Am I imagining this?

[museumum]

I honestly don't know if i'm imagining this or not.

It has been seeming to me more and more lately that there's a very different attitude to men and women who are self employed, particularly thif they are parents.

I seem to keep reading about women who are self-employed so they can do the school run and be flexible around childhood events and illnesses etc.

While simultaneously reading about men who are self-employed who can't possibly take any of the childcare burden either routinely or in emergencies because 'they don't get paid of they don't work' and 'they're self employed so they have to work long hours'.

Has anybody else noticed this?

Is it the nature of the type of SE work that men do vs women (e.g. there'll be more tradesmen than tradeswomen, more female copywriters than male)?
Or is it because some men use self-employment to avoid family duties?
Or because self employment appeals to male workaholics?

If SE is so wonderfully family friendly and flexible for women then why not for men?

Or, as i asked originally am I imaging this all?

[I have to declare that I am in the category of women who are S-E and therefore do more of the child drops/pickups through choice. Though on the flipside it balances as I do travel for work at times whereas my employed dh never travels overnight for work].

Also, to back to the original question - it's amazing how people assume that I'm around to do childcare even though DH has long been the DC primary caregiver. Ditto, they all assume I can take off time whenever for lunches and coffees. I know for a fact that the friend I was talking about in my previous post isn't assumed to be on hand any time to do childcare.

I see what you are saying tabulahrasa but why is it men who are more prone to take those types of jobs? Where flexibility isn't as much of an option? Is it because they can?

OP here. Bit scared to be honest. I posted this on feminist chat for a chat - not a big argument with sources and citations and the likes. I have NO evidence of anything. Just my own experience and an unsettled feeling.
With employers and employees there is always the argument that it's easier culturally for women to get flexible working or p/t even though legally it should be the same.
But when self-employed there is t the formal "flexible working request" - it's about structuring your business yourself for the hours that work for your family.
Yet I have a strong impression from mn and real life that it's still far more common for SE women to structure their business around their family and for SE men to put their business first and ask their partners to do more family responsibilities.

I'm perfectly willing to be told this is not what other people observe. Or that it's the nature of the types of businesses run by men vs women.

But really id prefer an actual chat around the whole subject rather than an argument.

Am I not taken seriously as a consultant cause I clock off at 4pm and catch up in the evenings? Is not working Fridays losinge credibility with clients? It doesn't seem like it is but who knows what they're saying behind my back???

"why is it men who are more prone to take those types of jobs? Where flexibility isn't as much of an option? Is it because they can?"

Possibly...also partly because it's often skilled labour type jobs and they're not 'women's work'.

I know when DP was an apprentice there was a female one...on the other side of the country that his whole industry were aware of, because it was that rare and it's still a male dominated trade. It's not a huge industry so they do tend to know most other people in it, but still it was unnusual enough to have one female apprentice that it was news.

I think you are entirely correct op, and it is part and parcel of the way economic activity is still split along gender lines in this country.

To run with DWH's distinction between nurturing and providing, these two characteristics have long been gender split - nurturing is for women and men do the providing. This is still the case on the whole and can be seen throughout economic activity.

Then you get the problem of relative status. Generally nurturing is simply not valued as highly as providing in our society - hence the eternal problems matching up childcare and work, a society that valued nurturing equally or more highly than providing would have better balances - the 'work-life' balance it is called, which seems to emphasise that life is outside work, but that simply is not acknowledged in practice. Scandinavia's balance, I have heard, is much better than ours.

I think it is the gender which drives the status of the job, not the job that drives the status of gender. So nurturing is devalued because women do it, and therefore men have far more important things to do. There are other examples of this besides your example of self-employment.

Incidentally while both genders are currently suffering from the split, it is women who have historically suffered the most as the undervalued sex, and I am not impressed by either the man 'whose head explodes' at women on a feminist site because men are just starting to wrestle with the same problems women have for centuries, nor the man who expects me to feel sorry for him.

I'm not sure I'm buying the skilled labour thing. Plumbers, mechanics, plasterers etc. - outside of emergency call out, what makes them unable to structure their day around the kids? Evening and weekends would actually be more convenient for many customers, I can't imagine you'd lose business.

I definitely don't agree it's work type. I work in the City, doing consulting work in an area that has as many women as men. The difference is that there's an expectation that I can do more childcare and my company is taken less seriously by outsiders than a man's in a similar situation. Fact.

Sorry, op, x-post. Daggers away.

I know a couple who are both barristers, and the care is totally shared of their daughter - they just divvy up the dropoffs/pickups based on each other's caseloads.

I know another couple, where the dad is some kind of boat repair person, and he does all the dropoffs on the way to work, and she does all the pickups. I really think that emergency callout aside, most jobs can be shuffled around to accommodate, and if men aren't doing it, its because they don't want to.

