Not On Our Watch

Im angry, really really angry. Women all around me who I speak to daily are facing impossible choices when it comes to their kids and careers, they are whilst their man folk are not. 

I have 5/1/2/ hours a day to fit all my full time work in, to fit exercise in, do all the housework, food shop and be CEO of 2 businesses both in pivotal stages of growth requiring serious hustle and drive that enables me to pay for pretty much 50% of the house bills whilst apparently on paper being in equal partnership with my husband, outside those hours its on me to get 3 kids under 6 ready for nursery and school and out the door , which is like FBI hostage negotiating in english when the bad guys only speak chinese, its on me to do school pick up 2.55pm as no after school club options or childcare now, feed the midget mafia, take 5yr old to sports clubs various, do nursery pick up , more feeding and handle the to the face final death throws of witching hour, again on my own before husband may appear or may not if he has hockey training and then i just about manage to host instagram live business chats with needed wine at 9pm tuesdays, wednesdays and thursdays, although if i want to do tues and thurs then its on me to pay for a babysitter as husband has hockey, which - sidenote- he gets paid to do and we need that money for childcare to enable both of us to work, and there’s no way in hell 5yr old will leave me in peace, so i have to pay to be able to work those nights, makes total financial sense…. So here’s why im angry he gets 12 to 15 hours a day to only think about himself and i get 5/1/2 with all the home stuff included in that and supposedly we’re partners, supposedly there’s gender equality in the workplace ...bollox there is and that imbalance is more glaringly visible than ever before 

The system is rigged, totally and utterly rigged and all the last 6 months has shown on the gender equality front is just how fucking rigged it is

Am i angry with my husband, No, it’s not his fault that he’s been brought up in a patriarchal rigged system to assume that us women folk will have everything covered, from assuming that if a meeting is running late at 5pm it doesn’t matter as we will have it all covered back at home, to if nursery calls because a child has chicken pox that we will be the ones to drop our work to go and pick up child. BUT do i think that men need to step up and be angry with us, damn right i do because we can scream about it from the rooftops but until men turn around and say in meetings ‘i have to leave dead on 5pm’ or ‘ive got to go and collect a sick child’ or ‘i'm bringing a child to a meeting as not got any childcare’ or just simply 'i have to work from home today as childcare issues' , until that happens and men are prepared to feel vulnerable, feel awkward, override that fear of ‘oh its going to look bad on my job ‘ or ‘i wont be seen as being fully committed to the job’, until then workplace gender equality cannot happen , until we are equal on the home front it is almost impossible to be equal in the workplace for working mothers. 

In 2020 it still shouldn’t be a choice of career or motherhood but it is for a lot of women as the burden of home even more so in the covid world falls squarely on the woman's shoulders, the data backs this up. In a recent Shoosmiths survey mothers were 47% more likely to have permanently lost their jobs or resigned as a result of Covid and mothers in two parent households were doing, on average, a third of the uninterrupted paid-work hours of fathers.

I for one am beyond exhausted, frustrated and just really really angry. Not on our watch will i let a virus send women’s workplace rights that the women before me and women now are still fighting for back decades. 

Everything we are doing at sistr now is about helping all professional women affected by covid to get back on their feet, find work, find their voice, get a job and be part of a community which has their backs no matter the industry and no matter their position. So we are calling for sistr ambassadors , those women out there who want to help, to pay it forward and not let the hard graft they’ve put in over the past few decades go to waste and calling for sistrs as a whole to come and join us and not be on their own, to ask for help and just be part of a movement that says NOT ON OUR WATCH .

To the men who want to believe in equality step up, be proactive , be flexible as bosses and push the dads in your workplace into going home at 5, working from home when you dont ‘need’ them in the office, not penalising them, making them feel they can work in the same way working mothers do, because men your sistrs need you more than ever we cant change the narrative on our own so step up and step out of your comfort zones