Not yet, says financial coach Elizabeth Buko

From a young age, I was ambitious and optimistic that women could be fulfilled in every area of their life. Growing up with an absent father and a strong, determined mother, my vision had always been to be like my mum, who climbed the career ladder and ended up owning her own law firm. For a long time I felt like I could have it all, too.

After graduating from Loughborough University with a Masters in Chemical Engineering, I rose to the top of my field working for an oil and gas consultancy, got married and had two beautiful children.

However, shortly after the birth of my son, Niade, in 2017, my role was made redundant when the company restructured. I tried to apply for new jobs, but when I mentioned I had two young children, they offered me lesser roles that weren’t in line with my experience. This was even when I explained that we had adequate childcare. I can only assume that they felt because I had children, I wouldn’t be as committed.

At one point, I was earning more than my husband, who is a bank auditor, and so I found it hard to suddenly find myself financially dependent on him. I had been proud and fiercely determined when it came to my career and felt resentful that I’d inadvertently succumbed to societal expectations. Now, instead of doing a job I loved, I was breastfeeding, cooking, cleaning and maintaining a home. While I love my children and relished the time I spent with them as babies, I still wanted to go back to work. The way our situation was with my redundancy meant that my husband and I never discussed the possibility of him slowing down and me becoming the main breadwinner. Our roles were decided for us by circumstance, which I think is the case for many couples.

It’s frustrating to see how much further male excolleagues have got in their careers as a result. They’ve pushed for promotion after promotion and haven’t had to take time off to raise children. Plus, I was shocked to discover that a male colleague who left the company at the same time as me, earnt almost 30k more for doing a similar

role. I wasn’t shy; I had frequently asked for a pay rise, yet somehow, he had zoomed up the pay scale ladder and I’d been left behind.

I think, for all its joys and advantages, no one prepares you mentally for that feeling of losing yourself when you have children. It’s something most men don’t even consider, because they never experience it.

A year after Niade was born, I retrained as a financial coach and set up my own financial education company, called Wealth From Little. But as my husband’s salary is bigger, I tend to work around the children more, doing the school run and taking them to after-school activities. It’s almost expected that the children will run in when I’m on a work call, but if they do that to my husband, I can tell his colleagues wonder why his wife doesn’t keep them away. I’m not sure he would know how to deal with it either – when he’s working, his brain is solely focused on that.

I think that a key difference between the sexes is that women are conditioned from a very young age to think about multiple responsibilities at once, whereas men are much more compartmentalised. If they’re not seeing the empty coffee cups by the bed or dirty socks on the floor, they don’t worry about them. We also remember more of the little things, like dentist appointments and when the kids need new shoes, which adds to our mental load.

If the roles were reversed and my husband needed to juggle his career and home responsibilities, I think his career would take a hit. When I ask or remind him to do things, I often feel very guilty because I know he works hard to bring home a salary.

‘I WAS SHOCKED THAT A MALE COLLEAGUE EARNT 30K MORE’