For a certain generation of women, the sky was never the limit when it came to progressing up the career ladder.
With ambitious appetites, compromise and sacrifice were never words they thought they’d utter in pursuit of their careers.
For a time, women marched into various fields of commerce to work alongside men with supposed glass ceilings shattering all over town. But these women, who fought so long and so hard, now appear to be retreating from the boardroom, and not returning to full-time employment, when children come into play.
Whether this is a growing trend in the UK, time can only tell, but if we follow the ailing trajectory found by a research centre in the States, then women with children of a certain age, in full time employment, will fall even further.
I wanted to prove that you could be a great mum and have a great career. I've come to the conclusion – the sad conclusion – that it’s just not the case
M Urbain, founder of UrbanMummy.co.uk
For American mothers, full-time employment has grown even less appealing, a fall by 11% between 1997 and 2007, found the PEW centre. While it remains unclear whether the same trend will appear in the UK, we can be sure that a shift is occurring.
Redefining 'have it all'
Working women in the UK constitutes 13.6 million, of which half work part-time due to family commitments, according to the Office of National Statistic. A given sign that, for all the lip service paid to modern men and the ability of flexible working for both parents, child rearing and domestic issues still fall largely on the impetus of the female.
When the innate urge to raise a family puts a spanner in the works of career progression, women are finding new ways to ‘have it all’ – redefining a term they invented.
For some women, having it all meant returning to work after having children. For some it was a necessity, for others with the luxury of having the option to be stay-at-home mothers, it was a choice.
And yet, the growing demands of motherhood and family life have led many women to consider whether their old corporate jobs would be better traded in for businesses of their own, so they can call the shots.
So why do so many mothers see entrepreneurship as a route to dovetailing work and family? We talked to three businesswomen about what motivated them.
M.Urbain, mother of two and owner of a successful internet business supplying French gifts and luxurious finishing touches for children’s rooms, epitomises the ‘yummy mummy’. The urbanmummy.co.uk founder’s Middle Eastern looks and dark hair would not look out of place on a film set.
Prior to starting her business, Urbain had a successful career as head of international marketing for a large asset management company in Paris. She describes her motivations for turning her back on the corporate world and going it alone:
“The career was going very, very well when I was young and single, moving up and through the ranks,” she recalls. “I had all the advantages of working in finance – travelling, meeting people... it was fabulous!
“In 2003 I had my first son, and when I came back from maternity leave, suddenly everything had changed.”
