Children bad for career, say working mothers

HAVING a baby is bad for your career - with one-in-three working mothers saying they are less likely to be promoted since having a child.

One-fifth of full-time working mothers have also been asked about family and childcare arrangements during performance reviews, Ireland’s first nationwide newspaper poll on childcare reveals.

The Irish Examiner/ Lansdowne Market Research poll found:

* more than half of women in Dublin believe that becoming a mother has damaged their career while in Munster, four out of 10 mothers strongly disagree that family life has slowed career progress.

* over half of pre-school children with full-time working parents only get to spend a maximum of four hours with a parent on a working day due to lengthy working days and time spent commuting.

* one-in-four pre-school children with full-time working parents spend just three hours with a parent.

* parents are spending over one hour and 15 minutes on the daily round trip to childcare, work and back again. Among parents of pre-school children, the average commute increases to one hour and 24 minutes.

The stark results highlight how many Irish working mothers believe they are at a disadvantage in the workplace compared with childless women and men. Just one in four women return to work full-time after the birth of their child with another quarter switching to part-time work.

Equality Authority chief executive Niall Crowley said employers were regularly flouting employment equality legislation. Complaints from women about discrimination in the workplace is the authority’s second most common complaint after racism.

“Performance reviews should be about a person’s capabilities and aspirations and not about their family situation. Employers need to accommodate the needs of employees with caring or family responsibilities, but to go beyond this in reviews, you run the risk of moving into the area of discrimination,” he said.

National Women’s Council head of policy Orla O’Connor said workplace cultures needed to change so that a working mother is not seen as less loyal to the workplace.

“Family-friendly workplaces need to be there for everyone, including men. We do hear anecdotally from a lot of women that they feel less likely to be promoted because they have responsibilities outside the workplace and often have to leave on the dot of finishing time. People must stop seeing working mothers as a negative thing in the workplace,” she said.

Meanwhile, IBEC’s Maria Cronin said 82% of workplaces have introduced some kind of flexible working for employees and that employers are “learning all the time” as they don’t want to lose valued, skilled staff.