[2] Let's talk about: women's issues in the work place

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

There are so many different facets to this:

• The kind of work women are more likely to do (with the associated pay and risks)
• More likely to be on zero hour contracts, PT work etc
• Maternity discrimination at work
• Childcare issues preventing women from working
• Time out of work for caring reasons making it harder for women to find work
• Work place harassment
• A general lack of confidence and lower expectations (less likely to apply for promotions or advocate for pay rises)

In my life I've had to leave 2 jobs due to sexual harassment by my boss at one, and attempted sexual assault by my colleague at another. I've always done "women's work" - care assistant, primary school TA etc - and have therefore never worked for more than minimum wage. I left uni when I found out I was pregnant with my oldest and haven't worked since. I'm trying to retrain atm to go back to work when my youngest is a bit older but am restricted by childcare and funding issues.

What kind of issues have you all faced in the workplace?

Really interesting thread.

I'd also be interested to see statistics on when a heterosexual couple move for a job how many times the 'trailing spouse' is female.

Also passing on of child care problems to older women (grand mothers) as a SAHM I know a lot of grandmothers in this situation and quite a lot of them really don't seem that happy about it, and rather forced into it by circumstances. In my experience it's always women too - have never yet met a grandfather doing this. And of course, the general trend is to have children later so grandparents will be older possibly with more health issues themselves, so it really doesn't seem a very robust long-term solution to childcare issues.

I've ended up with a very long career gap because firstly, only I was entitled to maternity leave when our first was born (I do think people forget that shared parental leave is a relatively new thing and not all of us had that choice), which led to me being the 'trailing spouse' by default somewhat as DH offered a big opportunity during my mat leave, and then that decision lead to me again being the one to stay at home with child 2.

As a family, each decision is not taken in isolation. In my experience, once you've left the workforce it is much easier to then continue to take on the caring role when additional children come along (or there are other family caring needs) and quite difficult to break the cycle of everyone relying on you for all the mental and practical load.

@Thingybob 13 hour shifts are worked by Male Nurses as well! Its not sexual discrimination is it?

13 hour shifts are worked by Male Nurses as well! Its not sexual discrimination is it?

The context was 'Jobs that require the employee to work long shifts outside of childcare provider hours. ' - so, they effectively discriminate against the primary carers of children, so in a sexist society it's indirect sexism. Or as with so many of these issues, more specifically 'motherism'.

MirzyMoo, I didn't describe 13 hour shifts as sexual discrimination but I do think being required to work those hours is indirect discrimination against parents. As it is usually mothers who are the primary carers for their children, or sole carers in the case of single mothers it is a women's workplace issue.

13 hour shifts (in whatever job) are very unfriendly to anyone with caring responsibilities for any other family member, and of course we know that caring responsibilities disproportionately fall on women. So many people have small children at some point in their lives and unless they have a SAH partner/ grandparents / other family willing to help I don't see how you can easily manage childcare (particularly in a way that isn't hugely disrupting to the children) when shifts are that long. Unless you're paid enough to pay for a nanny (not the case for nurses).

Seems to me the workplace plays lip service to being family friendly often, rather than actually being family friendly.

OvaHere

Same, but instead of SN, MH issues, including school refusal, resulting in distance/home ed and need for a parent to supervise.
Disrupted my return to work at a time I would not have expected it.

When kids were younger, the cost of going back to work full time was prohibitive in terms of child care. It would have cost us for me to work. And I did not have parents or in-laws to help, as both sets were still in f/t work themselves.

I still wish I had spent all my income plus more on childcare at that stage; in retrospect, it would have set me up to be the working parent, and dh to be the 'stay home with the unwell child' parent, and given me a lot more financial independence in the long run.

What I've seen happen is where workplace conditions are family unfriendly it is disproportionately the mothers who take a step away and into a job (often completely unrelated to what they trained for) which fits around their kids - sacrificing a range of things like career prospects and work benefits (e.g. pension). Certainly happens where DH works - up to a certain level there are a reasonable number of women, and then you hit a certain point (roughly when people start to have kids) and the women seem to just fade away so at more senior levels there are barely any women.

