Is it OK to have a career rant here?

[ItsGotBellsOn]

Just perusing the dreaded FB and noticed an ex colleague of mine (male) has posted up pics of the latest high profile conference he is chairing. We are both late thirties now and worked together 10-15 years ago.

It got me thinking (not for the first time) about how amazingly well all the men I worked with in my twenties have done. Every single guy I worked with at that particular workplace - whether bright and talented or not, whether good people or not - have carved really, really impressive, exciting, creative, lucrative careers for themselves. Very, very few of the women - even the brightest and best of us - have.

I just feel so fucking depressed about it. Yes, it is a bit of self pity. I fucked a glittering career in the media by having a child in my twenties. But there is also a sense of rage. All of those bloody brilliant women have just one by one dropped off the radar, are no longer trailblazing in that sector, are no longer visible in the public world. It just feels so wrong.

I could show you the bruises on my head from the glass ceiling. I am 40 and work in an industry that claims to be pure meritocracy. I call bullshit on that. Three years ago I decided to grit my teeth and pluck myself out of the hole I'd stalled into and made massive strides in the following two years...only to have my team taken away from me because someone else (a man) needed a vehicle for his next promotion. This man ran the team into the ground, while I was stuck with a new team of chronic under performers and demanding clients.

I was so stressed that I quit.

I'm planning my return and intend to get as much support as I can in terms of (paid) coaching, therapy, whatever it takes...but it's so freaking unfair.

And in the meantime, all senior management go to offsites to "tackle the diversity problem" which invariably ends up in coming up with more training for women. Because you know, the problem is us, not them.

I'm inclined to agree with greengrow regarding woman not doing themselves favours by failing to appropriately self promote.

I have lost count of the number if times I've cringed through women saying "I think" "we might" "maybe we should try". Men do not speak like this. They don't apologise for their POV and if they're wrong they get on with it.

I found the book nice girls don't get the corner office a really interesting read and useful for examining those ways we all sabotage our careers without even real using it - there is a very interesting part about not taking on roles that aren't within your remit because you "feel you should"

I am one of a handful of women amongst an 800 strong engineering workforce. There are literally no women in senior engineering roles where I work, they have all moved to business or programme management or similar. I love my job and I cannot see myself ever moving into a less technical role but I am starting to feel so much less confident at work now that male colleagues are soaring ahead. I returned from my latest maternity leave to find someone I had trained now working as my team leader. I don't begrudge him that, he is very capable, confident, works hard etc etc and was good in the role (has since moved on again...) I started to question why I wasn't in the same league, and I still don't really know the answer. I consciously didn't apply for what I considered to be a desirable role while I was pregnant as it seemed pointless. And I wonder if I'm just not as good as I thought I was when I was younger, maybe that's true? With virtually no female colleagues to compare experiences with I find it really hard to tell whether I just need to adjust my expectations (there are plenty of men working at my level and happy to continue to do so forever, it would seem) or if this is unfair treatment. My appraisals still seem to be good but I think my lack of confidence is now holding me back. A lot of what Greengrow said has struck a chord for me. I need to start with the self promotion. It certainly doesn't come naturally to me.

"Meritocracy" - now there is a concept to which far too many self-satisfied organisations pay only disingenuous lip service! It usually reminds me of that saying, "Objectivity is male subjectivity".

As a mother I think the limitations imposed on my career are external to the office.

I do feel guilty: next week I will travel to four countries over three continents. Time zones mean I can't talk to the DC everyday and I find that hard.

As my career has progressed I've also had to shift more responsibility for the DC on to my DH and of course to do that I have to have a DH who is happy to take up the slack - which fortunately he is.

If anything I think my ability to "juggle" a word I hear used about me rather than one I use myself is seen as a strength.

People I know: a late 50s woman, very successfull woman in academia. Two children. She had a lazy, unfaithful SAH husband and she worked her socks off to get where she is now. She'd leave for work most days at 5.00am, did a MA, worked her way up and through the Uni. She still works 12 hours every day.

Mid 30s male, works in banking, travels worldwide extensively, earns lots of money. He is doing the job he always wanted. His DW has a job in advertising, but since having 2 DCs doesn't get the interesting work, probably because she often is often off work to look after sicks DCs and has to pick them up from nursery at 6pm.

