'The truth is the only glass ceiling that exists today is created by women'

Interesting article on woman and our level of achievement in the workplace and how it affects/effects our home life.

By Maureen Rice

When I was pregnant with my first child 20 years ago, we all knew exactly what the glass ceiling was, who put it there, and how we - we being a new generation of ambitious young women determined to succeed at work on a level footing with men - were going to power our way right through it.
Two decades on, those certainties are all gone, and that kind of thinking sounds hopelessly outdated.

While more women - including 70 per cent of mothers - work than ever before, and we've had legislation to create equal pay, extended maternity leave and flexible working, hardly any of us are in the 'top jobs' we thought we'd have by now.

The figures are dismal. Only 9 per cent of directors in the UK's top 100 companies, 23 per cent of Civil Service top management and 20 per cent of MPs are women. Plainly, there are still barriers that hold women back.





But it's not the same glass ceiling I was looking up at all those years ago when I bought jackets to hide my baby bump, rushed back to work long before my paid maternity leave was up, and pretended that I was 'collecting my car from the garage' rather than admit to sneaking off to a primary school assembly.

Attitudes to women at work have changed beyond our wildest dreams since then.

When fund manager Nichola Pease spoke out last week to a Commons Select Committee to criticise British women's entitlement to a year of maternity leave plus flexible working, she undoubtedly shocked many working women.

'We've reached a point where we feel confused and conflicted about what we want from work'

Yet she was only saying what many managers and business owners of both sexes have been thinking for years.

'Women get everything they want,' complained one male boss of a marketing agency.
'They work for a couple of years, take a whole year off, insist on coming back part-time - and still complain that there are so few women in charge.'
Krystyna Nowack, a City headhunter, also approved of Pease's bombshell. 'This needed to be said - and it's great that a woman said it. If it had been a man, it would have been written off as chauvinism.'
The truth is that, these days, the barriers exist more in our own heads than in any old- school system of sexism. We've reached a point where we feel confused and conflicted about what we want from work.

In other words, it's women now who are constructing a glass ceiling above their own heads - because they want more from life than just the grind of a very senior position and the cripplingly long hours that go with it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1221818/The-truth-glass-ceiling-exists-today-created-women.html#ixzz0V4FCwsG9

Keep the Faith!
 
Until next time,
~E