International Women’s Day 2021 | Why the workplace has let me down

I write this on International Women’s Day 2021 and usually I never shy away from championing women and all that we have achieved and can represent. For years I felt part of this international movement and always relished the celebrations.

But this year I don’t feel very powerful. I feel let down, badly let down. I became a mum and lost my career and I struggle to understand what I spent my twenties doing? What was I working towards?

I’ll tell you what I was working towards, I knew I wanted a family in my thirties. I worked my butt off to achieve being in a £30,000 role by/in my thirtieth year, it’s a career goal that in my head I felt matched a right time to have children.

I achieved my career goal which felt amazing but as my post about leaving a job without a plan explains, I found myself under the ‘leadership’ of an appalling female manager and that job ended within three months.

Another role and another poor fit later ending in redundancy now meant I had wasted best part of a year achieving nothing… except having my self-confidence crushed, being unemployed, and I was now a few weeks into my first pregnancy.

It doesn’t always work out

This time in 2017, I wrote a post titled: Why it’s okay if things don’t work out right in your career and in life which was a reflection on things as I was coming to the end of my twenties. I wrote that failure, mistakes and wrong turns happen all the time and went on to discus some of my experiences and how I had learnt from them.

“Life never runs one course, decisions that do not go quite to plan so often actually turn out for the better on reflection, even if they seem like the world has ended at the time.”

But here I am four years later, International Women’s Day 2021, and I feel like my career has completely flopped. The pandemic is partly responsible but not entirely and while I know this will be another mere blip in my life, it feels pretty permanent.

In my last full-time role, I was offered the job on the spot at interview which has never happened before and it felt fantastic, particularly after a turbulent few months. All my years working hard to progress myself in my career in marketing seemed to have paid off.

But I knew that once I had to reveal my pregnancy a few weeks later on my first day, I had just put the final nail in my career coffin as I knew it, and I wasn’t wrong. After I came back from maternity leave, I spent a few weeks on furlough followed by a convenient department restructure that saw my role disappear.

Having it all

Women don’t become inept when we have children, we don’t suddenly become useless and only good enough for domestic chores in the home, nor should we be punished for this life choice. Having children becomes another string to our bow which, aimed correctly, can have powerful results. All we need and ask for in return, is a bit of flexibility at work so we can manage everything, not to be made redundant.

I was reminded yesterday about a post I wrote in October 2016 about what having it all means and here are some thoughts I had at the time –

“Let’s say that I decided to give up work for the duration of my thirties, returning at 40; regardless of whether I would enter back at the right level, I still would have 28 years to make a career for myself. So often we forget this.”

“I also kind of relish that regardless of the financial impact, all being well, when I do come to have a family, I can take a bit of a career break.”

I don’t have a problem with my working life adapting to suit my family, I always knew that I wanted to be there for my children and if that means doing something different for a while to ensure I can do playgroups, school runs etc. I will.

But I am sat here, almost six months unemployed since redundancy trying to pursue a freelance career and I am feeling really rubbish about a lot of things. Overnight it seems, I became a housewife.

I am frustrated and I can’t hide it. I just feel I worked so hard to then have it all begin to blow up in my face once I landed my £30,000 job. Having a crap manager and then being made redundant from a job I hated is one thing, but my current anger stems from feeling my current position is down to starting a family.

I adore being a mum, it’s one of the best (and hardest) things in my life but it’s not enough. I am more than a mum and a wife. I am capable of so much more: I have ideas, I am hard working, and I am ambitious. We all are.

International Women’s Day 2021: Why is the workplace letting mothers down?

To any organisations reading this, on International Women’s Day 2021 or otherwise, it is not enough to champion your female employees in your company communications if you’re not shouting about what you truly offer women.

The young bright graduate is an inspiring read but what are her career prospects with you, particularly when she announces she is pregnant, will she still be championed?

And the woman in HR who has become the first woman on your Board of Directors, her children have now grown up and she talks about the importance of organisations being flexible with good policies in place to support young families and attract talent. Do you offer that? Or was her early experience with other employers just down to luck?

A high-spec laptop, an on-site canteen, your birthday off and 25 days holiday is not enough. What are you offering as a maternity package? What are you truly offering female employees by way of training and development? How many female employees are mothers and how have you supported them?

My career in marketing has been built by gaining experience and then moving on to a new employer once I have been ready for progression because it hadn’t been offered to me internally. How are you going to entice me to your workplace and keep me?

I do get that children are a choice and not something open to every woman, but women have children. A wave of frustrated capable mothers, working any old job instead of a role that meets and pushes their strengths, is not going to do society or the economy any favours.

What are your thoughts? I would love to hear about some of your experiences.

Until next time x