Women at work, beyond the 9 to 5: The untold realities of working mothers’ lives.
Penny* has three boys aged four, two and nine months, so she’s taken three rounds pf parental leave in four years. Working in law has made it particularly challenging, as it’s an industry that doesn’t widely support flexibility and part time work – especially without it impacting your career trajectory.
The first part timer
Penny’s first parental leave starting during lockdown, in May 2020. Her work assumed she’d be back full time, then when she said she wanted part time they assumed it would be four days.
“I was the first person in that team to have gone on parental leave and then come back wanting part time. It was very incumbent on me to teach them about flexibility. I wasn’t offered anything, I had to ask for everything.”
The upside to COVID meant that with everyone working from home, Penny didn’t get pushback on remote work; not at all a common occurrence pre-lockdowns.
The pressures of outside-of-work work
Nine months after returning to work, Penny moved from a large firm to a boutique organisation, and said it was a great decision.
“One of the pressures of being a working parent is that you need to do everything well. You need to be excellent at your job, within part time constraints. You’ve also got to build great relationships with people. And that takes time away from your billable work as a lawyer.”
“Not only was the work not interesting enough, but it was a huge team. I can’t build relationships with all these people. I need to leave on time, I’m not sticking around for drinks, I can’t do long lunches. Joining a smaller team was part of the answer.”
In her new role, Penny thrived – still working three days a week. But her work as a contractor dried up, and three months pregnant with her third son, she found a new role.
When flexibility isn’t really flexibility
Her request for three days part time was knocked back, so she started her new job four days a week. I wish I could say it was a huge success, but alas…
“It started off so badly.”
Penny runs a support group for mothers with unplanned pregnancies on Tuesdays, so had requested from the recruiter that Tuesdays be her day off. That message was never passed along, and on her first Monday at her new role they said, ‘see you tomorrow’.
Explaining the misunderstanding, all Penny received was pushback. The whole-company meeting was on Tuesdays, and the message was, ‘If you care about the business, you’ll be at this Tuesday meeting’.
“There was no openness to exploring how that could be done differently. Instead, [the message] was, ‘You’re selfish, you’re in this for yourself, why don’t you see that you need to contribute to the team’. That was tension the whole time.”
“They asked, ‘How are you going to build trust with anyone?’, as if this was the one time you get to build trust with people.”
“It kind of blew my mind that we can’t change a meeting, but secondly that all of our trust building was happening at one time in the week where we have to be present.”
In Penny’s experience, plenty of businesses talk about remote working but don’t support it in practice.
“There’s a lack of insight in some businesses that actually want to see you on a chair, they want to look at you, and that really plays against carers.”
The ethics of job hunting while pregnant
Reflecting on her experience, Penny wonders how much of the issue was starting when she was already pregnant.
“It’s a conundrum. I knew I was pregnant and searching for work. If you don’t have work and you need to find work, what do you do?”
“Where I landed with it ethically, was I wanted to tell them before I signed the contract. I didn’t want to join a workplace that’s not supportive, but I also don’t want it to be the first thing they find out about me and then cut off the [opportunity].”
She also wanted to disclose before signing so she could gauge their response and enthusiasm. And she thought she got that assurance they were in it for the long term.
“Obviously that was not a sincere response. There was a whole lot of resentment that translated into trying to make my life difficult.”
After leaving, the recruiter told her that as soon as the company found out Penny was pregnant it was stacked against her. But as Penny says,
“This is why we have anti-discrimination laws! If I say that I’m pregnant, you might not interview me. But if don’t tell you that I’m pregnant, I exercise all of my rights and simply tell you until 8 weeks before I go on leave, that’s a really weird thing to do from a relationship point of view. I don’t give you the chance to be on that journey with me and get to know me at all.”
“It feels like all the decisions are fraught.”
Resetting who you are through parenthood
Penny found parental leave a period of resetting who she really is
“You’ve chosen to step away for a time from your work identity, had everything stripped back and been in a very hidden season of life.
“You don’t get to hide behind titles. Who am I without all the public things, without being patted on the back for hard work, without having something to strive for. It pushes you back into the state of who am I outside of just doing things.”
“It can be quite an identity forming time.”
“I’m less flappable, because I’m used to juggling a fair bit of chaos. I have more emotional intelligence.”
She, of course, had times that were isolating and overwhelming, and Pennys feels part of the global sisterhood in that. But she found it rewarding.
“That time away from work was very reflective for me and quite formative. I feel like I’ve made peace with solitude. I’m grateful for those times. My faith was a bit part of that.”
The lack of part-time opportunities
Companies benefit from working mothers too. In Penny’s words, we are ninjas in efficiency.
“You work your butt off on the days you’re there. I think if more businesses embraced that, we would see more good part time roles.”
Job hunting for ‘lawyer in Melbourne’, Penny came across more than 400 opportunities. When she added in part time, there were 14.
“You really get incredible value, because we work really hard on the days we’re there. There’s a fear of part time, and people are unwilling to admit it works really well.”
Penny shared an example of tedious administrative legal work that her company needed to hire for.
“It’s not a job anyone wants. The Managing Director said, ‘Oh we should target it at mums’. As if this kind of boring job is something that should be done by mums.”
“I’m not looking for an easy job. I want something that’s intellectually stimulating.”
But as Penny says, most mums don’t want to go to work and just park their brains for a few hours.
*Not her real name. Because of the stigma faced by working mothers, the motherhood penalty, and the fact that the state of women’s relationships directly affects the state of their lives and careers, the women in this series have chosen to remain anonymous.
If you would like to share your story, please send me a message!