“Floor five: Subway muggers, aggressive panhandlers, and book critics. Floor six: Right-wing extremists, serial killers, lawyers who appear on television. Floor seven: The media. Sorry, that floor is all filled up. Floor eight: Escaped war criminals, TV evangelists, and the NRA.”

Fans of Woody Allen films will recognise Harry Block (Deconstructing Harry) on his elevator descent into the bowels of hell to reclaim his true love from The Devil (a wicked Billy Crystal). A scene that always gives me a chuckle for its accuracy; even with the glaring omission of global rawk star charity spokespeople, baby manual writers, and Lucinda Creighton.

No matter how potentially inglorious, self-serving, or inherently corrupt certain most sectors are, the status of ‘career’ confers on its membership a quietly understood respect and immunity. “Wait a second! You can’t attack me for moving virtual money around the globe! It’s a career!”

There they go. Those determined folk armed with personal goals, attempting to scale the heights of potential and self-fulfilment, as the rest of us ‘checked-out’ women ‘choose’ to watch on in a supporting role. *needle screeches across record*

Call me a party pooper, but I’m finding all this leaning out, checking in business a tad tedious. Much like the inevitable direction of this post.

Some statements of the obvious:

• Of course certain jobs are more vital than others, and require specialist training and education. I read about it somewhere (think incubators, coffee grinding etc.)
• It’s unlikely everyone, given the opportunity, would have the required competencies/flair compatible for training in these roles. Some require a life-time of learning. A stark truth I learned when thrown out of NASA.
• The pursuit of personal potential, self-fulfillment, and some degree of job satisfaction is universal. Otherwise what is the point of living, or enduring school for all those years; particularly sacramental preparation.
• Ambition and drive aren’t dirty words, unless it’s the first day of the January sales.
• Women are under-represented in ‘traditionally’ male sectors, their absence keenly felt in the boardroom, and efforts to redress this are fair game. It’s all the rage.

I’m not talking about the priesthood here either (Floor six? OK, seven it is). Those chaps reside in the untouchable category of ‘vocation’, transcending all careers; puzzlingly overtaking saints serving curry chips to incoherent drunks at 3am, and the fairies who lovingly assemble Reese’s peanut cups. But that’s life, that’s what all the people say. Besides, women can’t sign-up unless they defect to the other side. And they must be chosen by God for that particular gig anyway.

Rumour has it he also chooses teachers, nurses, social workers, and community workers. And they’re mostly women. At least one of those groups is more flattered by the gift of poverty. The Big Man chose effective unions to come to the aid of the others. Other lesser spotted beatitudes: Blessed are the state vocations, for they shall inherent the airwaves. A few more bullet points:

• The national obsession with third level as the only proven pathway to a ‘career’ shows no sign of losing steam.
• Time was, careers were confined to medicine, teaching, law, some manly areas of engineering, medjia, the odd scientist, the Rose of Tralee, maybe one economist, the person who rang the Angelus bells on TV, the ESB, funeral director, minister of the eucharist, accountants, and an assortment of civil servants. It’s safe to say, they were a bit of a mixed ability group, too. And still are. Not unlike my own fellow lobotomists. Only last week, one of them removed an ear by mistake.
• Traditional areas of vocational training and on-the-job courses continue to be brought under the sphere of university influence and learning with the knock-on effect of raising entry criteria. We’re all about the National Framework these days. Which requires a proliferation of universities, and the slide of same in league tables. Remember when nurses didn’t require a degree; and corporate finance wasn’t the global bastard it is today. And 15 to One would be on after Sons and Daughters. Ah, they were the days.
• Credit should also be given to Benchmarking and the sterling work of unions for tripling the number of careers, and single-handedly sustaining the clip-board industry.
• That said, it’s unlikely there will ever be enough to go around everyone.
• Access to third level education remains inherently biased and discriminatory for reasons that don’t need to be spelled out here. Do they?

