Aussie Sexism Gives Work/Life Balance No Chance

How many times have you heard phrases like ‘the work/life balance’ and ‘having it all’ being bandied about the place? Too many to count, I’d hazard a guess. And they’re usually sneeringly uttered in the workplace, by people who aren’t remotely interested in your pursuit of either. Yep, that’s right, I’m talking about you lot up the back, swinging on your chairs and chewing gum: men.

Having recently returned to Australia from six years in Britain, I’m finding the inherent sexism (or do I mean out and out misogyny?) spewing forth from the mouths of Aussie men (and often women, too) and radiating from their smart/casual business suits all a bit of a culture shock.

And nowhere have I found this more apparent than at work. Well, apart from those other dearly-held, fine national institutions, the NRL and The Footy Show, obviously.

A couple of months ago, I went back to full-time work in an office. I’d had three years away from paid, recognised, officially respected ‘work’ and had stayed at home, looking after our baby son. That last bit might require some translation – when I say ’stayed at home looking after our baby son’, what I really mean is I worked harder than I ever had before without being paid for it, without receiving any praise when I did things correctly (not that that happened much, anyway) and never getting to chat with colleagues over the water cooler about last night’s telly. I never had time on my own on the bus or the train or the car for my commute to and from work and I never got to go for a ’swift one’ with workmates (read: lengthy after-work booze-up) after a particularly draining day – or, let’s be honest here, just because it was Thursday or Friday. Or Tuesday lunchtime, whatever.

I did, however, get maternity leave on full pay (heaps more than the minimum wage) for six months. After that, I received a reduced rate of pay and my old job would be kept open for me for a further six months. If I wanted/had to return to work after that, by law my company had to consider part-time options and be flexible about working hours.

But we were still in England and it was endlessly cold. And, as a result, depressing. I was an SAHM, fast losing what might once have been quite a GSOH. And I didn’t want to go back to my old job, I wanted to move on. I longed to come back to the sunshine, the easy-going, she’ll be right, no worries working life I remembered from my early 20s. So we left bleak, grey, dank London and headed for what we hoped would be warmer, sunnier, more family-friendly climes.

My husband got a company transfer and seamlessly started work immediately after we arrived in Adelaide. I got a job reasonably quickly after that (well, two months is comparatively quick these days, isn’t it?) which I was amazed at, having been out of the ‘real work’ loop for such a long time. But it soon became apparent that there would be few if any concessions for being a working parent.

I was to work five days a week, which meant that my son had to go to pre-school five days (and $400.00) a week. We lived over the other side of town to my office, which meant that if I got in on time, but had no lunch hour, I could leave an hour earlier than everyone else in order to pick my son up without being forced to pay the dollar-a-minute late fine the pre-school charged for late pick-ups.

My fellow workers weren’t happy about this – you could tell by the way their eyes darted to the time at the bottom right hand corner of their computer screens whenever I bade them farewell for the evening and bolted for the lift at the unseemly time of five o’clock every day.

I’d get up at 6am to herd my husband, child and self out of our house by 7am for the 30-minute walk to the nearest pre-school which had (hoo-bloody-ray) a space available for my son. From there, we’d tear ourselves away from our crying, clinging little boy to run for the bus, lest we be late for our respective work days which both began at 8:30am. On the dot, no excuses.

My husband’s hours were set in stone – he had to work till 6pm. So it was down to me to negotiate my hours with my new boss so that I could leave by five in order to pick up our kid in time. Negotiating my pay was a non-starter (he said everyone in the office was paid the same – but there was no way I could afford designer clothes like everyone else was sporting on my salary). As far as time went, he cancelled my lunch hour, so that I did the same hours as everyone else. Fair enough, I thought. But by the time I got to the pre-school, I was exhausted and cranky – and so was our boy. Our 30-minute walks home every evening turned into a living hell of tears and tantrums. And that was just me.

Something had to give. I know, I thought naively, I’ll ask work whether I can go part-time! If they say no to that, surely they’ll agree to working from home for, say, two days a week, like the woman who held this job before me, who also juggled work and a toddler, did. Technology being what it is these days, remote offices are all the rage – the future, in fact!

Unfortunately, my boss had other ideas. When I asked whether I could go part-time, I got a flat refusal. And the working from home? Ditto. With a chuckle thrown in to underline the preposterous nature of my request, he smiled stiffly and said it wasn’t fair on everyone else for someone to get ‘preferential treatment’ and ’special dispensation simply because you decided to have children.’

I was speechless. To cover the awkward silence, my boss then hit me with his best shot: ‘Of course, you can always resign if you feel that mothering is more important than work. It would probably be the best thing for all involved, come to think of it. You women can’t have it all, you know! That’s what your predecessor decided in the end. Of her own accord, I might add.’

Now I was aghast. I’d gone straight from thinking my boss would be flexible and at least entertain the notion of part-time or working from home – to being asked for my resignation! WTF?!

‘No, no, no – it’s fine,’ I managed to say eventually. I then mumbled something about it just being an idea, something to run up the flagpole to see if he’d salute and then kept my head down and scurried back to my chair to stare blankly at my computer screen for about ten whole minutes. And then I started to get angry.

This never would have happened in England! And if it did, I’d be well within my rights to march my boss straight into a tribunal for such inflexible behaviour – completely bypassing HR on the way.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s better over there than it is here – I can just hear the cries of ‘well if you don’t like it here, go back there, then!’ – and I’m not holding up Britain as a model of greatness, I’m really not. I am, however, saying that with regards to maternity leave, working mothers and fathers and chasing that elusive work/life balance, the UK’s definitely got a head start on us. Indeed, the UK seems to be light years ahead of Oz in terms of female workers’ rights.

Pity the weather/beaches/food are so crap over there.

My boss’s reaction spoke volumes about the Aussie attitude to workers in general – and definitely put me in no doubt as to what he thinks of me and my work. There is little or no respect for workers in this country – and certainly very little respect for working women in particular. And working mothers? Forget about it! This is immediately obvious when you consider that maternity leave is only coming into play here for women (or ‘primary carers’…um, basically that means women) who give birth after January the first, 2011. And that took years of heated debate to happen! Which means there’s no money for you if you go on maternity leave before your baby is born, and there’s no legal compunction for your employer to hold your job open for you. And all you get is the federal minimum wage (currently $543.78) for four and a half months (18 weeks). After that, at the time of writing this, you’re on your own, cash-wise – possibly everything-wise.

Ultimately, what it means, sadly, is that the ruling elite (the bosses and shareholders – both male and female) have no respect for 50% of their most valuable resource – women. And as far as respect or even interest in babies and kids (ie the future of this once-great land) goes, that’s negligible. At best.

But back to me for a bit.

We desperately need all the money we can get (outrageous debts and a sky-high cost of living have well and truly stuffed us up financially), so I feel as though I can’t give up this job – and there are no other jobs going in Adelaide in my field at all, anyway. I really don’t want to stop work entirely – despite my boss and the prevailing sexist attitude of the place, I really do enjoy my job – but at the same time, the situation really is untenable.

My work is suffering, my relationships with my husband and son are really suffering and this is in no way what we had in mind when we hopped on the 747 airbus at Heathrow nearly a year ago, now.

And to top it all off, I’m pregnant. Fifteen weeks, to be exact. Now what’s the bet I get the sack when I tell my boss the good news next week? Yeah. Talk about joy. I can hardly wait…