All in all it seems to me that this bit of 'research' has been made to perpetuate the author's own patriarchal views, and hence provides valuable ammunition to the anti-feminists in the media.

I might be the first to provide a review on google books

OP posts:

scottishmummy · 05/01/2011 00:18

so isnt a given that conception alone stalls a career.or renders female lesser than her male colleague in same field

in reality there is discrimination for some, no discrimination for others, and bit of both for some others too

the grade attained, industry worked in, and flexibility offered all come into play

i wasnt compelled to go back ft either. i chose that. other females colleagues did go pt after their dc

sakura · 05/01/2011 00:20

it's not a given that conception stalls a career, but there's a huge chance it might

scottishmummy · 05/01/2011 00:22

yes and chance doesn't equal certainty. but good to see you have revised your stance for this

sakura · 05/01/2011 00:30

I am certain that women-as-a-group lose out in the workplace because of conception

ALthought individual women, such as yourself, may be lucky

scottishmummy · 05/01/2011 00:41

your heart felt certainty is touching but nonetheless not wholly factual for all women

you originally said "but let's be honest, as soon as a woman conceives a child, she begins losing out to men in the career stakes (not to her partner but to the men in the same field as her)"

i challenged this and

your revision was "it's not a given that conception stalls a career, but there's a huge chance it might"

which is a revision and sensible reflection

now your individual certainty cannot be assumed or transposed onto others.you may want to make another revision

although individual certainty can have an emotional bias and subjective component. so maybe you draw upon your or others subjective beliefs/experiences

SnowyGonzalez · 05/01/2011 08:57

In the company where I last worked, sadly it was a given that conception = redundancy. Sadly none of us realised that until we are already at home with bambino. We all fell for the company line that so-and-so "chose" not to return to work after having their babies and were none the wiser, until we became those "so-and-sos".

In the long run I believe that for me and my ex-colleagues who would have liked to return to work, it will be a good thing as we create our own work opportunities in a way that suits our lives better than scraping our noses on someone else's grindstone. But that is in the very long "long term".

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 09:03

I have a lot of respect for Catherine Hakim. She represents my own experience and feelings.

And I have significant personal experience of pursuing those typically masculine qualifications/career path that the "feminists" say were the route to female fulfillment.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 09:27

Bonsoir, just because Hakim represents your experience, doesn't mean that she can speak for all women. Given that the estimates are that 30,000 women a year are made redundant following pregnancy, there appear to be a lot of women who really are denied that "choice" between career and family. Men are not made redundant because their partners fall pregnant, they don't even have to make this "choice".

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 09:41

I think you are misreading Hakim, karmakameleon. She doesn't attempt to claim that all women are getting exactly what they want and a fair deal out of the work/life balance all the time. Rather, she claims that more women than some so-called feminist factions claim are making choices to put time with family before time spent on career.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 09:49

Really? 30,000 women a year made redundant because they choose to have a baby and therefore are denied a career isn't a lot? And that doesn't include women who are forced to give up because of difficult working practices. (For example in my last workplace it was the norm to spend several hours in the pub after work. That was a culture that is totally incompatable with being a working mother and not surprisingly there was not a single one in the team. Lots of working dads though.)

So my guess is that there are lots of women who have had to give up careers that they would rather keep because they have had children. Hakim is basically saying we can ignore them.

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 09:53

karmakameleon - I worked in an environment where spending one's weekend on the golf course with clients was the norm. So? What do you think is the right solution? Outlawing golf?

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 10:10

No, absolutely not. However, whether you are available for drinking sessions (or golf) outside of work hours should not be how individuals are get and are assessed for jobs. What should matter is how good you are at the job, and yes that includes whether you can win client work, if it is relevant, but not whether you can drink to the early hours of if you can play golf. An awful lot of managers are currently unable to make that distinction and women lose out.

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 10:11

karma - if playing golf with clients is how you win clients, it is effectively part of the job, isn't it?