BTW - it was more than frustrating, I was LIVID. However karma came around and this perfect position dropped into my lap, so whilst it's a rubbing point for us, it's not a dealbreaker - I think it must be much, much harder for women who aren't able to point at a career, or equal earnings to stand their ground and force the issue. I thank god for my nanny now, and an awesome childminder, and that DP now knows that when I ask for him to get the kids because I have a meeting he has to move heaven and earth to make it happen - because that's at least approaching fair - which is all I'm asking for.

Oh I don't think it's all to do with job type at all.

I just think it is a factor, especially because skilled labour jobs that involve some or lots of emergency callouts tend to be more male dominated.

There'll be less women doing a job like that because they're expected to be the one that compromises for children, but also it starts before that because women can't possibly do jobs with tools and fix things...so you end up with whole industries that only function because they don't have to be flexible for children and nobody challenging it because not enough women are in it to start with to feel able to challenge it and men just don't challenge it.

Yops is right. That's why men who start businesses from home are so often called 'dadpreneurs' and women are entrepreneurs It's insulting and belittles them. Oh wait, sorry, that never happens.

I was self-employed for a while. At the time, it suited us. I could work from home, I could tailor the hours to suit our family. Unfortunately, the recession hit my work with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and I am now effectively unemployed. BUT my husband never assumed that my work was unimportant. He picked up the children from school when he could, he dropped them off when he could. He made an effort to make work fit when it was necessary. Fortunately, they are very healthy and we have not had to make time for sick days! My point? Even in a traditional work setting, you can make it work if you want to. If the will is there.

From google search results.

262,000 mumpreneur
467,000 mompreneur

12,000 dadpreneur.

OP don't you know that if as a woman you venture an opinion on something, you have to provide data, evidence, proof with proper source citations to satisfy anyone with testicles of objectivity who may demand them.

You can't just shoot the breeze and have a chat, you have to be accountable to a man for your conversations.

Silly you, thinking it was OK for you to moot a discussion topic not approved by a man on a feminist board.

And LOL, yes, I know this will be dismissed as man-bashing feminism. But I'm only bashing men who come across as mansplainy poo-poo heads.

@ poo poo heads

Until you posted that whe I had never, ever heard the phrase dadpreneur.

Everyday is indeed a school day.

Of those 12,000 dadpreneur references, I wonder how many are juxtapositions with 'mumpreneur', ironic rather than serious uses of the term

We try and split everything as evenly as we can (neither of us are self employed do I'm not sure if this is relevant on this thread).

Dh does drop offs - I do pick ups. Sometimes we need to vary it to fit in with each other's work.
But i think I'm my own worse enemy. I think I could make things more even if I let go of responsibility for the kids stuff.

Basically if it involves the kids - my say counts more than his because I put in more work with them.

We didn't discuss who would do what with the kids and who makes the decisions. I just assume responsibility for the day to day organising of the kids and get on with it.

Dh is a good dad and would take on more responsibility for the kids. But I've kind of assumed the responsibility and the work for myself and he's happy with that situation.

I think in my and dh's relationship one big thing standing in the way of dh taking on more responsibility at home is me. I know I do more child related care than he does and I quite like the power and control that gives me.
Part of me really wants more down time and less responsibility - but I think I would have a hard time letting go.

I'm probably one if those who have said dh can't take time off as he's self employed. I'm looking for work, and have been for a long time, but I haven't been able to find anything that fits in with term time and school pickups.

Dh absolutely would organise his hours around dd but there's a few reasons why he can't, one being money, if I took a full job and dh rearranged his hours to do the pick up, it would mean him losing half a days pay as sometimes it's a three hour drive, so he'd have to leave at lunchtime, as he is responsible for other workers they would also lose half a day as if dh isn't there, then they can't be either, he earns in a week, what it would take me a month to ( and he is low income). We would be a lot worse off, dh doesn't know where he will be from one week to the next, and things change at very short notice, he often works away for weeks at a time, so it makes planning any childcare arraignments around his work almost impossible.

For us, he doesn't see his job as more important than anything I would do, but it's that he's job brings in the most income so priority is given to that. Nit saying it's right, and it's shitty that I have shitty earning potential, it actually makes me feel crap often, but that's how it is for us ATM.

Inicked - your kind of situation is sort of what I was thinking of when I said about the nature of the work. If your dh is far away or in unpredictable locations and has staff with him who can't carry on without him then that is absolutely fair enough. Not great, but understandable.

I work from home and market some of my services to small business owners. I cringe every time I use the word mumpreneur. I wouldn't use it but it is a useful hash tag to stick on my tweets and FB posts.

I work in a male dominated field, in a male dominated workplace, with around 15% women.

So I'm doing one of these man-jobs, where you just can't get flexibility. It's my observations, that when women get into these roles, they push for flexible working or patterns to fit around their families. Men just don't request that. The very rare few that do, are as able to get it as the women (which is not to say it is easy)