Do Mothers Care to Crucify their Careers?
posted Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
- Will care cost a promotion?
According to a recent findings by the ‘Australian Public Service Commission’ of female public servants who took maternity leave between 2000-01, 65 per cent, or 2 out of 3 mothers who returned to the same workplace were not given promotions, compared to only 42 per cent of women who had not had children in that period. So who is to blame? It may depend on what version of the story you read, and keep in mind, no participant mothers, or fathers, were quoted in any of the following three news stories.
Let’s take the first account from The Age. According to, so-called expert, Stephen Jones, from the Public Sector Union, it’s about making the right choices. He is quoted as saying, ‘If a woman, or father for that matter, makes a choice to take a backward step in their career (for a child) then it’s a matter of choice’. So does this view imply that parents, mothers in particular, are deliberately choosing to sabotage thier careers by having children and taking leave to care for them? Are they to blame? Mr Jones does go on to lay some blame on workplaces that lack flexible hours, quality part-time work and child care – and tut tuts the public service for not setting a better example – but sees little hope for change, especially if such a large, so-called ‘family friendly’ – public sector employer can’t manage to lead the way.
Let’s go onto story 2 from the International Herald Tribune, who chose to get expert advice from Gwen Gray, an Australian National University political scientist, and mother of 3. She is reported as saying ‘management clearly preferred to promote women who did not have family responsibilities’. So here she lays the blame of non-promotion for mothers on workplace management (and the underlying ideologies I would assume). So here it is suggested the choice to be promoted comes from management, not mothers.
However in this same article, a second expert, Marie Coleman, former senior public servant and spokeswoman from NFAW (National Foundation for Australian Women) is ‘reported’ as saying, ‘mothers’ careers suffered in Australia because most chose to return to work part time. (Again this issue of choice). Do mothers really choose part-time work, or is it the only option viable to achieving some balance? Marie goes on to explain that few senior positions are available on a part-time basis. Why not? Whose fault is that? The third expert, Anna McPhee, director of the government’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, is quoted as saying, ‘Certainly women with children are subject to greater levels of discrimination and barriers to their advancement’. – but surely no mother would choose such treatment, would she? Then Anna finds her target, ‘There is an old-fashioned view of what is work and what is an ideal worker, and that is a full-time male’.
The third story is not shy about apportioning blame with it’s headline Proof Mothehood Kills Careers. After digesting that title, I felt little appetite left to deconstruct it, especially after reading some of ‘choice’ comments written in response to this news article.
Big Deal! Where’s the news? It’s about time women forget what they read in Cleo and Cosmo magazines, and realise that life is about choices. You CAN’T have everything like the mags say you can. IF you choose not to have kids, work hard and study hard, you’ll get ahead in your career. Choose to have kids, then you have to make other sacrifices. Deal with it. Posted by: Dazza of Perth 2:30pm August 19, 2008
So what are your reactions to these news stories? Do you think mothers returning from maternity leave are just as deserving of promotions as others? Do you feel mothers have much choice in their career decisions? What about fathers, how do they factor into this debate? What about workplace culture? Who is really to blame for these findings?…
Sorry, this is off topic but I’m in a bit of a rush. Saw a note on Blue Milk that you need data. Happy to contribute if you’ll tell me precisely what and where (like I said, time crush).
Rachel Cervantes (Bloggername)
Rachel Cervantes said this on August 21st, 2008 at 9:29 am
This choice argument is ridiculous. Certainly, all life is about choices and priorities. But the reality is that women’s choices are more narrow, more regimented and more punished when they don’t conform.
My partner’s friend and his wife just had a daughter. The father is probably more involved than the average father; he prides himself on being involved and doting. But now the baby is ten months old, the mother is preparing to go back to work, part time and working from home. The father has a job that requires him to travel every couple of weeks. And he can say, “I have to travel for my job.” And use other language that makes it seem like he has no choice. He WOULD be devoted to his daughter full time, but his hands are tied, you see.
If his wife were to go back to work full time and take a job that required travel, quite aside from various societal issues that condition her to make that a harder choice in the first place, anybody she talked to about it would never let her forget that it IS a choice. She wouldn’t get away with saying “I have to travel for my job” or “my hands are tied”. Many people would forcibly remind her that she could get another job, or cut her hours or whatever, but that the real issue is just that she’s not making her family a priority.