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 10:20

It is not the only way to win clients though is it? And nor is drinking all night. And often it's not even about winning clients. Often it's about networking internally. That was certainly the case at my last work. There wasn't a client in sight at those late night drinking sessions. When I worked in those sorts of roles the vast majority of the client entertaining I did was during the day. Night time drinking was with collegues. Clients were an unwelcome annoyance. You'd have to behave with some decorum if clients were around. But you had to do the night time drinking to get in with the managers. You didn't get promoted if you didn't partake.

That is my experience (and plenty of other women) but Hakim is effectively saying it doesn't matter because some women choose not to be a part of it. (Not that it's really a choice if you have young children at home.)

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 10:21

karma - no, not the only way, but all client-wooing activities were similarly out of work hours time consuming. Basically a high-networking industry. If you remove the networking aspect, there would be no business.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 10:24

Networking can be done during working hours. Why not if it is an essential part of the job?

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 11:10

Oh karma - what you are saying is that you want working hours to be restricted to 9 to 6 to include networking? It's not going to happen, ever.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 11:31

No, I'm saying that all this essential out of hours client winning stuff is just an excuse. It doesn't have to be that way at all.

As a potential client, I prefer to be wined and dined over lunch. (TBH I don't care much about wining and dining and prefer consultants to do the work well and efficiently but that's by the by.) I'm not alone in this. Even some men feel that way too. DH went to a four day golf event with work last year and guess what. The clients came on the Thursday and Friday, and although they were invited for the weekend, they preferred to go home. The Saturday and Sunday turned out to be exclusively for people at his company.

I have to say that if I worked in a client facing environment and had children, I would prefer to do the socialising during the day and the "office based work" from home in the evenings if it couldn't all be fitted into a 9 to 5 day. Why shouldn't that be possible? Technology certainly allows for it.

And also, do you really think that the hours culture is all about client facing work? How many client facing jobs are there really out there? I work for an organisation with about 70,000 employees. I would guess that about 10-20% of them actually have client facing roles and the hours culture is simply not limited to that 10-20%.

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 11:42

I don't agree. Cloud cuckoo land.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 11:47

Bonsoir, that's not really an argument, is it?!

Why not? Just because something's always been done one way, no reason why it can't change.

Technology certainly makes these things easier. So does the fact that more clients are women and don't want to be entertained in the traditional ways. And the fact that men like to go home to their families too.

And you haven't even addressed the fact that not many jobs actually require contact at all, let alone at evenings and weekends.

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 11:53

People who are really good at their jobs don't clock off because it is the evening, or the weekend, or the holidays. If there are really interested in their jobs, they keep thinking about them and using their experiences to enrich their working lives (in multiple ways). You cannot legislate for that, and the people who work more do better...

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 12:02

Who's talking about "clocking off"? I'm not. I've mentioned working from home in the evening. I'm happy to check my blackberry at home, make calls and send emails if required, and I'm sure most other career minded men and women are. You can think about work at home, I often do. But what women with childcare responsibilities can't do is go to the pub and drink in the evenings or play to a culture of presenteeism in the office. These are not measures of how good you are at your job.

Bonsoir · 05/01/2011 12:03

It's not about "working from home". It's about being out in the world looking at what is going on. Do you go and look at what your industry is doing when you travel to a foreign country on holiday? Do you go out of your way to meet new people in associated fields?

sakura · 05/01/2011 12:11

Do you know what the biggest joke on women is?
That the most powerful positions, the highest status and well-paid work are the most flexible, in the main.
Supermarket check out jobs, the ones that are supposed to be great for mothers, are not flexible at all. You have to be there for a set amount of hours

Where I live in Japan, it's almost a parody to see the flexibility the men have compared to the women at the workplace.
White collar men take time out to go to their kids school plays (daytime) , or can take the kids into school, or can get time off at the drop of a hat in order to make some personal appointment or other.
That's exactly the type of flexibility that would be ideal for mothers, and it's wasted on the men! The women are doing the dead-end, low paid, inflexible office and retail work.

It's a funny thing, power and the patriarchy, and how it's twisted to suit men at every turn.

karmakameleon · 05/01/2011 12:12

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