We need to be assertive in negotiating with our men around the shared care of our children. It is a negotiation, not a fight. It is a conversation, but an important and crucial one if you both want a career and a family. So how do you start that conversation?

1. Chose an appropriate time to initiate this important conversation.

Timing is all important with these types of conversations. You both need to be relaxed and able to focus. You need to choose a time when you are unlikely to be interrupted. Sometimes it can be good to foreshadow the discussion by saying early in the week: "Over the week-end I'd like us to find some time when we can talk about how we can work together in sharing our work and the children." That way, it is not sprung on him.

2. Approach the discussion with a positive attitude.

Believe in what you are doing. Believe in yourself. Believe that the two of you can work this through and that the outcome will be good for everyone.

3. Be clear about your position.

I recently conducted a workshop for women on networking. One of the exercises we did was around evaluating our existing networking as to whether they met our goals. A number of the women had attended a particular breakfast meeting and found it helpful. As we discussed it quite a few women in the group said that, no matter how useful a breakfast meeting might be, they couldn't attend because they had children to organise. Their response was automatic. They did not even stop to think about whether it would be possible or how it could be organised. I asked if their men ever went to breakfast meetings. Many of them indicated that their men often did. Did their men ever stop home from a breakfast meeting they wanted to go to because they had children to organise? No, not really. Did they ever talk with the women about what they could do before they left to make things easier for her, e.g., making children's lunches? No, not really. So why do the men feel that they can go to breakfast meetings without considering what is going to happen to their children, and women can't?

A Philippino colleague contacted me recently about some of the work I was doing with work/family balance and women leaders, especially in regard to the issues that were raised in the March 2007 newsletter which celebrated International Women’s Day. She alerted me to the Grant Thornton International News Release of 8 March 2007 that indicated that 97% of businesses in the Philippines have women in senior management positions. In fact, the Philippines was the only country where women have parity with men in senior management roles. A number of other Asian countries are also at the top of the Grant Thornton list. The link to this news release is below.
http://www.internationalbusinessreport.com/main/index1.php?page=133&lang=&id=&country_id

If women are going to achieve balance in their lives and be able to have a career and a meaningful life outside of work, they will only achieve it with the good support around them, especially that of their partners. (I’m not even going to try and talk about those extraordinary superwomen called sole parents for whom my admiration has no bounds!) Many men are changing quite considerably around these issues. They are reassessing whether work is the be-all and end-all of everything. They have often learnt it the hard way after a relationship break-up because in the greatest majority of break-ups it is the woman who leaves. She leaves because her needs weren’t given sufficient weight in the relationship.

I have met and talked with so many of that 60% group of women who want to work and have a family who, after struggling to get balance, unilaterally make a decision to leave their jobs. This decision is often made on the spur of the moment in response to a crisis. For example, one of their children gets sick at school and needs to go home. They can't leave work. They phone their partner who also can't leave work. They can't get their mother, sister, auntie, cousin or the next door neighbour. They resign on the spot. Or the woman I met the other day, whose boss phoned her wanting her to come into work at short notice. Even while she explained that she had no child care organised, he continued to place pressure on her by stressing the urgency of his request. In order to extricate herself from that pressure and the competing demands, she resigned on the phone, on the spot. Obviously what she was experiencing in that moment was not a new feeling. She'd experienced it many times before. This situation was the one too many.

It's not just children's needs that make considerable demands on women. It's also the needs of ageing parents because it is women who are their major carers.