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? By the way, we were talking about one particular breakfast meeting that occurs once a month. The 60% women who want to work and have children need to begin negotiating a partnership with their men around the care of their children. They need to begin, what is, a "crucial conversation". How do you do that? See my next blog post.