Also, it’s important to point out that women who’ve spent their lives focusing on their career- even after having children- may struggle with what “successful” means after being laid off. It’s one thing to decide to put your career on the backburner and choose to stay home with your kids, but it’s quite another to be laid off and forced into that situation. Their definition of success may differ from yours, but it doesn’t make either definition more or less valid.

Sadly as a woman who worked hard in the 1970s to get pay equity and gender equality, it has to be admitted that the movement has not yet come full way. It has stalled at the half way point, and predictably one that still prefers male roles. Now it allows women to do these roles outside the home and that’s a liberation of sorts, but now it forces women outside the home which is a bad thing. It still says women’s care roles of the young, sick, handicapped, elderly or dying don’t matter. It still insults all traditional female roles as useless, selfish, lazy, unemployed, unproductive in the economy, hobbies and not using skills. All of those assumptions are wrong, and are very big insults to the women’s rights movement.
I was home for many years though a gold medallist at university – and the reason was because I was passionately convinced that my skills were best used to nurture my children. I taught them to crawl and walk and use a spoon and to read and do math and to share and take turns. I taught them my moral code and how to discuss opinions calmly and I gave them the security of my presence 24-7 on call as needed, to anchor them in life. I answered their gazillion questions and gave them the science exposure with museums and zoos and libraries that opened up their world. As a ’stay at home’ mom I was out with the kids twice every single day on learning outings. I found that this role used all my skills academically and all my patience. I don’t feel superior to mothers who choose differently for they try to find caregivers who match their values . But it is completely unfair to have them judge me. I am now back in the paid labor force and feel women’s real liberation is to be funded either way, to have money flow with the child, to have our care roles valued in our words and in our tax policy and in our pensions.

Although it is true that I lacked mentors and female colleagues, I feel that the rampant outsourcing and allowing visas in professions that were in decline (namely after the dot-com crash) in recent years has reduced working conditions locally. I had my salary halve in a short number of years and the opportunities available are far less glamorous. Personally, I don’t want to work nights and weekends so that pretty much eliminates all opportunities that I’m qualified for. I was laid off nine months ago and have started my own company that allows me to work flexible hours from home, and I’m much happier for it.