnetters' views on this issue, in addition to the formal evidence sessions that will take place in Westminster.

They are especially interested in your opinion on:

• Obstacles for women wishing to progress in the workplace
• Issues faced by women wishing to return to work following childbirth
• The gender pay gap
• Flexible working

This is not an exhaustive list: the Committee welcomes your comments on any area within the inquiry's terms of reference, which are available on the Parliament website

Thanks,
MNHQ

Hiding, isn't the moral of that story as a woman never put your career second? Never accept the sexism of that. We moved for my work. He followed. I ended up earned 10x what he did. On the divorce issue there is divorce on demand after 12 months in English law. In any marriage you can write out the reasons but anyone in any loving marriage can find enough to write on the form - if one side thinks it's over it's over. I wouldn't worry about what was written as the illustration of that. I wonder if you earned 10x what he did and he was working 3 days a week and part time if he would have divorced you?

As long as women are prepard to play second fiddle to men and go down to earning pin money and accept flexible and part time working they will never get to where they want to be - in positions of power and out earning men. This is the interesting point - if you go for the easy life, whether male or female and go for very long leaves when a baby comes and then work part time you pay the price - thus in a sense foisting all this child care on to women, guilt tripping them into thinking mother must be home more and doing the dreary school run day after day as some kind of motherhood ideal rather than painting a picture of woman as rich business leader which is much more likely if she leaves her husband to mop up the baby sick or he and she hire help, is what also holds women down - sexism is the key to women's unhappiness and lack of progress at work)

Xenia's view that women should go back two weeks after birth is stupid for many reasons, but also very London-centric. Many people commute by car and if you've had a C-section you can't actually drive for 4-6 weeks because you've had major abdominal surgery.

But there is a challenge for all of us here: what can we do differently in our own workplaces? Many of us have senior roles or line management or influence. Basic change management theory shows that the most effective and sustainable changes come from the front line. So what are we all doing to encourage a less rigid, sexist working culture - not just for women, mothers, parents but everyone? Why are women emptying the dishwasher? Why are women organising the Secret Santa (I wish they bloody wouldn't)? Why are we letting ourselves get talked over and taken less seriously?

From a business perspective there are valid reasons why there are limited 10-2 jobs etc. One is that a lot of people would still require/expect their own desk, PC etc. which are fixed costs that are only used part of the time. I take flexible working requests more seriously if people can show how it will impact the business or the rest of the team. Are you willing to come in at 7.30am twice a week and then leave at 2.30pm? Are you willing to work 10am to 7pm?

Marking place for later.

Most women don't have C sections and all the more reason tos top the rise in C sections where there is no reason not to have a natural birth. I have never said everyone should go back in 2 weeks. I just said I do and plenty of women do like this and it works really well. I said I supported the current 6 weeks at 90% pay for women, not men as women need to recover after birth.

I agree with Queen - why are women emptying the dishwasher? Why does Sarah Vine wife of Gove in today's Times write about she (not him) doing all the Christmas cards to teachers. Why if in my non sexist marriage even 20 years ago he did that kind of thing as much as I did and he took the children to the dentist for 17 years and I never once, why if I can achieve no sexism in marriage in the 80s are women today still putting up with sexist pigs at home and doing more than men? Is there such a shortage of men that they have to pander to their every need and take on more than men at home? Are these women brought up on sexist homes so kind of conditioned to think woman equals low paid worker or indeed home servant?

Most of us try to keep good workers. We work around how they work. I have done that with people too. Tiny example but my cleaner now works around her other job. She sometimes is here at 7.30am and sometimes until 7.30pm she has my work ethic, she is marvellous. I will bend her hours to fit to keep her. Our first nanny who stayed 10 years in due course brought one of her babies to work and then the second. Another person who does work for me now does it from abroad. You make the accommodations which suit you. If the person is pretty useless as are I suppose most people then you certainly don't.

Xenia obviously has a very strong and uncompromising view on this. In some ways I agree with what she's saying. Roughly - to achieve equality in the paid workplace, women need to ensure that men step up to equal responsibility/effort on the domestic front.

(Or, men need to volunteer to do that, rather than it having to be another thing that women have to organise...)

