Should HR departments ask women about their plans to start a family?

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Sheryl Sandbery COO of Facebook has recently said, ?Employers should be allowed to ask women about plans for children ? Every HR department tells you not to do that but we need to have a much more open conversation.? This has got the Family Friendly team at Mumsnet wondering what you think. Would it make for easier career planning for women and a more open discussion between women at work and employers or would it be a massive backwards step? Have you ever wanted to talk to a potential employer about your long term plans or ask about their maternity package? Have you ever been asked and felt that your answer has had a negative impact on your employability? We'd love to know.

PS
On the physical side I was lucky not to be ill so could work until in labour. I genuinely did not find being in work at 2 weeks was particularly hard. I never had a C section however. Also sitting on the train without 3 under 4s pulling at you and making demands is hugely restful. Going to work and being treated as an adult, respected and looked after by people at work is much much easier than minding three under 4s.

Obviously it depends on your job and health as to when you go back.

We also had two nannies go on maternity leave too which allows you to see things from the other side.

Xenia, did you share your plans when TTC your first child?

I suspect a lot of people would still say, "ah, you'll have to see how you feel once baby's here" to a first-timer's plans to return after two weeks.

Besides, they wouldn't (couldn't under current law) hold you to it so would have to plan as if you hadn't said it.

Sheryl Sandberg has a new book out a few days ago called 'Lean In. She has also been all over the business news. This article from Business Insider is fairly typical of the coverage.

One quote I picked up on was this:

" .... she defends her message that women should take more responsibility for their own success by saying, "I'm not blaming women" but "there's an awful lot we can do."

I also note the article mentions she is in the top '1%' of the population.

Sorry but as a bloke married to a professional woman and having worked in the City I know full well how men in powerful positions talk about and undermine women's efforts. It is not women's fault they are not running top corporations. It is men's fault. It really is.

The D. No way. As I'm not fat nothing ever showed much until about 5 months pregnant so I told no one at work until then for all kinds of reasons - I wasn't ill so didn't want a fuss made; money; my principles; not their business. I suspect when I said I would be back in 2 weeks' time the first time they did not believe me.

Women can take some responsibility. Plenty of us go off and work for ourselves and generate our own work which is lots of fun and I recommend it. I feel at the moment being nearly 30 years into my working life with perhaps 20 - 30 years more to go, that it is the perfect life actually.

i find myself perversely tempted to tell my boss i'm pregnant and see how he reacts. possibly not a good idea eh? would be interesting though

Have not read all the thread.
I was asked I was less than honest with my answer got the job. Would not have if i had told the : - ( When I told them they quoted back what I had said to assistant practice manager. Then made my life v miserable sent me on visits that ere dangerous. This was a Drs surgery and at least 2 of the partners needed IVF to conceive. Moved jobs as soon as I could.

Would like to point out they appointed a locum for my maternity leave which was fully covered by the PCT

Sorry for typos

I disagree for many reasons. furstly, even if you did ask men and wonen the same question, the outcome would be massively discriminatory against women. The assumption is that men only take short periods if paternity leave so employers don't really care whether they have kids or not (in fact you often hear people talking about how Bill or whoever is a real family man, meaning it as a compliment...you don't often hear the same said about women in the workplace!)
Also, erm people sometimes get pregnant by accident - will they be accused of being liars if they haven't told their employer?
Women have babies. Fact. It isn't a crime and it doesn't mean you can't make a really positive contribution to your employer and the economy. But the implication of what this woman is suggesting is that we are somehow being selfish by trying to work and have babies. That attitude makes me bloody furious and just because its a woman saying it does not make it any less misogynistic.

More beta, i could not agree with you more. I've been in the city for 15 years and you are so right. I am constantly appalled how a certain type of bloke will undermine women at every opportunity and bitch about them behind their backs, especially any women with any kind of power. Unfortunately pregnancy and mat leave is a gift to these people, particularly if they have any power.

The truly appalling thing is many of them have young young daughters. I have had to say to one dikhed who asked me if "I had considered moving into customer services when you come back from mat leave" (work in highly specialised technical area), do you want your daughter to be treated like this (many other incidents and undermining attempts) when she's in the workplace?

