Pregnancy Impedes Women’s Careers

CareerOne initiated a new survey touching on the subject of family and career in women’s lives. It appears that working women are inclined to find family obligations obstructing their careers and interfering seriously with their promotion possibilities.

The survey encompassed 1,467 working women; two-thirds of them voiced their conviction that pregnancy would prove to be a serious hindrance to their career, and three-fourths of them were sure that raising a family would be hardly compatible with holding a senior position.

Those views were confirmed by Federal MP Bronwyn Bishop who participated in the CareerOne Women’s Forum. Ms Bishop (as quoted by the Daily Telegraph) stressed the fact that it’s much more difficult for working mothers to pursue a successful career.

“All the evidence I took in at that inquiry shows that once you have a child your career plateaus,” runs the conclusion she was forced to make.

The working woman’s colleagues will be regarding as an injustice in the long run that she has to get off to get the kids home at 5.30 pm, and it’s even worse if the child falls ill and she has to stay away from work while they have no such excuse.

So Bishop is ready to take a stand and make the public bear in mind the results of the inquiry until they get ingrained in the public attitude towards working mothers.

“One thing that desperately needs to be done is (to abolish) fringe benefit tax on childcare and there needs to be the ability to salary sacrifice or have tax deductibility for your childcare expenses,” she was quoted saying.

She is sure that ways must be found to enable women to combine childcare with work and the possibility to get on with their career.

Source of the image: sxc.hu/profile/glachucik.