Half of childless women over 30 look at stay-at-home mothers and think it will be difficult for them to get back on the career ladder and a fifth believe they’ve lost their identity. Meanwhile 26% admit they are fearful of the effect motherhood would have on their career.
It is also possible that because mothers spend less time at work than non-mothers, mothers have smaller and less close internal networks. Specifically, women have cited the lack of a network of contacts as being a barrier to re-entering the workforce.
As per Kathy Caprino, Women’s work-life expert, career coach,
The Top 5 Reasons Women Are Miserable At Work:
- Struggling and failing to balance work and family
- Suffering from chronic financial distress
- Using skills and talents that aren’t “natural,” interesting or easy
- Feeling chronically undervalued and disrespected
- Experiencing no excitement, joy or positive meaning in their work
Top Reasons for Lack of Women in Leadership Positions
It is true that there are a number of pull factors that clearly influence women’s decisions to stop working like caring for children or elderly parents or moving because of a spouse’s job relocation. Apart from these pull factors, there are several push factors too like perceived lack of opportunity for advancement, discrimination, harassment, or disdain for the corporate culture. Role models are important because they inspire women to persevere by demonstrating that attaining certain levels of success is possible. Unfortunately, there are so few women at the top of organizations that female role models are hard to find.
Many women are uncomfortable working in organizations because they feel pressure to adopt behaviors that run counter to their values. Women have traditionally been taught a “care view” of morality that emphasizes solidarity, community, and caring about one’s special relationships. This “different voice” may cause women to experience conflict at work.
Labour Force Survey data show that 60 percent of mothers working part-time cluster into four occupational areas: ‘elementary administration and service’, ‘sales and customer service’, ‘caring personal service’ and ‘administrative’. In contrast, just three percent of mothers employed on a part-time basis are corporate managers (Tomlinson et al., 2009).
The majority were aged between 36 and 40 years of age and had at least one child under the age of 12. All switched to part-time working for maternity or childcare related reasons. The women’s decisions to work part-time were a result of multiple factors including their own ideas about active parenting and the demands of their own and often their partners’ careers.
Expectations of managerial careers typically require long hours, geographical mobility and networking after hours. Lewis (1997) refers to this pattern as the ‘male model of working’. Reasons for the reluctance by managers to recruit part-time managers stems from perceptions that senior jobs require full-time workers and that employing part-time workers would result in uncompleted tasks, an increased burden on those managers who worked full-time and a delay in decision making.
Findings and Implications for Coaches
An online survey of 100 women was conducted. Following is a summary of the Survey Results (What Returning Mothers want – Desired Job Characteristics).
1. Common transitions that working mothers go through: 74% of working women surveyed, reported they were settling into a new role / organization / business.
The implication for coaches: The niche of women in transitions, seems promising and worth specializing in.
2. Top most issue/s women are trying to address in their lives – 40% responded How to lead a less stressful and happier life followed by 35% who said it was How to earn more money.
The implication for coaches: It would help to prepare some assets / supporting materials / blog posts / workshops addressing these issues as women are more likely to respond to these topics.
3. Characteristics of their current/intended work life that women would not like to compromise on included (in order of priority)
a) Flexible structuring of work day depending on ability to work given personal situation,
b) Ability to take a varied level of responsibility as and when required,
c) Ability to take time off as and when required for as long as required
The implication for coaches: Coaches can support their clients in prioritizing which of these are more important to them than the others and help them in applying these criteria while choosing an alternate career.
4. Whether women would consider seeking some help to navigate through their current life stage:
31% were willing to but I don’t know whom to approach, 50% were tentative about it
The implication for coaches: There is a huge opportunity for coaches to create awareness about coaching amongst their target audience. This could be done via planned campaigns leveraging social media and even in conjunction with other coaches.
5. Awareness of coaching and how it can help women: 17% said it was new to them and the rest were aware of it or had been coached in the past.
The implication for coaches: While people seem aware of what coaching is, there is an obvious hesitation to reach out to a coach. Finding ways of making coaching easily available to people and perhaps creating a common repository of testimonials would help. Offering pro-bono coaching at a designated time of the year would be a great way of building trust and confidence amongst the target audience around coaching and its benefits.