‘Balancing Work & Family - A Challenge’
New Zealand High Commissioner to Fiji, Charlotte Darlow believed that balancing family and professional commitments was always a central challenge.
Ms Darlow said virtual meeting technology and the normalisation of flexible work practices had made a huge difference to women trying to sustain a professional career while also meeting the demands of family and caregiving roles.
“It governs how I structure my entire week. If I know that there is a particularly busy period at work, then I also know that I need to be extra organised at home to make sure that my children have everything they need while my work is under way,” she said.
“Learning to be flexible around last minute disruptions (e.g. school closures due to weather, school uniforms that didn’t make it into the weekend washing basket, or creating late night Book Day costumes) is a constant work on.”
She said she never thought about being a leader until she had her second child.
“I was only focused on doing each role I held to the best of my ability. Then a series of work leadership opportunities came my way, and I discovered
that I loved helping to shape and support a team to deliver great results,” she said.
“I also discovered that if you are the one in charge, you can create an environment for yourself and others that allows you to balance your life commitments alongside your job.”
Ms Darlow has had the privilege of
being New Zealand’s High Commissioner for the last year and a half. She said New Zealand’s High Commission in Fiji was an important global and regional hub for us.
“Our relationships here are some of New Zealand’s most significant in the world, and are built upon a deep set of historical and people to people connections,” she added.
She joined New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry from university and had done a wide variety of roles over the last 24 years.
“Alongside Fiji, this has included postings in Geneva and Canberra, as well as lengthy stints in New York,” she said.
“I have spent much of my career focusing on multilateral and regional issues, and have a particular interest in environmental and oceans issues.
“Fiji is an amazing place to be for my professional experience to come together with my personal passions.”
Inspiration
Ms Darlow said her mother was an inspiration.
“She was the first person in her family to attend university, and was one of a handful of women who studied medicine at New Zealand’s Otago University in the 1960s,” she said.
“At the time, the small female cohort in her class were told by one of their lecturers that they were “taking the place of a man” as the assumption was that they would get married, have children, and leave the medical profession.
“Many decades later, all of the women in that cohort remain engaged in the medical profession, while also having had children and fulfilling other family responsibilities.
“My mother is still working as a psychiatrist at the age of 76 and I am very proud of her and the glass ceilings that she pushed against in the late 1960s and early 1970s in New Zealand.”