Women returning to work after maternity leave may face obstacles when it comes to asking for flexible hours and convincing their boss that condensing their working week in some way will not have a damaging effect on their work and the company. But forget the image of the chauvinistic male boss, the new problem could be other women.
It seems that working mothers are increasingly facing a distinct lack of sympathy from women in the workplace. A recent study of 1,500 working mothers concluded that female colleagues who do not have children were less sympathetic to the pressures that working mums faced juggling work and domestic duties than male colleagues.
Things are so bad it seems that more than half of the women say they often blamed traffic or oversleeping for being lateness, as these were seen as more legitimate excuses than having childcare issues. It seems that taking days off work to care for a sick child, for example, is just seen as a passport for skiving.
As for other women, there are those who don?t have children and do not realise the full extent of the work involved and the hours dedicated to cooking, caring for a sick child and so on once working mums get home from the office.
A lack of commitment may be demonstrated by a minority of working mothers, but unfortunately this can lead to us all being tarred with the same brush. Louise Bolitin, a 46-year-old freelance journalist, recalls her experience when she worked in communications, where a colleague?s actions started to impact on her own life so much that she felt she needed to leave the company.
?On the days when she was working she was always late by about 30 minutes, despite living literally around the corner, and had an infuriating habit of booking doctor’s appointments etc for the days she was at the office, even though both her kids were at school so she could have gone for haircuts/dentist/whatever on her days off.
?Some weeks, all the skiving meant she’d do perhaps a day and a half of work instead of three. I got really fed up with her hardly being around and having to pick up her slack, as it was blatantly unfair. I was doing five days a week and rarely took time off (apart from sick leave). I’d always try to arrange appointments with doc/dentist etc for early morning or late afternoon so as not to be too disruptive, especially as I had to commute.
?Raising the issue of my colleague’s absence with my boss was pointless – he just couldn’t see that there was a problem. In the end I left, and her skiving was a major factor. I know that some of the other child-free women there felt put-upon by mother colleagues, too.?
Understandably, childless women who have experienced similar outcomes as Louise would have a negative view of working mothers ? it?s one thing to abuse the system, but when it starts to affect other people, who can blame them for resenting working mums? But it?s not all mothers who work that do abuse the system. Most have genuine childcare issues and need to make the decision of putting work first, or dealing with a crisis at home.
NHS worker in Manchester, Katherine, 36, feels that mothers are unfairly treated when it comes to taking time off work for legitimate reasons. ?In terms of how mum’s get treated, I have to say that where I work everyone does understand when mum’s perhaps have to take time off work if they have sick children (which is generally what happens).
?We all have family and we all understand that families should come first. But sadly mum’s particularly are made to use up annual leave or are marked as sick or absent if they take time off for sick children. We are (apparently) entitled to have ‘carer’s leave’ but it seems that this is very much at the discretion of the management. It’s my understanding that this is one of the times where carer’s leave is appropriate. Instead, mums have to have time off ‘sick’ and are frequently referred to occupational health because of their ‘sick record’ when they hit a particular trigger. So for me, mums are discriminated against because they have childcare problems, by managers – not by their colleagues – at least in my experience.?
So maybe, these child-free women don?t actually resent the mothers themselves, but resent what they are entitled to. ?I think the idea of maternity leave is unfair – women get to take six months off, then when they return to work, they come and go according to their children’s needs rather than workplace needs and colleagues without children seem to be expected to fill the gap,? says Louise. ?I’d like to see a general concept of “personal leave” introduced – this could be used for maternity/paternity leave or (for us child-frees) to use in another way – that way, everyone gets equal rights to time off for personal things, whether it’s children, elderly parents or just having a sabbatical to do something else.?
Maybe this would go some way into solving this cultural resentment towards mothers who work. Another area that?s also worth looking at is the way that managers themselves deal with the issue of things like holidays and organising cover when mothers have to leave work if there is a crisis at home. ?I was particularly annoyed, from a ‘childless’ point of view, when we were informed, via memo that staff with children would be given ‘preference’ for time of during the school holidays,? says Katherine.
?I was annoyed because even though I don’t have children, I felt it was grossly unfair that we would be discriminated against in this way (particularly since I am not childless by choice) and was ‘told’ that we had to do it, when to be honest most people avoid booking those weeks off if they can just so people with kids can have them, anyway!?
Looking at the issue from both sides definitely does open our eyes to the problems. It?s not a simple issue of child-free women hating the fact that working mothers choose to work ? clearly. But when the fact that they work flexibly anyway, yet still have ?the nerve? to have a crisis that demands they leave the office, and their colleagues ?in the lurch?, too, that becomes a little too much to take.
?I truly believe that women cannot have it all. And that if you are going to have babies, then you are going to have to make sacrifices instead of expecting colleagues to make allowances for you and take up the slack. I’m one of four children – my mum stayed at home until the youngest of us was nine before returning to work, which seems about right to me. I appreciate many families need two incomes to survive and that a lot of women need stimuli beyond Teletubbies and nappies but a pre-school child needs a parent around.
It?s an undisputable fact that working mothers are a dedicated and valuable part of the workforce. So isn?t it time for unity? If there is any hope of breaking that glass ceiling for good, then working women should be supporting each other.
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