Working mums

The word 'juggling' is associated with working mothers a lot - juggling childcare and juggling work. It's also about juggling feelings - guilt, worry, inadequacy (at parenting and work). And fear that my childcare plans will come crashing down so that one day in October I will have to phone my boss and say, 'I can't come to work this week because there's no one to look after my daughter. Oh and I've run out of annual leave. Sorry 'bout that.'

Dedication to your job 

I like my job. I enjoy the things I do and I like my colleagues. Since I brought a child into the world, my attitude to my job hasn't really changed.

Recently a colleague asked me to do something five minutes after I should have left the office. It wasn't a big job. In pre-child-land I would have done it. Because if you're dedicated to your job, you're happy to stay a few minutes extra to make sure something gets done right.

But now it's not an option. I can't leave the office more than five minutes after my official finishing time. Not just this once, not ever. Not because we have a deadline or I'm giving a presentation in the morning. Not ever.

I have to get home to feed my child. She's hungry and tired and waiting for me. I have to go right now. She doesn't give a crap about doing a good job on my presentation. She just wants her mum to come home and do a good job at cooking her some fish fingers so she can do a good job of throwing them on the floor.

Guilt and worry

To the colleague who asks me to stay just a little late for something important, I say lots of sorries and a no, and leave, feeling guilty that I didn't do the job and guilty that I'm a few minutes late. It's non-stop guilt, this working mother thing. Guilt that sometimes I'm too tired from work to be a good mum, or guilt that I've been up half the night mothering so I'm too tired to do my job properly.

And I worry that I am away from my toddler for so many hours each day, that I won't be there for her when she falls over and hurts herself or when she's overtired, that when she tells her grandparents or the nursery staff "I want my mummy", that they will have to gently tell her that I will be back later. I worry that I don't play a big enough part in her development, that her care is too fragmented between her relatives and nursery. I worry that she will miss me, or worse, that I will be away so much that she will stop missing me.

I worry that my colleagues won't think I'm committed to my job because when it comes to these moments I choose child over work. But it's not even a choice. Come 5.30 there's no one else to look after her so I have to be there.

Being late

Often I'm late for work. But more often I'm surprised we get there at all. Toddlers don't have a concept of time. Explaining that they really have to put their boots on now because Mummy is going to be late for work and get in trouble with her boss is really ineffective (I do it at least once a week). Walking from the house to the car must be unassisted, stopping to look at twigs and feathers along the way. It's both beautiful and infuriating.

A child rushing to get to nursery on time. Photo by Casch52 via Flickr Creative Commons

Last week when my bundle of joy dragged her feet I hit on the brilliant idea of a race to the car, She sped off, tripped over her own feet and bled all over the pavement. Back to the house for cuddles, antiseptic, plasters and chocolate. Major punctuality and child safety fail.

People tell you to enjoy every moment, to treasure the times when they look amazed at a feather and watch it float to the ground. These people are not looking after a toddler and trying to hold a job down.

Forgetting work

I don't check my work emails from home anymore. If someone asks me to do something for work on a weekend, I'm very likely to forget.

It's not that I don't care. It's not even that I feel differently about my job since my daughter was born. But I'm on child-watch now, and toddlers constantly demand attention. I can't work from home when she's there, If I switch on my laptop and try to do an online grocery shop she'll be clambering on my lap within five minutes, trying to "help". Attempting work is useless.

Before I became a parent my friend, a solicitor, told me that the minute she walks out of the office door she switches into "mummy mode" forgetting all about case files and judges and checking that she has the baby wipes and knows what she's going to cook the kids for tea. I thought I'd never be like that - I could never switch off from my very interesting job so easily and think about such mundane things, but I'm exactly the same. I have to be, because I have to be there on time and the minute I'm there I need to make sure that my daughter is fed, cleaned and watered as she needs to be.

Sorry, but I have to go...

I'm making this working mother thing sound like a nightmare. It's not, it's pretty amazing in lots of ways: having independence, supporting your family financially, doing something rewarding that isn't changing nappies, not having to be 'mummy' all the time, and just having a career. There was never any question that I would go back to work when my daughter was born. I'm not cut out for stay at home parenting (I admire those who are), and I am committed to my job. But I'm more committed to the little girl who is waiting for me to get home.

Being a working mum is really hard, We are contributing to society, paying our taxes, carrying out a service to whichever industry we work in, and we are bringing up the next generation. Perhaps we should shout a little louder about this - to ourselves and our society. And stop apologising.

Gender inequality

By San Jose (map), Hayden120 (retouch),
 via Wikimedia Commons

I consider myself privileged to be a woman living in the UK. I had always considered myself one of the lucky ones, that having been born female I had the good fortune to live in a place where that wasn't too much of a problem.

33 better places to live

Today I discovered that actually there are 33 better places for women in the world, including all of our nearest neighbours.*

This is because the UK has been ranked 34th in the Gender Inequality Index, part of an annual development report published by the UN Development Programme.

This assesses countries based on three areas - reproductive health, empowerment (parliamentary representation and educational attainment) and the job market, to find out how equally or inequally women and men are treated in different countries. The report rates 148 countries (data isn't available in all countries of the world).

