WOMEN’S DAY NEEDS TO SHOW FEMALES AS VICTORS.. NOT VICTIMS
When the pay of people in their 20s is compared, no matter how it is measured, women are the higher earners.
An increase in the number of female CEOS is just around the corner, another positive fact ignored.
It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the number of girls going to university really took off, and with the job of a CEO requiring decades of experience, we will very soon see those women becoming the highest-ranking in their company.
At least they can be, if they want to – but they may wisely choose a happier work-life balance. Prioritising family often means we women shun jobs that take over our lives and that’s our choice. There are gender quotas in everything from politics to the arts, positive discrimination, equality legislation to ensure rights are observed and even scholarships awarded on the basis of biology. In today’s society, women do have choice. You can be the stay-at-home mum or the CEO or you could be Kim Kardashian, on the front cover of a magazine with an exploding bottle of champagne balanced on your naked derriere, if that’s what you wanted.
We still have a long way to go around issues of childcare. We need to make the office a more inclusive place for those trying to balance a career with children – it is often such a stress and mothers are so exhausted and wracked with guilt that a recent Irish survey showed 63% of us would choose to stay at home, if finances permitted.
Another helpful change would be to lift the societal expectation to be the “perfect mother” that is pushed so heavily in the media.
Maternal instinct plays a big role in this but less healthy is the fact 85% of Ireland’s 90,000 single parents are women, who have literally been left holding the baby, shouldering enormous financial and emotional responsibility. Dolores O’riordan
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