At Mamamia, every day is International Women’s Day. But this year, we’re celebrating March 8 by sharing stories from some of Australia’s most influential women. You can find all our International Women’s Day stories on our hub page.
I came back from the holiday break at the beginning of this year feeling excited – but there was a time, 13 or 14 years ago, when I was sh*tting myself at the idea of going back to work.
I used to say that I started the Mamamia in my kitchen following the most god-awful job of my life.
But looking back, like every other woman who starts their own business, I think that the seeds for the idea were planted way before I actually took the leap. You see, for years leading up to this point, I’d been thinking about how magazines weren’t meeting the needs of women anymore and how the future for women’s media was going to be online.
So a few months prior to walking out of that big swinging door at the short-lived TV Exec phase of my career and away from many big swinging dicks at that god-awful job, I sat down at my kitchen bench, cut some letters out of a magazine to spell Mamamia and sent it to a friend of a friend who was a website designer.
I was 20 per cent exhilarated, 80 per cent terrified and 100 per cent full of self-doubt.
That’s a lot of percentages of feelings.
For a long time, I’d dreamed of being my own boss – having time freedom and location freedom over my work life. The dream, of course, was far, far away from my reality which involved the daily nightmare I came to think of as the Work Walk Of Shame.
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This is a thing. Having worked in HR for nearly 20 years the ‘work walk of shame’ is still a thing. I have also personally experienced this myself. It’s especially prevalent in male dominated industries. If someone is vocal about going to the gym on there lunch break or leaving the office to ‘train’ for a event is applauded. Yet, I’m off to pick up my kids is ‘not committed’.
This is why diversity and quotas are so important in organisations.
Yeah diversity quotas, because one thing a woman will never do is to judge another woman in the office.
I work in a medium sized business approx equal representation 48/52. Most of the men including myself didn’t care if the new hire was male or female, it would come down to if they were a contributor or a dead weight of which both genders contributed in both columns.
Then HR started social media campaigns and hyping up more women in the business, it raised some eyebrows from the men who were achieving in their roles, maybe an odd comment about how all we have is results, breasts are apparently what it’s all about now.
Then they started playing unapologetically outright favourites to, “encourage women to rise through the ranks”. Shortly after I started noticing some male high performers becoming more 9-5 and leaving with the parents at pickup time.
Then HR made celebrating Women’s Day a mandatory thing for the whole office and one of our consistently top performing sales people told a couple of us that he’s had it and has started reaching out to the competition, he’ll be on the market about 5 minutes given his record and reputation. He had to reschedule a critical prospect meeting to attend a woman’s day morning tea and is simply done with the PC rubbish coming out of HR.
There is a saying, “get woke, go broke”.
Today on "Things that Didn't Happen"
Name my industry?
Oh cry me a river. As a single woman with no kids I reserve the right to grizzle a little as you walk out at 5:30pm to work at your own pace (ie after tending to the family & household tasks) in the comfort of your own home. Fine. Leave. But be grateful you can go to the lifestyle *you've chosen* while we continue to work solidly until 7pm. And be grateful you have a husband who brings in money. Perhaps he could make sharing the load looking after his/your children a higher priority? The childless worker doesn't have a partner to share the load...and can't choose NOT to work late (they're EXPECTED to work late. No discussion). I've had jobs where work is dumped on my desk at 5pm and told it's urgent - required for a meeting the next morning.
The iunderlying issue here isn't whether you want to start your own business. It's horrible workplace cultures due to the terrible managers. If you don't have a partner to bring in money you can't leave...and usually til 7pm.
It’s a little like the smoker thing at work, smokers always ducking out for a durrie whilst others keep working.
Like that, it kind of depends how you look at it. As a parent, I’d be horrified if anyone got roughed for looking after their children. I had one case years ago when the owner had a go at me because the kid was in hospital. I just told him not to ask me to choose between my child or my job because there’s only one answer to that question. He quickly dropped it.
On the other side, I can see the point you are making as well. But unless you’re do some kind of communal, pool or group work, does it effect you directly? If it is team based work then you have a case to ask for more if you are in fact contributing more. If not, let it go, life’s not fair.