As you'd expect, developed countries come out at the top of the index, and the poorest come out at the bottom. Australia and Canada come in at spots 17 and 18. The US bombs in at 42.

Holding their heads up high

These are the countries with the most gender equality, according to the Gender Inequality Index:

Silvio Berlusconi, by Ricardo Stuckert/PR
(Agência Brasil), via Wikimedia Commons

1. The Netherlands

2. Sweden
3. and 4. (joint) Denmark and Switzerland
5. Norway

6. and 7. (joint) Finland and Germany

8. Slovenia

9. France

10. Iceland

11. Italy

12. Belgium

I was just going to give you the top ten, but then I noticed that Italy was ahead of the UK, and felt compelled to include this information. It means that the country that elected Bunga Bunga Berlusconi to be its Prime Minister, is ahead of us in terms of gender equality. That is pretty galling. 

Doing the walk of shame

These are the bottom 12 countries - those which ranked as having the least gender equality. There are few surprises - some of these are the worlds poorest countries, whilst others (spots 145 and 148) have notoriously bad human rights records. These are the places you don't want to go to be a woman.

136. Zambia
137. Cameroon
138. Côte d'Ivoire
139. and 140. (joint) Mauritania and Sierra Leone
141. Mali
142. Central African Republic
143. Liberia
144. Democratic Republic of the Congo
145. Saudi Arabia
146. Niger
147. Afghanistan
148. Yemen

What does it all mean?

I idly speculate that the UK does so spectacularly badly because we have relatively low representation of women in parliament, bringing us down in the 'empowerment' ranking, and our job market is still relatively unequal, partly due to the high costs of childcare, something which the countries above us have all pretty well sewn up, allowing women to go forth and be useful and productive members of society.

The fact that we come 34th doesn't mean that the UK is a bad place to live. But it does highlight that, as a relatively rich company, and a nation that considers ourselves to be progressive, we are lagging behind our nearest neighbours when it comes to equality between genders. It's time to try and keep up with the Johanneses.

*Except Ireland, which seems to be strangely absent from the report.

Is it cos we is thick?

This week's Guardian Women's Blog asked the question, 'why are there so few female maths professors in UK universities?' It reports that only 6% of UK maths professors are women.

This is, according to the blog, the worst gender imbalance of the university subjects. I don't know what the figures are for the sciences, but I'm guessing they're not far off.

At university I once attended my boyfriend's computer science lecture. A woman! In computer science (I think they were amazed both that a woman might come to one of the lectures, and also that one of their compatriots had managed to find one). Of course I didn't understand a word of it, I'm not bright enough.

Female professions

There are many industries which are heavily skewed towards one or the other gender. I work in the arts, which is much more heavily populated by women than men.

My previous job, for a support charity, was even more imbalanced. In our entire head office at one point we had just one man (he was, of course, the boss). And there are many more female than male teachers at all levels, but at primary male teachers are extremely rare.

My husband works in the computer games industry, in which the numbers of women are gradually increasing, but are still very low. He once told me that the word for 'woman' in their office was 'receptionist', another area of work that is dominated by women.

Here is a picture of two beautiful receptionists, as decorative as the flowers which seem to be quietly consuming one of them...

Evan Bench, Paris via Wikimedia Commons

Are we too stupid?

Here are some reasons why there might be so few women pursuing scientific study and careers:

1. We are not clever enough - we don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp the rigours of science
2. We don't want to - there is something in the female brain that predisposes us to the arts
3. Social conditioning - society makes us believe we are not suited to scientific studies
4. Intimidation - we might not want to take a university course or pursue a career in an area dominated by men

There are many more reasons why this might happen, and each of these could be broken into a proper argument, after all, what is 'clever'?. For the purpose of this blog, I am making wide generalisations. I am an ex-journalist.

Science v arts

Of course, no one really knows why it happens. I hope and believe that it is not our intellectual prowess  preventing us from pursuing maths and science after age 18. I suspect that it is partly social conditioning, but maybe not entirely.

Maybe there is something in the idea that women prefer more people-centred subjects - if you study an arts subject you will spend much of your time thinking about people. In the case of my subject, English literature, it is about understanding humanity and their stories. We grapple with difficult philosophical questions, which require rigorous academic thought and understanding, but these are essentially people-centred questions. That doesn't mean they are necessarily less complex.

Maths and science on the other hand, are much more abstract subjects. With the exception of biology, they have little connection to our personal, social and emotional stories.

Women - stay away from science!

All this is just speculation. I don't have a clue why, in an age of equal education and opportunity, there are so few women pursuing scientific careers. And even if we are just naturally inclined that way, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing these things.

Women represent 50% of the world's population, so to disqualify ourselves from the sciences would represent a massive loss of potentially brilliant researchers, professors, doctors and teachers, who could bring invaluable skills, experiences and a different gender perspective to these areas.

The gender imbalance, whyever it exists, is all the more reason to encourage girls and women that the sciences are a viable area of study and work for them, in which we have as much right and chance as men to succeed.