It's not all men and I do see small positive signs that it is slowly changing, but you're so right, women's biggest problem in the workplace is not that they biologically have to have children, but is still men.

everyone notice how this thread was dropped from the top of active and replaced with one on 1 in 7 women made redundant after maternity leave?

Threads generally get un-stickied after a certain number of days unless a company is paying for them to stay at the top.

It is certainly another issue. If you adore your work and don't take much time off you are more likely to be kept on. I am not a huge fan of very long maternity leaves for women who want to do very well at work and earn a lot of money. I am not sure they are good for anyone - babies, families, relationships, women or employers although I am sure 3 months off whilst keeping in touch and may be doing a bit of work from home can be okay. 6 months I think is getting a bit much in jobs where you are a success as most people need continuously to keep up to date in their field and maintain their business relationships with customers which cannot just be frozen in aspic for 12 months.

Sure Xenia, but maternity and paternity leave legal allowance has to be the same across the board, interesting job or not.

The nurseries near me only take babies at three months. If you went off two weeks before your EDD and then were two weeks overdue, you'd be a bit stuffed if your ML was only three months. Not everyone can afford a nanny.

... Having said that, now of course you can share leave after twenty weeks so that would help.

I work for a small technology company. I'm the only woman here of childbearing age and that is no accident. My boss is quite open about the fact that he doesn't want to employ women who might have children. He only employs me because I have quite an unusual set of skills that he would be hard pushed to find elsewhere.

I don't agree with my boss' stance on this. But I don't know what it would take to change his mind. He sees that, in a small company, any absence hurts his business. Until I got pg the first time, he assumed that companies have to pay SMP themselves. I basically had to sit him down and give him a seminar in maternity issues (awkward).

I was not in a fit state to work until dd was about 9 months old. I would not have been worth my salary.

I think the thing that disturbs me about Sheryl Sandbery's comments are that she makes them in the context of a US company and women in the US don't even have a decent maternity leave/pay entitlement. If companies there are worried about employing women who might take 6 weeks off, we're not going to convince companies here to employ women fairly and equally with men. Maybe we just have to find ways to force them to.

TryDrawing, I've had males friends tell me quite openly to my face, that they wouldn't consider employing me at the moment even knowing my ability and likely me, purely because I'm female, married and in my mid thirties. Its 'simply too much of a risk' and 'too much of a costly disruption'. Understandably its not done wonders for my confidence tbh. (Strangely, I've not spoken much to these friends since... can't think why).

I have been very conscious of the questions I've had asked at interview. Some have been bordering on dodgy ground and at least once I believe they have overstepped - it was only after the interview, I kicked myself for responding, even though they had said I didn't have to answer if I didn't want to (of course I felt I had to).

In all the interviews I've had, I've had very positive feedback and its obvious that I'm a clear second choice not far behind the person who eventually got the job. But I can't help wondering whether the deciding factor has been my ticking timebomb status.

Those women who only want to take a few weeks off therefore are in a sense tarred with the same brush by those who want to be off for 9 months to a year. it is not fair. It is other women damaging women who want to go back sooner. As so many women now take so long off (goodness knows how they all seem to be able to afford it) it means women's position at work is more and more damaged because the maternity leaves being taken are so long and that does damage business - we all know that. Okay may be Janice on a factory production line can be replaced but many jobs it is hugely disrupting to have someone off. Those of us who have employed nannies who go on maternity leave know how disrupting that can be too.

The reason women dont get to the top is because men deliberately stop them getting there. There is no other reason.

It is striking that Shery Sandberg appears not to have talked at all about the role that men play in the lack of promotion of women. I have not read her book so I apologise if she has said something but from what I have read elsewhere there appears to be little mention of men and their role.

Surely men are in power now and it is men who must begin to promote more women? I have not seen her challenge men in top jobs to step up to the plate on this issue. Why is she only talking about what women need to do - what about the men in power?

