A HOME RUN FOR EQUALITY IN THE OFFICE
Juggling kids and work is easier with flexibility – and that’s worth celebrating on International Women’s Day
TOMORROW might be International Women’s Day, but I must admit that I decided to celebrate early this year.
Hey, it’s a woman’s right to choose.
And to be honest, by “celebrate’’ I don’t mean a party or an event or even sharing a glass of wine with a fellow female … I mean working.
But it was the way that I worked that I feel is cause for real celebration.
I had a big interview lined up this week with Gold Coast lawyer and mum Claire Gibbs, who just won a landmark High Court case.
That’s obviously awesome in itself, women kicking goals et cetera.
But beyond what Claire was saying, I was struck by how she was saying it. And where.
The two of us sat on my couch, in my living room, our in-depth interview interrupted by first my two children arriving home for school, then the dog stealing their leftover lunches out of their bags, then my husband arriving home from work, and then the Coles truck delivering our groceries.
I am not quite sure if we scored a point or an own-goal in the battle of work/life balance, but we sure had an interesting conversation.
To be clear, this is not how I would choose to structure my work or my home schedule. But geez I’m fortunate to have that flexibility.
And with Claire being a fellow mum, she completely understood – in fact it was our joint ridiculous schedules that led to this home office appointment … we simply could not find a suitable venue in a convenient location on such short notice.
As she pointed out, she would have happily met at her own home but with threeyear-old twins, she was concerned it could be a health and safety issue.
Carving out a career in the cracks between family obligations has never been easy, but I am sincerely hoping that this one simple incident is indicative of a wider change.
And hey, the fact that coronavirus could soon have us all locked in our lounge rooms working remotely could well be a shot in the arm for the cause.
Unfortunately, many industries still carry in-built barriers when it comes to women in the workplace. After all, the dynamic of working mothers was only really born at the same that I was – in the 1970s.
As such, there are so many ways that we still conduct our work lives that hark back to a time when families had one stay-at-home parent. It’s wonderful that women and men can continue their careers after kids, but that does not mean it’s not bloody hard.
And then there is the issue of in-office behaviour.
I have to admit I was really shocked to hear the results of a landmark report by Australia’s Human Rights Commission on Thursday, which shows that workplace sexual harassment is prevalent, pervasive and doing huge damage. And yet most people – mainly women – do not report it.
Releasing the results of the 18-month inquiry, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins described it as a “shocking reflection’’ of the gendered nature of workplace sexual harassment.