You could argue that all these women are making a choice, and they are, individually, for what they think is the benefit of their families but you then have to ask why it is so disproportionately mothers rather than fathers that make this choice? In my opinion it's the way the workplace and society is set up, structural inequality, societal expectations (on men and women).....

Why do parents have to make an unpalatable choice, why can't the workplace change?

Caution - not my nigel ahead!

My Dad has provided full time childcare to one relative's child to cover a gap between maternity leave and child care place opening up. He's also provided p/t childcare to a child in the family much younger than mine.

BUT he is a rarity, and I agree that childcare being passed off to grandmothers is a major issue.

I think as the Boomers and Xers pass on, and Gen Z's have their own kids, a lot of them are going to find that Grandma is still having to work f/t till she is 70+ because she is financially insecure, and that will massively complicate childcare options for coming generations.

When kids were younger, the cost of going back to work full time was prohibitive in terms of child care. It would have cost us for me to work. And I did not have parents or in-laws to help, as both sets were still in f/t work themselves

Yes, I am in this position except parents ill rather than in f/t work (they really need help from me rather than being able to provide it) and no other family help. It is hard to decide to work when it's going to actually cost you money and make your life - and the life of your children and parents and spouse - more stressful and difficult.

13 hour shifts are also incredibly discriminatory against anyone with a disability or health problem. I find so many jobs expect you to be some sort of super human robot. And if you end up suffering from exhaustion, they are disdainful of you and find a replacement.

@JanesKettle

I still wish I had spent all my income plus more on childcare at that stage; in retrospect, it would have set me up to be the working parent, and dh to be the 'stay home with the unwell child' parent, and given me a lot more financial independence in the long run.

I did actually do this in the pre school years but it still didn't work out. I ended up moving from full time to part time to very part time then had to admit defeat in the end.

My DH is almost a decade older than me and has an established, well paid career, I had no chance of matching that so me being the sahp was the only realistic option.

The clause in every contract I’ve ever had that says which says ‘occasional foreign travel’ (to head office for training/socialising/indoctrination/whatever) which I can’t do. So 51 weeks of the year, I’m the perfect, overachieving, office-near-home-very-regular-hours-based employee, one week of the year I’m the stupid, awkward pain in the arse that won't go to HQ mostly for a jolly. (And I know it’s a jolly because a) Facebook and b) once they’ve finished making me feel lucky I have a job at all they agree I can not go.)

It's a two parter isn't it?

First there are the barriers to work that come from care work that is generally necessary and provided free by women and which allows society to continue. Children need to be looked after. Homes do. Other relatives. And by default women take on these responsibilities. And yes, this includes providing the wife-work that allows partners to progress career wise.

And then there are the explicit workplace practices which are discriminatory. The judging more harshly of women's grooming, social skills, output. The lack of recognition of needs. The underpayment that seems endemic in jobs that are mostly full of women. The refusal to promote because a woman is a mother or might become one.

I facilitated my husband's career. Made it possible for him to travel for work at the drop of a hat. Did not expand my business when I should have because it meant relying on him being home by 6pm one night a week.

So many women I know rely on grandparents to provide care. My mil made it very clear to me that while they were considering moving to live near us when my children were young she had zero intention of providing regular care on set days. Of course, she now provides that for her daughter's children (not having moved). My mother was unreliable because of her own work when my children were very young. It's not sustainable to push the childcare issue up a generation. Not only because grandmothers don't always enjoy/want to be caring for the children but also because they often need/want to stay in employment themselves. But children will continue to need to be looked after by adults. And wrap-around-care doesn't solve that even where it exists.

Back in 2016, the Equality and Human Rights Commission did a major piece of research into discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers at work. It was a very thorough study with a representative sample of over 3,000 women in the UK. They found that 11% of pregnant women and new mothers lost their jobs because of discrimination, adding to 54,000 women each year. They found that 4% of women leave their jobs because of health and safety concerns, which is around 20,000 women each year. Three-quarters of pregnant women and new mothers experience some form of discrimination but only around 3% raise a formal grievance and fewer than 1% raise a tribunal claim.

