The sound you just heard is an ugly can of worms being opened by UK Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman who has written a very honest, candid and rather extraordinary piece for the UK Daily Mail.
The short version is that she thinks, as an employer, that things have gone too far. The pendulum (in the UK at least) has swung too far in favour of working mothers at the expense of employers and other employees without kids.
After recent legislation in the UK that supports women (and men) wanting to negotiate more flexible hours, maternity leave, job sharing and part-time work, Shulman has come out on behalf of employers to say IT’S JUST TOO HARD to employ women and either they need to harden the fuck up and just get back to their normal full-time jobs after having babies or just stay home and be done with it.
She also says that forcing employers to accommodate the needs of working mothers and their desire to work shorter hours, less overtime etc will lead to fewer women of child-bearing age being employed.
Yowser.
Here is the longer version of her argument, in the form of some extracts from her controversial article:
“Nobody can legislate a route through the conflict between work and motherhood.
Nobody can predict the visceral love you feel for your children, the fear you have when they are small that when you are not physically there, they might come to harm.
Neither can laws help the sickening exhaustion of endless, sleepless nights combined with working days and the seeming impossibility of achieving success as a worker, a mother, a wife, even at times as a human being.
But while a slew of government policies are aimed at helping working women achieve a more satisfactory existence, are they not losing sight of the real workplace picture?
And are they ignoring the evidence, not documented but heard in the beat of the tom-toms if you listen hard enough, that some of this legislation might even be harming women’s chances of employment?
I completely understand the decision of any woman to give up their job to stay at home with their children. And it seems entirely reasonable that in many situations a woman who becomes a mother will want to trade in her role for something less demanding.
But what I don’t understand is the idea that you should be able to keep exactly the same job, with all the advantages that entails, and work less for it, regardless of how that affects the office or colleagues.”
Shulman goes on to talk about how her own mother (a journalist in the 50s) took 2 weeks off and and “had to pretend to her male employers that pregnancy was a bit like flu – inconvenient and not worth discussing.” She returned to work because she needed the money and enjoyed her job. Shulman wonders if we’ve gone too far in the other direction…
“Nowadays, the majority of pregnant women I know take close to a year off, during which they are entitled to statutory maternity pay for up to 39 weeks. They return with the expectation and right to have their old job back after 52 weeks.
Except that, when they do return, many of them don’t want exactly their old job back. They want the same role but moulded into a time frame that suits family life better. They want to investigate four-day weeks, flexitime, jobshares, and they often then have another baby and are entitled to take another year off. But is this realistic?
I met a woman last week who heads up a small company. ‘You’re not allowed to say it, but the reality is that the maternity situation is a nightmare. ‘Of course what happens is that the younger ones in the office step up to fill the gap – and,’ she whispered, ‘they’re cheaper.
‘At the end of a year, how much do I really need that person back?’
Successful fashion entrepreneur Anya Hindmarch, who has built her own business while bringing up five children, adds another dissident voice. ‘If we are not careful (and I speak as a mother and an employer), maternity leave and benefits will become too biased towards the mother and not considerate enough for the employer. In which case, it can start to work against women as it becomes too complicated and expensive to employ them. To me, it shouts of shooting ourselves in the foot.’
Alex Shulman -who, as Vogue Editor, has a 90% female staff – is herself a single mother with one son, aged 14, and mentions that she has a live-in nanny because it’s cheaper than a live-out one and her job requires that much help.
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Top Comments
i choose to work full time and put my daughter into childcare. I grow up in single parent family and my mum is always busy and on business trip, I grow up in different people's house and only get to see my mum around 1 month in total every year. it was hard for me to really communicate with my mum, but when i reached 14, things changed. when i need serious talk, about career, about art, about literature, travel, political issues, my mother could talk to me like friends, like, we are equal. because she travelled a lot, because she experienced a lot hardship and see people in different situation too. when i grow even older, when i started working, she understand every single ugly little secret that senior management would like to do, she understand financial market because she has been working in that field for more than 20 years as board people, she is not just a teacher but mentor. after retire from finance field she does a lot of humanitarian works, so on top of mentoring me through my day job, she could provide me much more guidance.
this is my case, i really enjoyed spending time with my mum, the experience, the calmness, the wisdom, the power to show you that what human could achieve, to give you strength and confidence. I would like to provide my daughter the same kind of support, the mental support, not just the lunchbox or nice clean clothes. i will show her by real example as to how strong human could be.
it is black or white case, but working, and really challenging yourself through the career ladder, give you more exposure to the world around you.
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