Greengrow: I found your statement that no one ever dies wishing they earnt less money quite perverse. Many people die wishing they had spent more time with their family and less time working.

I loved being at home with my DCs and I am so glad that I had that time with them.

Maybe the answer for career women is find themselves a SAHD.

"Greengrow: I found your statement that no one ever dies wishing they earnt less money quite perverse. Many people die wishing they had spent more time with their family and less time working."

I just get sick of people going on about people dying wishing they had spent more time with their family. Plenty don't. It is used as comment to hit those who enjoy working hard over the head so I like to turn it on its head - a good death, something sadly my last few years have been concerned with as both my parents have died - their deaths were good in part because of earnings because they could afford full time care at home, could die in the home they owned in control and with the money to ensure that was so. Don't knock the ability as a woman or man to generate money to ensure your retirement years are not spent in miserable poverty. Spending decades with your family as an unpaid servant is not the wonderful nirvana so many people suggest it is.

On the other topic I know it's hard for many women to progress at work. Self promotion is difficult. I listen to a lot of women in work contexts and too many say - I think or perhaps or I am not very good at this, I might be wrong. Try to strip those comments out of work place conversations. Be authoritative in saying what the answer is. Try not to touch your hair too. I am certainly not an expert at all this but I've always known since I was a teenager that I was pretty good at most things, not lease because I got th best A levels int he school and top prizes at university so it's probably objectively provable that I am (no false modesty here.......) It's always fun to out earn and beat men.The exercise of erotic capital can be fun too.

I think whether yhou are male or female and stay at home or not though the time when you have children udner 5 is probably the hardest of your life, of any stage of it iat all. I have been looking at the VHS video tapes we made of those years which I hadp ut on to a hard drive recently. There's a tap where I am changing the cloth nappy of the 3rd child on the floor (in those days we either could not afford disposables or they did not work well - he has now graduated) with the 1 and 3 year old around - the constant tasks of seeing to one child and then the next. Once you have teenagers as I have now it's a walk in the park. Worth keeping up the full time career in those difficult years because once children are older things like the fact my children can graduate debt free, buy properties in their 20s and my daughters have the same legal career to talk to me about are priceless - much more priceless than the fact I changed 4 nappies a day not 25 when they were under 5 and cannot remember.

Women working based at home can have a huge capacity to do international business.

I think this is part of the problem - many of us still don't think of stay at home parents by default, but stay at home mums. We need to see flexible working as something which benefits everyone, not just parents - after all, we all have lives outside work. Obviously not all types of job can have the same flexibility as others - you can't decide not to teach year 9 French a bit later just because you had to take the car in for its MOT, for example. But for many jobs, technology means it is possible to work from home and do some of the work at times which don't fit into 9-5. Meeting face to face is good - but there's also email, instant messaging, document sharing, screen sharing when necessary, telephones, video conferencing... It doesn't have to be desk-based 9-5. But unfortunately, until more men start working more flexibly, it's going to be seen as that thing mums do while they're not really on a proper career path.

I also think we need mandatory equal pay audits, and more objective ways of measuring performance. I know that's not always easy - some things can't just be broken down easily into measurable numbers. But there are things which can be looked at - why are female academics having to publish more papers than male academics to be seen as equivalent? (I have some issues with the way academia sometimes seems to be all about numbers of published papers, rather than looking at the quality, or whatever work is being done. But while it is - well, that is something which is measurable.)

This is all something I feel quite strongly about at the moment - they've issued tables of technical competencies, and what you should be able to achieve at particular levels. It's far from perfect, but I think it is a good starting place, and if they ranked everyone against it, I think they would see that not everyone is equal, and some people are better than management think, while others don't deserve the reputation they have, when you break it down. Some people probably are in about the right place, but a lot aren't, and a lot of it is dependent on the manager's opinion, and it's currently too subjective - I suspect many places are like this.

I think also, there needs to be much more awareness of issues like unconscious bias, because while it's difficult to counter unconscious things, the starting place has to be awareness that it does play a part.