Experiences of career and family from a working mothers perspective
1. Professional Success: The desire for professional success does not stop when women become mothers. 2. Maternity Rights: The provision of maternity leave did not impact on the decision to have children but helped to make life easier. 3.Gender: Women were subtly directed towards female appropriate careers. 4. Empathy: Increased level of empathy was reported by all participants. There was a belief that this made them more well rounded bosses. 5. Love & Caring: The expectation was that the working mothers would also be responsible within the family for the majority of love and caring. It was reported that this was done instinctively. 6.Choice: The suggestion is that when children are small the women did not have a lot of choice and all choice they did make were difficult as either family or career suffered. As children grew up, the women felt more choice became available to them.
Central Statistics Office (CSO)
Since its establishment as a specialist national statistical agency in 1949 the CSO has pursued as its mandate 'the collection, compilation, extraction and dissemination for statistical purposes of information relating to economic, social and general activities and conditions in the State'.
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Changing Women's Lives: Child Care Policy in Ireland
Child care as a policy issue has been forced to the center of the national planning agenda in Ireland with the report of an expert working group on child care. As Ireland has broken into the ranks of wealthy Western economies, Irish women have joined the formal workforce in ever greater numbers, dramatically breaking the traditional ideology of women as childbearers and homemakers. However, women are now carrying the double burden of work that accompanies the lack of any state policy on child care. This article traces this recent history of the feminizing of the Irish workforce, amidst a fast-changing social context for family life, and the multiple problems confronting the expert working group of securing an adequate range of policies for the provision of child care in a country which has one of the lowest rates of formal state provision in the entire European Union.