These research findings show that things are pretty bad for pregnant women and new mothers at work whether or not they are on high or low incomes or in high or low skilled jobs.

You would think this would have prompted some action by Government, since they commissioned the research, but it hasn't. They put out a consultation earlier this year on minor improvements to redundancy protections, which is two years late and doesn't offer much to anyone. Maternity Action has been quite active on this and their report on redundancy is worth a read.

It does my head in that the Government's own research shows just how bad the situation is but they keep avoiding the problem. There is a comprehensive set of recommendations for action in the Women and Equalities Select Committee and Equalities Select Committee inquiry on this issue which would really improve things for women.

Excitingly, you don't even need to be a mother to benefit from sex discrimination - simply being a woman of childbearing age will do (please apply sarcastic tone). I've been in interview situations before where a male interviewer has tried to not-very-subtly find out if I have children, or if I'm married and therefore likely to have them soon. I particularly remember being asked "So, what three words would your husband use to describe you?" I didn't have a husband and had given no information about my marital status on my CV, so clearly I was supposed to either correct him or else have him assume that I was married because I hadn't corrected him.

Since I'm not actually married and don't have kids, nor do I want them, I've been tempted to say that when I've really wanted the job, but it wouldn't sit right with me morally. And anyway, as soon as people do find out, they assume you'll be ok to cover all the Christmas and summer shifts that the parents book off months in advance...

I worked in admin in my 40’s. The software we were required to learn (in-house software and standard applications) were legion. It was expected we’d learn this with no formal training. Men with jobs requiring similar levels of expertise (but in more traditionally male roles) were always paid more, given a hell of a lot more autonomy over their day to day work, and not subject to the same role to role bullying that women engage in.

One of my admin jobs I was the only staff member (all women) out of 9 who was a single parent and only one of 3 members of staff who had kids (the first boss had kids who were now adults in their 30’s). On the very rare occasion one of my 2 would call from school saying they were ill and needed to go home (aged under 13) the supervisor would refuse to let me leave. This was a major problem for me as I felt pulled in two: the kids need me to work to earn for food, shelter, etc/the kids are ill and need to be at home with their mum. I just think it’s inhuman and needs to be sorted.

The "but men work 13 hour shifts too" argument is covered by the concept of indirect sex discrimination (as pointed out up thread).

To count as sex discrimination, a working practise or salary scale doesn't have to affect all women. It doesn't have to affect only women. It simply has to disproportionately affect women compared to men.

The example we were given when I covered this on an equality course at work was a job advert which said "You will already be in a role earning 35K pa." The intention of the job ad would be to screen out junior role holders trying it on and select only established professionals in the field - so not directly aimed at excluding women. But it would count as indirect sex discrimination because women on average would be less likely to earn 35K than men.

I had four times being left off the list for a fresh contract after missing a round due to pregnancy.

The stupidity of it was that they kept telling me I was terrific and trying to get me to work at a higher level, and bewailing the shortage of team leaders (the level I worked at at that time).

When I finally moved to self employed and stopped accepting offers at all, they literally did not notice. This was after a twenty year contract work relationship. The fools.

With two DC’s, my issue is that I’m hindered in terms of career progression, as the main carer. Basically been stalled for last 5 years. Can’t increase PT to FT, can’t do residential training/ prof development, can’t look for jobs at other institutions (academic) due to increased commuting, cant attend ‘after work’ seminars/ research groups, can’t stay up til midnight working anymore.....
(But realise this is very much tempered by the benefits of the flexibility of an academic role).
So, not actual discrimination as some of these awful posts depict, but this is my current experience and frustration, which is a big issue for me.

The childcare issues question is huge. My sense is that a lot of the public discussion about it circles around the real issue, which is that seems like we would really like to be able to avoid the question, that we don't consider childcare, or eldercare, or care of the disabled, really significant valuable work. It's like a buck constantly being passed, to grandmothers, to paid childcare workers, to nannies brought from other countries.