I once worked in a firm where the man who was Head of Dept systematically destroyed the career of every woman who reported to him. I was very junior but knew enough that he deliberately cut the bonuses, refused to promote, and eventually got rid of every single woman manager. He never recruited any women.

It was so blatant. Every single one of those women through no fault at all had their career damaged. They were all extremely good at their jobs. I worked for most of them on teams and they were much much better than the two male managers who I mainly worked for. Those two male managers also held very similar views about women as the Head of Dept. He naturally promoted them above all the female managers.

I do wonder over the years how many women have had their careers damaged and destroyed by those three men.

Most women don't realise how much the odds are stacked against them. They blame themselves or think they just have to try harder. If you came up against the three men I reported to in that firm you would have no chance. No matter how good you were or how hard you worked.

Believe me it is nothing to do with women being unwilling to 'lean in', or having babies or not asking for promotion and pay rises or being too assertive or not assertive enough or any of the other reasons that are cited. There is always a reason given as to why women dont get to the top. It is never true.

It is always a man in power that stops an ambitious, competent well qualified women from getting to the top.

SP: Sheryl

If these conversations are had then there will be attendant pressure to plan to the nth degree and to conceive to plan.

I wasn't convinced it was the right time yet to ttc until the month we decided to go for it - and we were instantly successful. I can imagine it would be even worse the other way (with troubles ttc).

Can you imagine if i'd told my boss in November that children were on the cards but i wasn't really ready yet then had to report conception in mid December?

Thankfully i'm self employed (deliberately planned this way) so I can do a phased return to work which I plan to start very gently (0.5days a week) at 3mnths.

Xenia, I would never judge another woman's choice in the family and career balancing stakes. But if you're going to talk about women damaging other women, then I have to say that wearing a 2 week maternity leave as some sort of badge of honour is the real damaging behaviour here. If it works for you then fine but I think sensible medical advice would be to take much longer than that to allow your body to recover and of course if you choose to breastfeed then you need to be with your baby. Not to mention the other benefits of spending those precious first months together.
I have worked continuously since leaving Uni 10 years ago, except for 6 months maternity leave and a further 9 months I intend to take for the child I'm currently carrying. That's 15 months out of what will hopefully be a 45 year career. So I fail to see how that's somehow letting the side down.

i agree josie. i also agree with morebeta and note that xenia turned this around to 'women getting it wrong' when in reality it is very clear exactly what gets in the way of women. i too have seen managers who are the same as morebeta describes but they liked their pet women, the ones who'd make tea, bring the cakes in and never complain or expect promotion. any ambitious women expecting to be treated as equals were targeted and destroyed.

i'm not surprised when powerful women slate and blame other women. women who do well in the men's system don't do so through their sisterhood skills generally.

Maybe men should be forcibly made to take longer periods of paternity leave.

I wonder what effect that might have to attitudes.

i suppose the only real thing that could make a difference is quotas but people don't tend to like that idea.

is it true paternity leave doesn't kick in till 20wks? that's a mistake i think that could be rectified straight off. if it kicked in from 4 weeks people would have more genuine choices about who would be the stay at home carer in the early days. why should it 'have' to be the woman for the first 5 months? it's like saying oh we'll say men can do a token bit too but it's still women's work really.

Beta, sadly I have to entirely agree with you again. Did you work for a bank by any chance? I have seen what you describe an you're right, it's so blatant. They force the women out because confident, clever, well-balanced women remind then if their own failings am inadequacies. Interestingly, all the male managers I have encountered like this had very bitter breakups or terrible relationships with women.behind them in their personal lives (not surprisingly really given what arseholes they were) and I often felt they came into work and took it out on the women under them who couldn't tell them to fuck off like their exes had.

This is getting slightly of topic but I entirely agree with you, maternity issues, women in senior positions are ALL symptoms of these men being in control. This is what hapenned to me and it takes a lot of self belief and sled confidence to come back from it (and set my career back years), many women just give up and become SAHMs. I console myself that these arseholes will soon be dead (invariably fat amd unhealthy) and I do see positive signs that the younger generation of men and women are on more of an equal footing. My boys certainly won't ever treat women that way I have been treated, by some.
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