Hippolyta's blog: The Dark Ages

As a Mentor with WorkLife Central for the last three years, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring five smart, ambitious, caring, hard-working parents in a range of City occupations.  I do it as an unpaid volunteer, because I wish that I’d had support from WorkLife Central back in 1999 when, as an unmarried trainee barrister with a four-month-old, I returned to work full-time in order complete my professional training, still secretly breastfeeding my baby.  Stuck on a nursery waiting list, for a few months I depended on my early-retired father for childcare.  A senior woman, aiming to be helpful, directed, “You’ll have to get a nanny!” after which I also kept secret the fact that I’d chosen nursery care.  Eventually, I realised that in order to advance my career and avoid negative stereotypes, it was wise to keep secret in professional circles the fact that I was a mother at all, let alone a single mother.

Thank goodness times have changed!  Now, professional women like myself – and working fathers - are able to speak openly in the City environment about the fact that we are working parents.  Most reputable City businesses have serious plans in place to improve gender diversity at senior levels, to reduce the gender pay gap, to retain working parents of all genders in the workforce, and, in the most progressive organisations, to encourage flexible and agile working for everyone.

As the City moves away from its historic long-hours, late-night, macho, boozy past, into an era when working mothers are respected, paternity leave is accepted, technology is used to facilitate agile working, and businesses are alive to the commercial losses associated with losing trained, skilled working parents, I ask why our Parliament is stuck in the dark ages.  How can our lawmakers relate to the needs of modern working parents and businesses, when their own working practices remain archaic?

Why, in the digital age, does Parliament vote in a way which requires working parents to be physically present in the Commons late into the evening or even all night?  Why did a female MP who lives within commuting distance of Westminster tell me matter-of-factly that she only sees her children at weekends and recesses?  When an MP is expected to work hours which require either a stay-at-home partner or a full-time live-in nanny, doesn’t that exclude most “hard working families” from being MPs, including single parents?  In London, can you even afford a full-time live-in nanny on an MP’s salary? 

Every day, in the City, working parents perform responsible, skilled, highly-demanding, high-stress jobs, and make decisions worth millions of pounds about transactions, negotiations, litigation, and other people’s livelihoods, whilst still honouring their commitments and responsibilities to their families.  I think it’s time that Parliament opened its mind to listen to and learn from working parents and City businesses about how we want to live and work in the twenty-first century. 

Hippolyta – like most WorkLife Central – plays many roles including: Parliamentary Candidate for the Women’s Equality Party, Barrister, University Governor, Trustee, Lone Parent of Three, and WorkLife Central Mentor