The next Top Role Model Wanted. On the power of representation

You sit with your boss for your yearly review, to discuss your performance and the 'way forward' for your career. It goes well, business is doing just great, you feel appreciated and your future seems really bright. You are for some time in the role already so it is time to look for the next step. Only that you do not know what to say and you struggle a bit to form your concerns. Finally you gather the courage.

'Thank you for your appreciation. But I have one point of discomfort when it comes to my future, and my presence when it comes to that. Already now I am the only woman sitting in the room. I am surrounded by married men with home-stay wives. I cannot function the same way as them. I am a single mum, my life situation is different. You know that I will do my job well, but I need far more flexibility around working hours and an option to do some meetings remotely instead of traveling. Otherwise I really can't see myself moving forward and, to be frank, also staying in the current job.'

Your boss, who is actually a very decent man (married with a supporting wife) looks at you with all the compassion he can gather within, but the answer he has is rather astonishing.

'Well, you know, this is your life-style choice really, I cannot do much about it. Think about what you want to prioritize.'

So you have two choices:

1. Go home and tell your 2-year-old to pack his bags, as mummy goes to pursue her career.
2. Scream inside thinking 'why am I the only one who has to choose here', suck it up and work yourself to death doing both - mothering and official job.

That is a real story I came across talking to a friend of mine. Or rather 10 or 20 friends. If I had time to talk to more people, I would probably have heard it 100 times on repeat. The story about woman being lost in her career just because there's no option on the horizon that seems manageable within human power anymore. You hit the wall.

Since I started my career in the corporate world, I similarly struggled to find a point of reference in such development discussion. Usually, when you try to project yourself in x-years time the easiest way is to look up to some existing person being in the place you want to get to. I had a lot of women I would respect and admire around me, but by far I did not want to become like one of them or share their fate in the future. My mother, my grandmas, my aunties, my teachers, all hard working, all committed and dedicated to their families, all bullied around in their jobs and usually getting very little appreciation for what they did. That's the role-modeling that you get when you are born in a chauvinist country. You hear constantly not to talk back, to be modest, calm, obeying. Girls don't swear, girls don't compete, girls stay calm and smile.

The moment I started to work in bigger and smaller companies, most people I saw in the management were men. The women visible on the horizon had no families and would get unbearable amount of rumors behind their back about their 'life choices'. Slowly, within last 15 years of my professional work, there have been much more women coming to the power positions, but you rarely hear them sharing their stories. They often did not want their 'womenhood' to become a part of their career narrative, scared they would be accused of getting a preferential treatment.

So my life choices on the horizon were:

1. Focus on career, ditch the whole idea of family/relationship.
2. Go back and get reborn as a boy - that way I could finally open the option to have it all - career and family.
3. Forget self-development, get a man with a good job and settle with idea my needs are secondary to someone else's.
4. Try to start cracking by myself how to have both - family and career, since no one wants to practically talk on how they did it.

Here I have to admit that my mum failed to raise me like she wanted me to be and my stubborn character made me to focus on the option four. I simply could not understand why my gender should be the only factor that makes some things in life impossible. At times it seemed I am hitting a real wall. At times I would think I'm just simply going to burn myself with exhaustion - trying to juggle doctors, parents-teacher meetings, international work conferences, trainings and remembering my own meal. I felt I'm getting older than many women my age with much more peaceful life. I would be tired all the time. So I found myself living a life I did not want either. But it seemed a situation with no solution really - unless I settle for less. I would only hear that the problem is me and my ambition, not the rules the world seems to be working with. I seemed to be fighting those battles on my own. That I am the only one with such challenges, so I should not even speak up not to seem weak.

One time I walked into the office restroom and I heard someone crying in the cubical with a sound of the breast pump in the background. I waited for the lady to walk out. I knew her a bit, not very well, we never really worked together. I knew she had a baby fairly recently, but had to come back relatively fast (which she got quite some judgment for in the office). I put my courage together to speak up, though I felt how private this matter was.

'You seem overwhelmed' I said looking at her red eyes 'Why don't you work from home or ask for a breastfeeding break?'

'My boss is a man' she said. 'I would not even know where to start this conversation.'

'He is a human, isn't he? And he has a family from what I know, surely he would understand.'

She washed her face with cold water and patted it with the towel. She turned to me with a very determined look at her exhausted face.

'I don't wish for any special treatment. I'm gonna make it.'

It was like looking in the mirror.

It hit me back then that the situation will not change and we all will be 'sucking it up' and 'make it on our own' until we start speaking up about it. Speak up to one another. Share the stories. Speak up to the managers, to the HR departments.

Share the basics on what it means to be you and what it takes for your to perform at the top of your abilities at your job. It is not asking for charity. A modern company should have ability to adapt working conditions to enable individuals to show at work at their best.

Don't count on Sheryl Sandberg or Melinda Gates or couple of other women who 'made it' to fix it for you. There is still too few of them. Speak up and share your story. Be the role model you are looking for and create the example for more of women who struggle with the same. Believe me, we all do.

Stop sucking it up. Speak Up.