This post was originally published as a guest post on Tales from the Hood. As it now no longer live, I thought it was worth putting it up here again.
I was reading a recent
post by J. at Tales From the Hood about “local” being an article of faith
in the Church of Aid, and it occurred to me that Gender is the
G-spot.
You know I'm right. You
just cannot (and certainly should not) have a document, meeting, program
or strategy that does not address gender. Depending on the place and
theme it can range from anything along the lines of combating FGM to
increased political representation and decision making. As aid
practitioners we are acutely aware of the pitfalls and structural biases
that leave women vulnerable to abuse and dependency. We ignore the local’s
arguments that link these forms of discrimination to culture or tradition, and
demand equality be treated as a basic human right.
So why is it we are failing
so miserably to achieve gender balance at home?
Some years ago, when the
goal of gender balance for UN staff was set for all the agencies, I was
working in a large UN agency myself. Very responsibly they hired a (female)
consultant to undertake some focus group discussion in order to discover
why it was so difficult to retain qualified women. I took part of the
young professionals discussions. The YPP was a group of staff selected through
an intense process for their management skills to be fast tracked within
the organization. For the most part they were in their mid twenties/ early
thirties and females. The group discussion, as might have been expected,
revolved around two things: motherhood and the difficulty of having men
follow a woman around, (which the UN career requires as there is constant
rotation between duty stations all over the world, much like a diplomatic
career).
I also took part of another mixed group with men and women
from different departments and ages. I remember a man in his forties talking
about how young staff would come to him for advice on how to advance their
career. His advice was to go to a difficult duty station. These are the
places were you get noticed, where you get fast tracked, and are mostly
non-family duty stations, so, he admitted, hard for a woman in her thirties who
is probably starting a family. His suggestion was to introduce the
possibility of extended 2-3 months missions to these places for women past
the recommend six month breastfeeding period so that they’d be in a
position to compete for these spots.
I was secretly a few weeks pregnant back then. There was
something about this proposal that just did not quite work in my head,
back then I didn’t understand what.
The consultant’s conclusion after weeks of intense study was that
the best way to ensure that women don’t fall off the career track was
to have their babies later on in their career, once they
were established. No mention of the fact that many (most) women would not
be able to conceive by then.
Fast forward a few months, I’m walking around the office with a big
belly when I find out that a job I am perfect for is up for grabs. I start
asking around and get positive reactions from the people involved. It’s really
interesting and a step in the right direction for me. After a few of these
positive informal talks I ask why this position is empty:
“The woman that used to chair this group went on maternity leave. She
was meant to return this month but has decided to quit instead”
As his last words echoed we looked at each other in silence. I am
wearing large overalls and am but a couple of months away from maternity leave
myself. It dawns on us that there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to get that
job. No one is going to say it, they are going to make me go through the steps
(written exam, panel interview…) but no matter how well I do we both know that
fight is lost. At the same time my husband is interviewing for a great job. The
fact that he is about to become a father is irrelevant.
Fast forward to the day I gave birth to my first born. I had been
preselected to be part of the first training for middle level management. I’m
not middle level management yet. I’m not even based in Africa which is where
the training will be placed. The mere fact they are considering me is a huge
pat in the back. As the phone interview to confirm my spot begins I warn her I
am in labour and might stay quiet during the contractions. It sounds extreme,
but it was the last day they could interview me, and I was determined. I knew
what being part of that group could mean for my career. She said:
“Go have your baby and call me back in a couple of weeks.”
I ended up doing the interview while breastfeeding and my mom holding
the phone. I got in but I never did it because, like the mother whose job I had
wanted, I decided to extend my leave.
Fast forward again towards the end of my extended leave. I get an email
from my old boss all excited that my name has been put forward for deputy
(second in command) for a small office in south America. I contact the office
and set a day for the interview. During this call I mention that although my
leave is indeed about to end, I am now 6months pregnant with my second child.
Silence. The interview is set. After a long struggle between my old and new
identities, I call back and cancel the interview. You can hear the relief in
their voices through the phone line. They thank me.
At the time I was based in Cambodia for my husband’s job. The one he got
when I was 7 months pregnant. After some months as a consultant for a UN agency
I am offered a fixed term position. My old career self is about to have a fit,
but the new mom side wins again, I turn it down. I never got another consulting
job from them again.
You might say this was a personal choice, that I didn’t have to turn
those jobs down, and you would be right. You would also be ignoring the fact
that I’m a psychologist and for a living I look after the wellbeing of children,
and that inevitably entails their family and, in particular, the mother for the
role she plays. How can anyone expect me to work all day to get the best
possible life situation for other people’s children, and not aim to get the
same for mine? We are talking about regrouping families in Africa and Asia, and
at the same time about ways to get the women away from their own children so that
their careers wont suffer.
I’m not saying stay at home is the only choice or even the best choice.
If it makes you a bad mother (which it would make me, trust me, I would go
insane), then it’s definitely not the right choice. Sometimes it’s not even a
choice. All I’m saying is that it is high time that we started looking at what
we preach and helping families (emphasis on family, not women) find the best
solution. This might mean flex-time, it might mean that some days you
work from home. It probably entails an obligatory paternal leave to level the playing
field. It might mean that each parent can take one day off a week so the
kids spend 4 days out 7 with at least one parent, as opposed to 2, (before you
laugh, this is common in Holland, so yeah, it’s doable, and in the private
sector too where it’s not about politics but about getting the job done).
I'm saying that what we are doing now is not working, it’s not good
enough, and as a consequence we are hardly in a position to go around preaching
to others what we haven’t managed to work out at home. I feel like we keep
trying to will the typewriter to be the best option, and frankly, the world has
changed, the tools and mechanisms we use to work have evolved and it’s high
time that we do too. We can do better. If we are looking at remote management
for unstable situations that might blow up, maybe we can consider introducing
these options for the benefit of our own staff and their families, and as we
know from all the research, the impact of this would benefit us all.
Personally, I believe that these changes would lead not only to happier
children and parents, but to more productive, creative and efficient aid
workers. Trust me, you’d be surprised how much a working mom can get done in
that ONE hour she gets between drop off and the TV repair guy.
Deep down we all know that if we could just find that humanitarian G-spot,
we’d all be much happier and better people.