Women who take a break in their professional career to raise their children are often discriminated against. Not only does it seem that they had to apologize to half of humanity for doing so (beware, if they return to work after the corresponding sick leave, too), but at the moment in which they want to return to working life, that period is usually seen as a space of dead time , in which they have ceased to be people who know about a trade, to be “a simple mother”… as if having a baby did not bring you lessons that you can transfer perfectly to the workplace.
Women: penalized for being mothers, and more so during the pandemic
In Babies and More, a few years ago, we documented a case that appeared in all the media in the country due to the strangeness of the event: a father gave up his professional career to raise his children. It was on all the websites, social networks and even in the news. Have you ever seen the same when it has been a woman? Neither do I.
The numbers don’t lie: according to a study recently published by the Iseak Foundation, having a child decreases the probability of women living with a partner getting a job by 22%. However, for men, having a child does not have any impact on their employment situation.
You don’t have to go far back in time to verify this: according to Mariano Ruipérez, author of the report How much time do you have for your children? , “the results have confirmed, once again, that women continue to be the ones who dedicate the most time to care and housework , to the detriment of their professional development, a situation that has intensified during the pandemic”.
What can the experience as a mother bring to the workplace?
you are more productive
When I think of the times he said he had hours left in the day when he didn’t have children, I laugh. Never in my life did I think it was possible to optimize time as much as I do today – I would like to see many preparing dinner, attending to a little girl who is beginning to use scissors, to an older one who asks you Help with the verb to be and making purchases with your mobile, while you think about which course to sign up for to update your CV.
No, raising children is not a time out . You don’t stay hibernating and staring at the ceiling while watching time go by: it’s a vital experience that makes you mature more, that shows you facets that you didn’t know about yourself and above all, that brings out all the strength that you can have. . It may not be a master’s degree in innovation, but it gives you other tools that you didn’t have before.
You value more the opportunity to rejoin the world of work
When you have stopped to raise your children you know that re-enlisting can be difficult. That moment of your life is so decisive for you and can generate so many fears (and I am referring especially to the fear of rejection), that you want to prove -and prove to yourself- that you can do it and that you still do not have to end the list of professional achievements in your life.
That is the main reason why the person -or company- that gives you the opportunity to do so, can be sure that they have a higher than average level of commitment assured. Just as you have worked your ass off to undertake the biggest undertaking of your life and do it well, surely you will leave it to yourself recovering that part of your life that you had left parked.
you are more empathetic
People are not production machines. The greatest strength of a company falls on the people who make it up , and in many cases, a person who has been a mother (and especially in high ranks), can make a difference in the work environment and in the response from them. workers.
It is clear that the labor landscape becomes more complicated when we become mothers, not only when we make a break in our career, but also because of the simple fact of having to juggle to reconcile.
That is why I think it is necessary to make these types of issues visible, to stop normalizing that because of having a baby and the responsibility that this entails, your resume should go straight to the “discarded” pile, without even having the opportunity to be taken into account. Men and women must be together in this, because if motherhood or fatherhood penalizes us, do we have to end up choosing between being parents or being professionals?
In Babies and More | ‘It’s okay if…’: the viral post that seeks to alleviate the guilt of working mothers
Image | ArthurHidden
