The Trouble with Working Women BBC2 9.00 p.m Monday - anyone watching ?

[EvenBetaDad]

Anyone watching this and what do you think?

Sorry - what do you mean Mollie that you don't have a choice? That you can't work, or that you can't get the promotions?

I have to work and if I want to have a job I have to put myself forward for more responsibility. If I don't then I would be viewed as not pulling my weight and would probably be out of a job. I don't think that is at all unusual

I sort of agree with some of what Erin Pizzey said. There has been a destruction of the family, women are forced to go out to work. However, that is mainly economic problem - rather than an equality problem. It is an issue of the cost of property forcing both parents out to work.

I don't know anyone in RL who doesn't feel like they are doing a fairly mediocre job of everything when they have a FTOH job and a young child. I think that was her point is that people are exhausted, have to work, having it all is actually a bit shit.

It's almost impossible to do both to the best of your ability IMO.

Your last comment presupposes that work is a necessary evil rather than something to relish and enjoy, EBD.

EBD not all mothers are forced to work, some choose to. I find it hard to understand why women should be well educated, train for a number of years in their chosen profession and then find their career effectively stopped because they have taken a few months off to have a child and cannot do the all nighters without some notice.

and of course is supremely sexist in assuming that women are being somehow forced out to work, while men are naturally hunting and gathering ...

Aww, cute babies [broody]

The salary difference between men and women makes me Dread to think what ideas people have on that!

Thought there'd be a thread about this.

V simplistic view IMO.

For eg women choose between children and career, ha that explains it then! Um well no, women earn less than men before they start their families so what's that about then, eh?

Plus I am sitting here with DH who looks like a rugby player but is in fact super-caring etc and was keener on children than me and is v hands on super-patient dad etc. better than me. So of course he is seeing sexism the other way - he would kill for long pat leave or us to be able to share leave rights to look after new baby.

Choice is the thing here and, as my DH likes to point out, it just isn't there for most women or men at the mo.

it's not that women are forced to work..but tbh some don't have a choice

What a twonk that professor is

OK, I know this is from the Daily Mail but it is a report about women who do not have childhood and how they are discrimated again.

employers are never bloody happy

Overall a depressing programme I thought. Nothing much seems to have changed much since me and DW stopped working for our respective employers a decade ago.

BigBellasBeerBelly - I agree. Interesting your DH's point of view. Free choice is just not there really for men for women. Societal and economic pressure seems to be preventing progress on this issue.

The picture painted by the programme was of men largely still stuck in the old roles at work with relatively few having real freedom or rghts to a take a greater role in childcare responsibility. Women coming into the workforce, partly through positive choices and often by economic necessity and often trying to juggle both childcare and work. Women still mainly being paid less than men and mainly still taking lower status job roles.

I hope the next programme provides a few more answers.

I just wish they'd looked at it in a more balanced way: instead of looking at how having children impacts on a woman's career, why didn't they pose the question 'Why do men never have this so called choice?' I would be much more interested to see how men (ones who aren't questioned on camera in front of their rampantly anti-parental leave boss) really feel about only having 2 weeks paternity leave.

The figures about only 7% of women and 4% of men (or whatever it was) wanting men to take time off to care for newborn babies is highly skewed - why didn't they follow it up with a question about taking time off when the children are 6 months or 1 year old, ie not so physically tied to the mother? I bet the percentages ae much more realistic. Of course when a baby is newborn, in the majority of cases it's going to be the mother who's better suited to care for it - but a few months down the line fathers could do just as good a job.

The more programmes like this focus on it being a monther's problem, rather than a parent's problem, the less people are ever going to see fathers as being an equal part of the equation - and the more women of childbearing age are going to be viewed by bosses as a potential drain on the business.

I was a high flyer and earmarked for a senior role when I told my company's chairman that I was pregnant. Over night I was shoved into a role I had done 5 years before and told to like it or lump it. My career pratically stopped overnight and it has never really recovered since having ds. I work long hours and put in the same level of commitment as my male colleagues but because I am primary carer for a child I don't get offered the business trips, dinners etc that you need to attend to network at the right level. Makes me mad.

I am in my 40s and feel my life as a senior executive is over and not through my choice. The only women I know who are in senior roles are those with their own companies.

I should add that the only women I know with children. I know plenty childless senior female execs.

MollieO - I am sorry to hear that happened to you. Not quite the same reason for my DW but she feels just as you do. She actually uses your very words quite regularly:

"I am in my 40s and feel my life as a senior executive is over and not through my choice."

MollieO - I am sorry to hear that happened to you. Not quite the same reason for my DW but she feels just as you do. She actually uses your very words quite regularly:

"I am in my 40s and feel my life as a senior executive is over and not through my choice."

well MollieO....your old companys loss and a mumsnet gain....i like your posts....

Mollie...were they allowed to do that to you?

Wordsmith - good points. I discussed your post with DW and we strongly agree.

"Why do men never have this so called choice"

DW has always felt that this is the really crucial question. She has always said that until men are in some sense 'given no option' but to take parental leave and their employers are forced by law to ensure that men take that leave for say at least 6 months then women will never be truely able to freely excercise their rights.

Compelling men to take paternity leave is perhaps too radical a solution but so long as men do not have equal parental rights - then both men and women will have less choice about the balance of the roles they play in work and parental responsibilities. Employers organisations have fought tooth and nail to prevent men getting equal paternity rights and so as the programme clearly showed last night employers still see an advantage to employing men over women. If men had to take at least 6 months off within the first year of each of their childrens' lives then employers would have less incentive to favour men over women.

This issue affected DW and me very badly when DS1 was born. We had planned and agreed I would be part-time SAHD (combined with nursery child care) and pursue a lower paid but flexible academic career while DW pursued a much higher paid full time career. We were both very happy with our decision, however, our respective employers disagreed and DW was forced into a full time SAHM role while I went out to full time work. This was completely the opposite of what we wanted but economic necessity and opposition from our emplyers and lack of truely enforcable legal rights forced our hand.

Both our careers were destroyed by it and we still feel bitter. When I did eventually give up work to be SAHD and work at home with DW my boss actually told me and DW to our faces that me being at home would never work as 'men are not cut out for it' .

As you say Wordsmith we need as a society to look at this in a more balanced way and start talking about equal parental rights. We need to keep on pursuing the equality rights for women but getting equal parenting rights on the agenda would be a big step forward. Sadly the current Govt seem to have backed away from taking that step. Maybe as David Cameron has a working DW a Conservative Govt will want to look at the issue again.

Hopefully the programme will talk about answers like these in the second episode tonight.

i watched it.....didn't think it threw up anything new...men are still sexist, women will always have to choose ....do i have children or do i have a career?

agreed with erin prizzey.....women have got it wrong re; feminism.

Just watched this on the iPlayer, and all those who are saying that it's a parental issue are right. There is much more freedom of choice for women, and although there is still (as MollieO's experience shows) a huge amount of discrimination, this would in fact be helped by giving men more freedom of choice in terms of working hours/parental leave etc. While women are told 'you can choose to go to work or stay at home', it is assumed from a young age that men will work full time for the whole of their lives.