Saturday 21st July
I was reading this week about the gorgeous and glamorous CEO of Yahoo who is seven months pregnant. She confidently asserts she will take two weeks off for the baby, and then will be running the business again fulltime, no probs.
She hasn’t – ahem – had the baby yet…
We will see!
I had coffee recently with a friend, and we discussed, not maternity leave, but sick leave, and the concept of “mental health days.” She thinks it is only people under 45 who take this sort of sick leave; those of us born in sterner times are much less inclined to take any sort of sick leave at all. A friend of hers has been working in the USA, and in the past 18 months she took 3 days sick leave, to care for her children, who were home from school with some ghastly affliction or another. At her performance review, her manager pointed out these three days, and said, “You seem to be taking quite a lot of leave, one way and the other. Is there a problem?” She was quite taken aback; three days would be considered to be a very moderate use of personal leave, in Australia.
It's great Yahoo have employed someone based on their merits, but 2 weeks?! of maternity leave?! I wonder how the baby feels about that ... I don't see how they can make this decision now ... it's symptomatic of our culture that so many people think we can catergorise time in such ways before a baby is born.
ReplyDeleteand as for the US, I hope it was the employer and not symptomatic of a societal issue?! Although if it was a corporate, male-dominated company, maybe it is par for the course, still, sadly, based on some recent studies
... mental health days ... I think they're necessary, but haven't ever done it (the guilts the guilts the guilts). My friend's employer did that - said everybody could have one day off a year, of their choosing, only had to ring up the night before, no questions asked ... and the amount of employers using sick leave actually went down ... that one day helped achieve a lot more, apparently :)
PS I really really liked the issues in this blog post, so much food for thought :)
Yahoo Mother was discussed on RN this week and two of my favourite points made were: She is exactly the sort of person who can and should (if she wants to) go back to work after 2 weeks because she has the money to employ a wonderful support team. And, women now have all these choices, why why why are we judging them when they make them? xoxo
ReplyDeleteKaty you are SO correct re this issue!
ReplyDeleteWell as a stay at home mother of 4, you're in a better position than most to have a strong opinion on this Katy. Good on you for being so non-judgemental.
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