IMO, this CANNOT be addressed effectively by tweaking improvements to flexible working - it requires much more fundamental change. The parliamentary committee should be looking at what can be done to encourage this. I guess that it would need to be introduced as skill development & expectation setting within the education system, as well as infrastructure changes to eg address childcare solutions.

While there are examples of marriages that work like this (Xenia has one herself) the large majority do not. I read Xenia's posts as tending to say 'women should be like xyz and not let the sexist stuff happen' - that's quite hard to hear. It's one way round to put things, and there's some truth to it - but it can't 'just happen' - it requires a large-scale skilling-up of women to negotiate that, and a large-scale expectation change of men. It's what the feminist movement has failed in to date (on a most-of-society level).

(I don't think the 2-weeks mat leave solution is realistic for most people - I think this denies the physical work/trauma involved in child-bearing as experienced by a large % of mothers. But I think that's a slightly separate debate)

I am currently on maternity leave from my professional public sector career. Before I left I was keen to negotiate my flexible working request for my return. I was shocked at how little my managers and indeed the organisation, wanted to support my application.

To all intents and purposes there are family friendly policies and flexible working is welcomed corporately, but the reality is very different. The attitude was very much "we are only legally obliged to consider your request, not grant it. We have considered it and decline it."

That is a pretty big obstacle to my return to work or furthering my career! Not one of the female senior managers where I work has children...

Brawhen, I think 1 - 3 months which is what plenty of women do is fine and we should not criticise women who want short leaves as actually long term it can be best for marriages, finances, money and babies.

The biggest issues holding women back are (a) no matter what they earn unless they are I, they marry up - men a bit older who earn more, whether the woman works in a call centre or Tescos or in a bank so their work is always seen as secondary and worse paid - men tend to marry someone they like who is pretty or/and has big breasts and women subconsciously look at the pay packet and (b) once they do marry women tolerate sexism at home. If you look all those of us who have been very successful full time working mothers just about all of us have not tolerated sexism at home.

Oh - I absolutely agree that more (all) marriages/parenting relationships should be far more equal, and that is probably the biggest issue holding women back.

I married someone earning less, and slightly less career-y than me - but was still scuppered by the unequal/sexist weight of domestic work. You can argue that I failed on toleration of that. (It wasn't the only reason for stepping back from my career, but it was a very significant one.)

But HOW to stop that happening - that's what needs addressing.

Also agree that 2 weeks mat leave should be a perfectly valid option. Just that I don't think we should plan around that being normal/average.

I think that when you're a woman significantly outearning your partner, it's probably easy to go back to work a month or so after having a baby, especially if you can afford to pay for help.

But most couples aren't in that situation. Even couples who have equally balanced careers pre-kids find that someone has to do the work of looking after the baby and there are loads of financial and societal reasons why that is normally the mother. Many parents can't afford the flexible nanny care you really need to support two good careers, unless they are financially well off. There are plenty of good professional careers that don't pay all that well, especially if you are in the early stages.

Wandering, just interested, what financial reasons mean it's usually mothers?

Like mentioned up the thread, women tend to 'marry up' with a man who is earning more, so it often makes more sense when doing the sums for the mother to stay home. I know plenty of mothers who earn significantly less than their partners, and (sadly) I think it's a far more common situation than mothers who outearn their partners.

I do agree that the fundamental issue needs to be greater equality generally - in the argument around who stays at home to look after a sick child, its nearly always the woman that does it. Don't ask me why - I had a professional career at a fairly senior level, but I nearly always stayed at home when the children were ill, despite the upheaval this caused at work. Imo a combination of the maternal instinct as well as ingrained sexism within the workplace and in marriages. When you work part time, everyone (and I mean husbands as well as colleagues) treats your job as less important, even if its more senior/highly paid.

However I think there does need to be some focus on tackling the workplace issues. Until women (OR men) working flexibly are taken seriously in these positions, the underlying sexist attitudes won't ever get addressed.

IME the key issues facing working women are:

1. Massive costs of quality childcare which for many women wipes out any financial benefits of working.

2. Companies need to pay more than lip service to flexible working. My ex employer is regularly in the press spouting off about how good they are at this but my experience there was horrible. It makes me cry laugh when I see them promoting themselves as leaders in this area.