And yet, now it would seem that in a couple of years, when her career is dead-ended, people will say, “but you chose not to make your career a priority, you chose to have a child and cut your hours.”
So the issue isn’t choice, it isn’t picking priorities, it’s that the damn deck is stacked. Men can have families and they don’t have to feel torn. If they choose their careers, then they’re excellent career men, dedicated to making a good living for their families. Even though being career oriented doesn’t cost them much peace of mind because their partner has been put in the position where she either takes good care of the children or she pays for it in mother-shaming (so men can more easily trust that it’s all taken care of), they are lauded for tolerating the sacrifice of family time. If they take time off for their families, they are celebrated for being family men, with feminist values.
You simply will not see women being celebrated for making either choice. Nor even for choosing not to have children at all. There is simply no winning.
Megan said this on August 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The comment you quoted infuriates me! Doubly so because “Dazza” is gendered as a male name – so a Man ™ thinks it isn’t a “big deal” women can’t “have it all”? Has he had to make the ‘choice’ between parenthood and career? Not to mention his implication by laying “the choices” out side by side that motherhood is not something you have to work hard at, and that by default involves no study to be successful in. I’ve found the complete opposite to be true in my short time as a stay at home mother.
I don’t think blame can be wholly apportioned anywhere. The ideologies that support and create a workplace where parents and caretakers aren’t supported or valued as much as independent, single entities is society-wide. I’ve added to it by stepping out to spend time with my child, my partner adds to it by going to work to support our family, when I go back to work in a part-time pink-collar job as I likely will I will be again adding to it. But it feels too hard to try to buck the system. I don’t have the energy.
Nokomis said this on August 21st, 2008 at 4:31 pm
This choice issue really seems to be at the nub of the of work life balance/interconnectivity question. It seems, as Megan so eloguently points out, choice is a gendered issue. But it seems that without ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ choices, reconciling work and family is always going to be difficult for women and men.
I empathise with Nokomis’s comment that it takes a lot of energy to buck the system, especially if you are a tired parent, as most of us are….But I do know some parents out there who are doing their best to challenge the norms…dads who have pushed for part-time work, couples such as Amy and Marc Vachon who practice equally shared parenting, but there are still many who still go with the status quo
To Rachel Cervantes, please feel free to comment on any of the blog titles that resonate with your life…:)
aztec-rose said this on August 21st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
sorry Megan, I meant eloquent!
aztec-rose said this on August 21st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I think it probably is all about choice, and women have more of it. The incongruity comes with our usual assumption that choice is unmitigated good. Men don’t have much choice. If they want to exercise choice, it will be much harder than it is for a woman, but there is indeed a comfort and a protection in a lack of choice. There can be no blame for something you had no choice about it. The older I get, the more I feel the pressure of choice. Go shop at Aldi, it sums it all up. It is much easier and far less stressful to shop at Aldi, but when you come away, you always feel like you’ve missed out on something. And if you had no choice but to shop there, you also wouldn’t feel guilty about feeding your family their godawful tomato sauce. The price of freedom is choice.
Ariane said this on August 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
[...] Unearthed wonders where is all the discussion about raising feminist sons. WoLFi TaLEs unpacks the rhetoric of choice used in the reporting of a recent study on women in the public [...]
Down Under Feminist Carnival: September 08 Edition « blue milk said this on September 1st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
It does not say much for the Australian Public Service. I am a Federal public servant in Canada and, here the usual chronology is that the woman takes her maternal leave and then the man (if both are in the Public service) does his share. Thus the child gets the advantage of having time with both parents. It generally does not have an affect on either parents career besides the obvious delay caused by the time away, but that is strictly a logistical issue. If promotions are usually at the three year point for your work designation and you take 7 months maternal you end up getting promoted at 3y and 7m.
Canbadian Public Servant said this on May 14th, 2010 at 12:18 am
Sorry for the typo. Aztec- Rose you may want to change my pseudonym from “‘Canbadian’ Public Servant” to “Canadian Public Servant.”
Canbadian Public Servant said this on May 14th, 2010 at 12:25 am