26 MARCH 2017
BY STELLA, IS IT A MUMMY DAY?

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Our new blog series, Speakers’ Corner, gives a voice to anyone up against gender discrimination in their everyday lives. The first instalment is about the difficulties of flexible working, from Stella of the fantastic Is It A Mummy Day? blog.

NEGOTIATING THE MAZE OF FLEXIBLE WORKING 

Have you ever looked at your boss, sitting in their big boss chair, at their big boss desk and thought, ‘I could do that freakin’ job!’? The only thing is, they seem pretty comfortable in that big boss chair, with no intention of leaving it, getting pregnant, or dying any time soon. If they aren’t going anywhere that means you need to – so, you make some furtive phone calls, stick an imaginary meeting in your diary and go to see a recruiter. They seem quite interested and think they can help you take the next step to a better job.

However, there is an enormous elephant in the room. All of the jobs on their books are five days a week. You currently work a complicated arrangement of four days in the office one week, three in the office and one from home the next. You leave half an hour early every Tuesday because your mum, who looks after the kids on Tuesdays, has her Spanish For Beginners evening class at six and she needs to be on the bus by 5:45. But you can always come in early on Thursdays as your boyfriend doesn’t have to start until ten. Oh, and you always catch up on work once the children have gone to bed.

Your recruiter’s eyes glaze over; you lost her at the Spanish class. She smiles at you and tells you not to worry about that right now, and that you can start to negotiate once the employer falls in love with you as a candidate. She has no idea that, after getting back from maternity leave, it took you a whole six-month campaign of wheedling, manipulation and charm to get that day from home. And the Tuesday thing, well you just sort of started doing that because you had been there so long, and nobody seems to have noticed.

You come out of your meeting with the recruiter feeling deflated and defeated before you’ve even begun. You try to convince yourself that your job is actually fine, that you are fulfilled, and the fact that you can take your daughter to toddlers’ gymnastics every other Friday morning is satisfying enough. You don’t need to leave. Who are you kidding?

 

ATTITUDES AROUND FLEXIBLE WORKING MUCH BE CHANGED 

So many of us have been in a similar situation. So many of us have stayed in jobs which work for our families rather than ourselves. It’s exhausting, and sometimes just not possible, to negotiate the hours we want, and the thought of doing it with a new employer puts us off. So we hold back our move, and our careers, so we can see more of our children.

Yet both are equally important. Cheering on your daughter’s collapsing roly-polies at toddler gymnastics while enjoying a cup of tea with the other mums is just as important as having an interesting, well-respected job that you love. I don’t see why the two have to be mutually exclusive.

But it is hard to negotiate your way through this. I interviewed for a full-time job the other day, knowing that it would break my heart if they refused some arrangement of flexible hours. I didn’t mention it, though, as I was too anxious that they would see me as uncommitted, flaky or unfocused. In fact, they are a wonderful bunch of people and offered me flexible working without me having to raise it – and then, because I am such an idiot, and because my fear of looking uncommitted is so ingrained, I tried to talk them out of it. Luckily, they didn’t let me.

Clearly, there needs to be a massive shift in how part-time work is viewed and valued, and who is asking for it. Why aren’t there more groups of dads sitting in pubs and moaning about flexible working over bottles of prosecco? Why, after having discussed at great length whether the new nursery assistant can actually change nappies with those nails, and if Kate will ever get round to leaving Adam, aren’t they having long drunken conversations about whether they will ever find another job that offers them three and a half days a week?

This is where the fundamental shift needs to come. Flexible working needs to stop being mothers’ work and become parents’ work.  Both parents should be negotiating flexibility for family time, and crucially, mums have to let the dads step up to it. Only then will flexible working be the norm, and only then will we mothers feel able to walk into an interview, confidently set out required hours and then move swiftly on to the business of wowing the panel with our ability.

Read more from Amy, Stella and Kath on their Is It A Mummy Day? blog.

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ABOUT AUTHOR 

We are Amy, Stella and Kath. Three working mums whose kids ask the question 'is it a mummy day?' most days. Most days it's a juggling childcare/ mother's guilt/ work and general madness day, and we like to share!