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.
Negotiating Work/Life Balance : The Experience of Fathers and Mothers in Ireland
Working arrangements are still not sufficiently flexible to enable parents to manage their roles as workers and as carers and there remains a dearth of flexible working arrangements and work-life balance policies especially for fathers. This paper examines the degree of work/life balance among fathers, and mothers, employed in 5 major Irish organisations surveyed in 2002. It concentrates on the access to, and takes up of, flexible working time and leave arrangements by fathers and mothers and explores the impact of such arrangements on their careers and their attitudes towards work/life balance. Parents were asked about their actual and preferred childcare arrangements. The majority of fathers were able to rely upon the provision of care by the mother in their own home (an option that was available to only a small proportion of mothers). The paper concludes by discussing the kinds of work/life balance interventions/measures sought by fathers and mothers.
The gender wage gap
The actual gender wage disparity (which compares the wages of male and female workers with similar labor-force characteristics) is lower than the raw gender earnings gap.