This means - more creative approaches to flexible working; genuinely looking or opportunities for job shares or areas where PT working can work without major disruption to the business, and provide proper opportunities for advancement rather than stagnation.

3. There should be better mentoring within organisations so that those who actually buy into this way of working can promote it within the organisation. I had a wonderful mentor at work who had a family of his own and who supported me after ML. When he left I found myself shunted onto rubbishy assignments, allocated poor resources and generally with no support.

But you said yourslef this is in the case where their careers are "balanced" (which I understand to mean roughly equal)

I think careers can be balanced but not financially equal. I have chosen a career path that just doesn't pay as well as DH's, although I think intellectually they're on a par with each other. Plus, DH being a couple of years older gives him an 'advantage' in terms of pay even if our careers were the same.

Also, in my case, maternity pay meant it made far more sense for me to stay home with DD, but the law is changing on that front.

All little things, but they add up to create the bigger picture.

Madwoman - sorry, don't know what you're talking about

Wandering, that's not tre any more. I believe that 30 year old professional women earn more than men before they have children? (may be slightly mis remembering).

Hiding, you say you both wanted 2 days at home. Then your husband refused to do any, so you did it all. Likewise people saying 'it made sense for me to be at home'. Surely we need to really make it possible to share care and both parents go part time if that's what they prefer or the gap of senior women in professional jobs will never go. Women's careers should be considered - by themselves as much as their bosses and husbands - as just as important as the men's.

The reasons women play second fiddle as Five asks are the ones I mentioned - women marry men who earn more on the whole or if they do not they are stupid enough to allow men to lumber them with much more dull domestic jobs or rushing home to let the childminder go than men do.

So one answer is to train our daughters as mine are to be feminists. You can do that by buying the books we bought showing women as leaders and doctors and men at home, when they are little. You can ensure they see happy working mothers earning a lot of money. You can skip buying them the barbie dresses and suggesting their wedding day is the most important day of their life. You can encourage them to climb trees and be adventurous.

As to the question of how does a woman who is just married where working and perhaps her husband earning about the same - how does she on that first evening when he assumes she will cook how does she avoid that. She just needs to realise he is as lucky to have her as vice versa. She needs to say - great . I am happy to cook tonight and you cook tomorrow. Or she could say you cook and I wil do the washing. At one stage I did not know how to use the washing machine as my children's father had 100% of that role.

May be parents need to teach their daughters how they would run such a conversation with a sexist slob they have been foolish enough to marry of course.

Sexism is really at the root of a lot of this and as I said women who don't earn much marrying men who do.

Hear, hear, Xenia .

I always enjoy it when Xenia is on a thread. I don't 100% agree but it is always an interesting argument, and we need people with strong opinions and conviction to effect real change.

I work for a large Govt Dept that actively encourages flexible working for their own benefit (no 1 being there aren't enough desks to go round ). Men as well as women regularly work from home or do compressed hours (working FT hours in 4 days rather than 5). It makes for a much more productive workforce.

The Govt is currently reviewing CS conditions with a view to bringing them in line with the private sector [Hmm]. That suggests that soon all these alternative working patterns will cease, at huge cost to the business.

So it seems odd that a Parliamentary committee is looking into this now, when another lot are looking into things with a view to change.

As working parents, our lives were easiest when ds was under school age. As we looked at schools, we realised that accessing wrap around and holiday care that had long term viability and offered ds more than just somewhere to be was incredibly hard.

Attitudes are hard to change too - this week I'm working in the US, and ds is ill. DH is working from home (not a problem normally), but yet his boss was quite snippy about 'is your wife away a lot', when dh would have needed to share the week anyway

While you can ask your existing employer for flexible working arrangements, most jobs are advertised as full time. This puts a barrier up to women moving employer to further their careers. I don't know the solution to this, but it is a real problem.

Breathe, good point.

Yes, I have found this to be a major sticking point in my career. I am an architect and have for years worked 3/4 time in small offices, but in the current economic climate, coupled with my level of experience, there are no more part time jobs. Only the large firms are hiring and they only want full time people at my salary/experience level.