Effects of pregnancy, maternity leave

Maternity leave has some detrimental effects on the career of a woman. When a woman gets pregnant, she has to proceed for maternity leave not earlier than the 45th day and not later than the 21st day prior to the expected day of delivery.

After giving birth, she is entitled to 98 days of maternity leave. In some cases, after the woman resumes her work duties and starts working from the physical office space, she is entitled to one hour a day of breastfeeding. This thus means her normal working hours are reduced by an hour.

Although this improves the physical and mental well-being of both the mother and child, it affects the career advancement of the woman.

An example to help illustrate the above is of a woman who works for a company that performs appraisals and promotions after every six months. If the woman is pregnant, they will likely forfeit the promotion because they cannot accrue experience or technical skills whilst away from work, resulting in maternity leave halting their progress.

While this is happening, male counterparts would have advanced in their careers and this might help explain why it takes longer for women to be CEOs than men (lost working hours and missed promotions).

Generally, women are unlikely to be promoted or move into executive positions or get a pay raise after maternity leave is over. This has been proven to be true by a research that was done by BBC which they termed “Pregnant then screwed", where most women shared how pregnancy and maternity leave adversely affected their progress. However, some companies have designed a program known as "keep in touch" that is tailor made to support female employees on maternity leave, so that the competence and opportunity gap is reduced.

Female related health concerns

According to the World Endometriosis Society, endometriosis (severe periods) is a chronic condition that tends to affect one in 10 women during their prime working years. The women that suffer from this disease tend to lose about 15 hours per month of productivity at the workplace depending on the severity.

This thus increases their rate of absenteeism at work. This will make them less desirable for posts or positions that are demanding, making their male counterparts most desirable. Surprisingly, women that face this type of discrimination find it difficult to speak to their female bosses about it.

For instance, when I was doing my postgraduate studies (CTA), some of my female colleagues would miss classes or discussions due to "female related health concerns" and in other cases some would be affected by this during the examination period. Their productivity and efficiency were adversely affected compared to my male colleagues.

Balancing responsibility

The amount of sacrifices that women make in order to pursue their careers are vast. Most women are not just career people but have kids and spouses that depend on them. Due to societal pressures that endorse the role of women as just that of being housewives and caregivers, they are in constant dilemma to create a balance between career and family.

This becomes more difficult for women when they lack social support from their communities and have to carry the entire burden alone.

This brings us to one of the most important decisions that a woman has to make in her life, which is to either avoid marriage or marry a person who will be able to accept and support them in their drive to build a career.

When advancing your career, you will need a partner that is supportive and understands that one day you will need to travel outside the country for a board meeting, you will sometimes come home late, and there are moments when it is not the right time for you to get pregnant, etc.

Marrying the wrong person has always made it more difficult to balance responsibilities thus resulting in most women prioritising their family than their careers, in an attempt to avoid fights with their partners. I believe with the right partners, all women could excel both in their career and family goals.

Lack of mentors

Women generally lack support even at the lowest levels. Society finds it difficult to accept that a woman can be financially independent and be able to enjoy the finer things in life without having a man sponsoring it.

In most executive positions that women find themselves in, they are usually titled as the first woman to hold such a position. General talks are always of, for example, the first female CEO, the first female partner, and the first female COO. This means that they always lack female predecessors to learn from resulting in most women lacking the support system that fully recognises the challenges they face each day.

This makes the general business environment lonely for most women. Some women also struggle to ask or can be denied to get an opportunity for learning and seeking advice from other women on how they attained their success.

Confidence

Some women lack the confidence to make major decisions. This is toxic and perilous because women may end up operating from a place of fear instead of confidence. As a result, they will fail in business even when they were meant to succeed. According to research, most women "prepare and prepare and prepare" and need to be absolutely certain of things before making a decision.

This makes women less desirable for executive positions that demand one to take risky decisions sometimes with the absence of adequate preparation and incomplete information. This might be because the yard-stick used to measure women is different from the one used for men, and men will not be judged if they fail.

Women on the other hand carry a huge burden being perhaps the first female to hold the particular position, the pressure may impact their appetite for bold and risky decisions, because should things go south the gender issue will be brought about during analysis, though irrelevant.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the challenges faced by women towards career advancement are immense and the career disparity between men and women is not always caused by the above examined factors, some is attributed to women’s personal choice, some are not motivated to advance and some enjoy to be taken care of by their partners.

It would be interesting to carry forward this conversation and look at other factors that result in men being the preferred gender in career advancement than women. It would also be beneficial to look at strides that are being made in the workplace to fight gender inequality.

Please in our next edition, check out our next article where I made an analysis of how these problems can be tackled.

Chimhofu is an audit senior assistant at Deloitte and Touché, Harare. — nigelchimhofu@gmail. com or www.nigelalbert.co.zw.