It was his confidence that irritated me. The successful male journalist telling me – then a childless reporter in my late 20s – that it was obvious I would scale back my career goals after embarking on motherhood. “You’ll see,” he said, with a knowing smile. “You’ll change.” He was a father himself, so had the experience. But what we didn’t discuss was why parenthood had made no visible dent in his own career ambitions.
I was reminded of the conversation last week after coming across this great Twitter feed – @manwhohasitall – which highlights how ridiculous some of the language applied to women can be when it is flipped to describe men instead.
Like this: “I genuinely don’t have a problem with male politicians as long as they are able to represent everyone, and not just men or men’s issues.”
Or: “To all men with an opinion. Don’t be AFRAID to speak up. It’s okay to be a man and have an opinion. Some women even find it attractive.”
Then: “TODAY’S DEBATE: Is fatherhood the end for career men?”
And: “MEN! If you speak up in a meeting and want to be taken seriously, dress smart but not too smart, stay calm and avoid appearing too ambitious.”
This is an idea with plenty of potential: imagine applying it to your own experiences. I could perfect my own knowing smile as I warn junior male colleagues to expect a career nosedive after having kids. Or tweet about how I can’t concentrate on what a male MP is saying because of his tight shirt.
Speaking of parliament, what about an incident that Lisa Nandy told me about? The shadow energy secretary said a man hollered “knickers” at her when she sat down in the House of Commons chamber for the first time. In the @manwhohasitall world, she’d yell “underpants!” back.
Which would all be funny if it didn’t point to something deeply damaging for women’s lives. As Sam Smethers, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, put it: “It throws into stark relief the way men and women are different in the workplace.” She argued that language matters, acting to embed “unconscious bias” in workers. Which perhaps explains why so many large employers are now enrolling staff onto training that helps them better understand their underlying discriminatory views.
Catherine Taylor, head of diversity and inclusion at the Whitehall & Industry Group, told me that unconscious bias is prolific. Her charity, which shares learning between the public and private sector, has found that this bias is shaped by many factors, including race, education and, of course, gender. Typical attitudes about working mothers include the idea that they won’t put in the hours or be focused on the job.
Training helps people realise what their biases are (as everyone has them) in order to help consciously suppress them. Practical steps could be mixing up interview panels so that biases counteract each other, or taking gender or race off application forms.
The economist Vicky Pryce has argued for quotas at senior levels in companies, to provide role models for female workers and prevent men simply hiring in their own image. That would force companies to come up with better working practices to allow parents that Holy Grail of work-life balance, she told me. And Pryce argued biases weren’t always unconscious.
That can certainly be said of the male journalist who spoke to me years ago. His assumption – that women would always want to step back after motherhood – was totally conscious, and it is the type of attitude that could see women overlooked for promotions.
But what most frustrated me was that he framed the issue as being all about women. After all, there was some truth to what he said: motherhood did change me. I now have two boys with whom I want to spend as much time as possible and that has, inevitably, meant that something has had to give. In my case it was less the job (thanks in part to a fantastic female boss who has managed to nurture the careers of a number of women journalists) but more things like social life and sleep. Striking a work-life balance with children is hard. But we need to increasingly see this as a challenge for men as well as for women. I know that my husband is just as keen to keep focused on his job while carving out time for his family.
That is clearly not always the case. Many good friends have chosen to step back from their careers to be full-time mothers, with positive results. But I know plenty of others who have found themselves frustrated to see that it is their job chances that will take the biggest hit.
What we all want is a more level playing field from which parents take these decisions. That is why I was glad to see the Women’s Equality party launch its policy priorities last Tuesday with equal parenting high on the list. They want both parents to be offered six weeks off work on 90% pay – which would be a welcome step beyond the parental leave policy that currently exists.
Of course there are arguments that women need to take the time in the early months, but a radical shift like that would help embed the idea that difficult family choices are not just for mums. It might even chip away at the widespread pregnancy discrimination by making bosses view thirtysomething women a little less sceptically. Sophie Walker, the leader of WEP, said that @manwhohasitall was often parodying the well-meaning language of women’s magazines that do want to support mothers with “sisterly advice”. But, she said, it was important for those magazines not to perpetuate the idea that childcare is down to mothers nor to portray men as inept carers, “as if a husband or partner is another part of your life that needs to be managed”.
Part of addressing that has to be about changing everyone’s language, being careful – for example – not to group together policies relating to childcare or flexible working as “women’s issues”. Similarly we need to change some of the ways we describe dads looking after their own children. We’d never say a mum was “babysitting”, would we? And let’s purge the phrase “daddy daycare”. It’s called being a parent. The cultural change needed to make things like that Twitter feed unnecessary is huge – but it has to be just as much about men as women.
In 2012 Anne-Marie Slaughter penned a now famous article Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. She used the essay in the Atlantic to explain why she had left her high-powered job at the US State Department to return to her family. Three years on, Slaughter has now written a book, Unfinished Business, Women Men Work Family – claiming that her mind has changed somewhat. She makes a similar argument, that the work parents do to care for their families is just as important as what happens in the workplace. But this version of her argument has “men” in the title as well.
She claims that the lives of women have been transformed, but the lives of men much less so. “You can’t have half a revolution,” she said. She’s not wrong.
Anushka Asthana is senior political correspondent, Sky News