I sometimes feel that as a society what we'd really like is to for children to just grow up on their own.
My sense is that there is a need to recognise that life requires people to do other things than paid work, and the goal of having all adults between about 20 and 65 in paid work is not reasonable. For a good quality of like a family with two adults and two kids can probably reasonably work one full time job when the kids are small and add another half-time job when they are a bit older. When they work more there will likely be a need to pay for help of some kind, or have a diminished quality of life and little capacity to deal with emergencies or life changes like a child who becomes in need of nursing care.

The increased intensity of childcare is also an issue IMO. The change where many kids now cannot walk home from school creates a huge childcare burden.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Goosefoot. Just try saying on AIBU that you feel tired/ overworked as a SAHP, or even a working parent, and you get a pile on of "looking after kids isn't work". Well, it is actually, and it's hugely demanding. It's not paid work, but it's definitely work! But it's also bloody wonderful for many people. I spend way too much of my time as a SAHP worrying about setting a bad example for my kids/ perpetuating sexism/ worrying about my non existent career etc that I sometimes forget just how much I love it. I love it so much, even the hard shit bits. But I'm also extremely aware that if my partner left me I'd be in big trouble. And that long term my career prospects probably won't recover, which will effect me my whole life, especially in retirement.

But yes, the drive to include women in more male dominated fields often ignores the fact that that kind of work is shit in it's own way. Who would rather work 24/7 than be with their kids? Some men apparently, but I don't know any women who want that. Really I think society would be a lot happier if we stopped trying to help women be more like men and started trying to help men be more like women. I said this on a different thread, but part of the problem with "the patriarchy" is that it operates on an idea of power, success, and progress that is deeply deeply flawed. What would the world look like if we looked at people performing caring roles the same way we currently look at investment bankers? To quote Germane Greer, "I don't think the best that we can aspire to is the lives that men have under patriarchy".

For a good quality of like a family with two adults and two kids can probably reasonably work one full time job when the kids are small and add another half-time job when they are a bit older.

Or how about two half time jobs when the kids are small and both increase a bit when the kids are older?

With increased mechanisation etc, I'd have thought that it should have become possible for everyone to have a better work-life balance.

...and then, basically, I was about to reiterate pretty much what grabthar said in the second para of previous post.

Or how about two half time jobs when the kids are small and both increase a bit when the kids are older?

For sure, I was thinking in terms of one and half units, if that makes sense.

Practically right now things like benefits play into it. And then so will things like the type of job or career, even in an ideal situation some types of work may not be so suited to part time, or if a family has more children than usual it will mean different sorts of choices, and so on.

But in terms of renumeration, I think a situation where we expect one or one and a half "jobs" to provide the income for a regular sized family, that's really a much better plan. It would be tight but doable for most single parents, people where both parents work because of more demanding careers could afford good quality childcare, and there would be more flexibility in families when making decisions about things like eldercare, or when facing other problems that mean someone can't work.

I'm not sure how it would be accomplished though. It was an unintended effect of the two income family becoming the norm that basic costs went up to reflect that. I suppose something might be accomplished just be emphasising the value of unpaid kinds of works instead of constantly trying to push all adults into employment.

Great posts Goosefoot and Grabthar. Agree with all your points.

I too love being a SAHM even though it is definitely more physically demanding and full on than my previous well renumerated graduate job. Much more fulfilling in every way too. For us, it just doesn't make sense for me to work financially - would end up costing us money - as we don't get State help (other than tax breaks on childcare, but they're not enough to sway the equation towards profit).

At the moment it seems the State in this country at least doesn't value the work of parenting at all. The state will pay childcare fees for those on low incomes, but will not give the exact same amount of money to those parents so that they can provide the childcare themselves while the children are pre-school age. Which seems utterly mad. So you have parents going back to work doing menial jobs they don't want to do and their children going to nursery for very long hours and no politicians ever seem to question whether this is actually the optimum thing for child health and wellbeing (not to mention the health and wellbeing of the parents). And yet they say the years before 3 are the most important for a child.

Seems utter madness really.