I have a question

women in the workplace

If you're reading this, and you have children, do you work fewer hours per day or days per week than your partner? And if so, do you do that because you want to, or because you feel you've been forced to? I'm reading an article in the Independent this morning, which refers to Glassdoor survey results ...

The Big Message in The Big Short

dollar bill - office mum

I remember standing in Oasis with my sister in August 2008, looking at a shirt-dress that I really liked. I put it back on the rail. "There's a recession coming," I said to my sister. She had heard the same. We didn't take it too seriously though, how bad could it really be? A month ...

Girls Can Drive Trains Too

Duple girl - office mum

Playing Duplo trains with my three-year-old last week, we had a crisis. We couldn’t find the train driver. I picked up the girl who came with the set and put her in the driver’s seat. My little boy took her back out. “No, she is a girl – she can’t be the train driver. We ...

Why Are Straight Women Earning Less?

Office mum work family balance

"Maybe sexist dynamics within heterosexual couples cause straight women to slip down the earning scale. Lesbians will never view their career as second fiddle to a male partner’s because they don’t have male partners." I was reading a piece by Una Mullally in the Irish Times yesterday morning, and the above two lines stopped me. The article ...

The Holy Grail of Flexible Work

Working Mother - Office Mum

Babies and commuting and working and cooking and changing and feeding and trying - trying very hard to keep it all together. That's how it was for me in the early days - like for so many others - as a new mother trying to maintain a career. I vividly remember reading an article by Gaby ...

Office Mum stories – Eithne O’Brien

Eithne O

“I think a woman can do anything in the work place but they need strong support at home.  Too often the role of men isn’t considered enough” In this week’s interview, I speak to Eithne O’Brien who works as a Journalist with RTE producing and presenting reports for the flag-ship Current Affairs programme Prime Time. Married ...

Man wears same suit every day for a year – but sometimes a suit is just a suit

Office Mum: dresses

Have you read about Karl Stefanovic, the Australian TV presenter who wore the same suit every day for a year? He decided to do it to prove that men escape the kind of scrutiny to which women are routinely subjected. Co-host Lisa Wilkinson had given a speech last year about sexism, which prompted Stefanovic to try his social experiment. ...

Women CEOs more likely to be fired? Here we go again

Office Mum post: photo from The Devil Wears Prada

Women CEOs are more likely to be fired, according to a report by Alison Smith in the Financial Times*. Consultancy firm Strategy& carried out a study of 2,500 businesses over ten years, and found that two in five female CEOs had been fired, whereas only three in ten (27%) male CEOs had been let go during their tenure. The study ...

Office Mum stories – Laura Kenny

office mum interview  - photo of Laura Kenny

“I did start off a level above my husband when we were both working in the same company doing similar jobs. While I started off ahead, he moved much, much faster through the career ladder” In this week’s interview, I meet Laura Kenny, a working mother of two living in the sunny south-east. She writes the ...

Do women really need to act like men?

The Devil Wears Prada (image credit imdb)

There are many generalisations about the differences between men and women, and like most generalisations, they are sometimes valid - clichés don't get to be clichés without a good foundation in truth. This is particularly the case when it comes to the workplace, where the following assumptions are often made and are frequently true: Women are good at ...