Motherhood Is Not An On-Off Switch

The role of mother does not abruptly end as soon as one picks up her briefcase because contrary to what some may think, you cannot swap one role for the other.

Apparently motherhood is a switch one can turn on and off depending on the situation. At least this is what a colleague I once worked with on a project thought about the role.

During one meeting, he so generously offered the following feedback: “I’d like to see less of a mother and more of a team-member.” He said this as he looked pointedly at my three-year-old, playing quietly next to me.

My daughter was with me as she had woken up with a cold and could not attend school, leaving me with little choice but to take her to work. It was the first time this had happened and she had not interrupted me even once despite feeling under the weather and despite her age and limited attention span.

I had always promptly delivered on my commitment to the project and not once blurred the lines between my roles as mother and consultant. Yet, the very fact that my child was present at the meeting was enough to somehow cast a few aspersions on my professional capabilities.

Having obviously believed he had somehow enriched my life with his comment, my colleague carried on sharing his expert opinion on mothers and how they should behave in the workforce.

According to him, professional women were liabilities because once they had children they were no longer exclusively work focused. Being single, childless and male had somehow led him to believe that he knew exactly what it was like to walk in my heels as a mother of two young children.

Thankfully it was a four-month project and I knew therefore that there was an end in sight to his unsolicited, and unfounded, counsel.

Juggling motherhood and corporate life

Yet, I also knew that as my career slowly resumed after years of primarily caring for my daughters, I would run into many others who would expect me to readily put down or at times, ignore altogether, my role as a mother as soon as I picked up my briefcase, as though one could simply be swapped for the other.

According to the latest data, only 54.1% of Malaysian women of working age are in the workforce; a figure considered one of the lowest in the Asean region in regard to female labour force participation.

Talent Corporation Malaysia (TalentCorp) chief executive officer, Shareen Shariza Abdul Ghani, was quoted as saying the trend amongst Malaysian women in their late 20s to early 30s leaving the workforce due to family commitments, was of significant concern.

Using the 2013 TalentCorp-ACCA Retaining Women in the Workforce survey as a reference, Shahreen said those giving up work did so mainly due to the lack of a work-life balance, wanting to raise a family and needing to care for a family member, adding that inflexible working arrangements and the lack of appropriate infrastructure were to blame.

She also added that unlike other Asian countries, Malaysian women generally failed to return to work altogether once they had left. The survey additionally found that 90% of female respondents on a career-break considered re-entering the workforce but that 63% found it difficult to do so and only 7% of employers had a childcare support facility policy in place.

A work environment hostile to mothers

TalentCorp’s snapshot of women in the workforce is hardly surprising considering that the Malaysian work environment has barely evolved to take into consideration the needs and commitments of its human capital outside of a professional capacity.

In the private sector, women are given between two and three months of paid maternity leave whilst paternity leave is still not common practice and when granted, is often a paltry sum.

My husband was granted a mere two days. After this short leave period, parents are expected to resume work and perform their professional duties in the exact same manner as they had prior to welcoming offspring into their lives. This is extremely unrealistic, often untenable and in the long run, highly detrimental to all stakeholders involved.

Consider the kind of workforce we stand to inherit in the future, if we do not allow the present workforce to adequately care for their young and provide access to a healthy work-life balance.

Children are not flexible entities to be customised and tailored to fit neatly into life and work. They can’t be thrust aside simply because one has deadlines to meet or late nights and weekends to work. Children fall sick, have unexpected accidents and require, especially during the early years of their lives, a high level of care and attention.

It is only natural therefore for priorities to shift a little after an individual assumes the mantle of parent. This does not necessarily translate into a reduced commitment to work or a lack of ability to perform a job. However the unfortunate reality is that women especially, are very often pressured and sometimes even penalised over their duties and responsibilities as mothers.

Options aplenty but no will to implement

Working from home and other flexible work set-ups such as job-sharing and part-time arrangements are virtually non-existent in Malaysia. Add to this the severe dearth in suitable child-care and after-school care options, as well as limited support systems, not to mention the long hours needed to commute between work and home.

Many quickly find themselves having to choose between family and careers. As the former increasingly becomes the preferred and often-times, necessary choice however, the Malaysian workforce continues to lose out on a large talent pool of highly qualified, extremely capable women who desire to keep their careers going but are simply unable to find a tenable way of doing so.

Should organisations wish to retain the female segment of their workforce or draw their women employees back into the fold once they are no longer engaged in caring for their families full-time, they must be prepared to re-evaluate their expectations and ensure that those expectations are formed in a holistic manner, taking both professional and personal needs into account.

Following the example of more developed countries that have maintained a healthy quotient of women in the workforce, appropriate on-site and off-site childcare options must be invested in so mothers can resume work, knowing their children are safe and well provided for.

Working from home should become a widely implemented practice, where it is possible, and offered to women so they are able to retain both their careers and caring for their young without having to forfeit one for the other.

It is time to make use of what is currently an untapped resource and recalibrate certain corporate expectations to welcome back into the workforce, the numerous highly capable and educated Malaysian women, who in exchange for a bit more support, can contribute greatly to this nation.

Gayatri Unsworth is an FMT columnist.

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