Rather than seeing a pregnant woman as a problem to be managed,business needs to start seeing the advantages they bring to the workplaceWhen women become mothers one of their biggest fears is that they will lose themselves. Rather than seeing pregnancy and birth as a learning experience or a series of opportunities, women often feel they bear to prove that nothing has changed. That they’re still precisely the same person they were before having a child. For working women this leads to two scenarios: either new mothers rush to return to the workplace and back to their familiar corporate persona, or battling privately with how to bring their new mother self into the equation. Or they feel that they no longer fit,so they decide not to return.
For years businesses just accepted this as fact. But recently there has been a growing awareness that losing the talent you’ve cherry picked and nurtured is not a much way to manage, and not much for business. In my experience, and most managers want to do the proper thing and support new mothers but they’re so often paranoid about saying the mistaken thing that they say nothing at all or totally put their foot in it. From boardroom meetings to overheard tube conversations,the assumption is that when a woman falls pregnant her career rise is over. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com