Tuesday 21 January 2014

Greener grass

I've been thinking about five women, of whom I am one, today.  We are all the same age.  We were all at the same university at the same time.  Different subjects, obviously, but broadly, you could say back then that we were similar, or at least had the same opportunities.  All of us went straight into further education or jobs on graduating.

Now, over fifteen years later, between us we have nine children and four husbands.

Two of us are employed full time. One of us is a full time mother.  One works part time, and one is trying to find a job where the interviewers will ask her about her skills (many) and experience (vast) rather than how she's going to manage picking her children up from school and cooking her husband's supper.
 One lives in a tiny village.  Two in small towns.  Two in cities.  

One of us was decorated in the New Year's Honours.

One, the only one I don't know personally (although some of the others do), is a FTSE100 chief executive.

Two of us have fish. One of us has a dog. 

One travels widely.  One hasn't had a holiday in over 18 months.

Some read, some knit.  Some sing, some go to the gym.  Three write blogs.  None has as much time for herself as she would like.

All of us, I suspect, have moments where we want some of what the others have. 

None of us has it all.

17 comments:

  1. One of those women.21 January 2014 at 22:01

    They offered it to me.

    And my husband can lump it.

    See you next week. xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woo hoo!!

      Have been getting v ranty about this (which is why I put it in although it wasn't directly relevant).

      A male friend here is interviewing for jobs at the mo. He has three children and a wife. I asked. They have NEVER been mentioned in interview.

      Delete
    2. I thought that part of your post was a joke. Please, please tell me that they didn't really ask someone how she was going to pick the children up from school and cook her husband's supper. Please….

      Delete
    3. The bit about the supper was a joke...

      Delete
  2. One of those women22 January 2014 at 17:08

    So I had the following questions in the space of one interview:

    - how have your priorities changed since you had children?
    - how long is your commute? (his was twice mine, I established)
    - what did being made redundant teach you?
    - what does your best friend do for a living? (huh?)
    - what does your husband do?
    - Its time consuming dealing with under 3s isn't it?

    When I had successfully parried most of these and given little away he resorted to telling me about *his* kids to try and draw me in and talk about mine. No luck, dude.

    Then I had another interview in which the interviewer said (no jokes) - 'its going to be impossible for you to meet deadlines when you have two children and live out of London'. Not even a question, and the HR lady was sitting next to him and didn't even blink.

    Fun and games.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am hopping up and down with *steam* coming out of my ears. I was 'offered' redundancy by my manager. I discovered he had 'offered' it to me, the only woman on the team, because I was a 'second' income earner and probably didn't want to be going to work, his words. He had no idea if my husband worked or not, how much he does or doesn't earn or whether any of the men on the team have high achieving wives. I'm the woman, I can go, and yes spot on, the female HR rep was there and never blinked.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ps I have a fish - I feel the need to share that!

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    2. Isn't there a twitter feed that talks about this sort of everyday sexism? Must find it...,

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    3. Pps we have fish too! Love the fish!

      Delete
  4. I want to be decorated in the New Years Honours... *stamps foot*

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love this post. Clever you x

    ReplyDelete
  6. I used to interview people for a living. I'm appalled at the questions.

    We used to have fish. Last one died recently after 11 years :-(

    ReplyDelete
  7. And speaking of questions...

    I have tagged you over at my blog. And could you also post a comment for me on your mate Carrot Crush's blog to say the same? I keep getting spam-filtered out, and there's no email address on her blog.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I never did it! Sorry sorry, rubbish me! Aargh!! Off to draft it now and post later. Although I'm not sure I know enough bloggers any more to pass it on.

      Delete

I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...