The last load:

• Large sections of mothers comprise the paid workforce. You might’ve read about it. They generously allowed the married ones back in after 1974. Thumbs up to Europe for the wrap on the knuckles for that. Although if you were a teacher, you received a special dispensation. And if you were from the Gaeltacht, ever further dispensation with a lowering of entry level requirements to the ‘profession’. Ahem.
• Middle class fathers and mothers are underrepresented in the paid service, retail, and caring sectors. These are propped up by low-paid women, and the least lucrative areas of work offering fewer opportunities for advancement, or fairness.
• ‘Choice’ of job or career is not a luxury available to many of them.

The mother on maternity leave from a ‘career’, and the mother  on maternity leave from a ‘job’, share the same aspirations for their children. And, in the main, dedicate themselves to improving their family’s circumstances by whatever means possible, striving to offer them secure futures laid out with opportunities for better lives than they had.

To attempt to crudely capture their efforts at achieving this through limiting one-liners around ‘choice’ and ‘leaning in’, or ‘checking out’, is symptomatic of the rise in creepy magazine-article friendly soundbites shaping a mainstream narrative that tears the rug out from under the complexities of every mother’s hopes and visions.

Bullshit, in short.

The latest phrases to box off a diversity of mothers by their assumed ‘choice’; judge their attitude to self-fulfilment, and the parking or pursuit of their potential. It implicitly filters the assessment of their job-worth through the contribution it makes to the world of work, not the actual world (two subtly but significantly different things conflated to further distort perceptions of the value of careers versus jobs, and partly why child-rearing/caring is excluded). It homogenises women, and their psychological bandwidth; and reduces the multiple determinants of women’s progression in the workplace, and by extension – life, down to a zippy strap-line on a book cover. Is this where we’re at? Oh go on then, insert some handwringing here.

All this without regard to the right of all mothers to compete for a career, or enter pathways to better education, and release their untapped potential.

At times, it’s impossible to interpret current discussions as anything other than being primarily concerned with safeguarding the careers of women already in possession of them. Consideration of the right to a work-career continuum that serves all mothers from every socio-economic background is drowned out by the premium attached to glass ceilings and boardroom pews. A career appears to be a predetermined right hinging on pre-existing conditions to access them. The preserve of a certain section of us.

Sean forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day. He hoped this wouldn’t affect his promotional prospects.

The stench of silence around inequality of access to the labour market and higher education amid feverish talk of ceilings and boardroom imbalances, contributes to maintaining the status quo. That’s not to suggest the latter shouldn’t be fought for. It’s just that those women whose potential and aspirations never get to leave the starting blocks don’t have access to the airwaves or the argument. So they depend on those who do to acknowledge them, at best. There are enough obstacles.That’s not an unreasonable request; it’s a responsibility, and surely middle class sensibilities can stretch to it. Except yours Sandberg, obviously.

Crude self-satisfying conclusion

Career or job. Yeah, whatever. Either one is a reliable measure of hard work, a sound work ethic, and efficient results. The value and effort required for one downplayed, the other colonised and re-packaged by go-getting corporate ambassadors to sell back to us an even more crude version of it.

No thanks. I’m choosing to check out of that one. I might even make a career out of it.

Happy Mothers Day.

*presses number 9 in the elevator*

From the usual rotation crop of controversial issues, it was the return of gender quotas for petri dish analysis last night on Prime Time. When I heard the topic advertised, I turned to my fella who was already wondering how he could delicately extricate himself from the room without making it too obvious. That’s what the bathroom in our house is for: a safe passageway from another debate on wimmin. Or rather my participation in the debate with comments audible to no-one other than myself. I made him wait to see if I was right in my predictions that the panel would likely comprise a fairly homogeneous group of women in terms of class, ethnicity, and success. Guess what? He went to the kitchen. I don’t always get it right.

The host was joined by two business women, one barrister, and a politician. Presumably they represented not just the divided views on the merits of quotas, or the savvy articulate Irish woman, but the broad interests and experiences of women in terms of the barriers encountered and the rounded view their respective positions as well as life experience affords them. So far, so run-of-the-mill.

Consideration was given to the need for interventionist gender quotas to re-boot the political system and encourage participation from women in politics and the board room. Those in favour (the politician and one business owner) cited the successes in Scandinavia and the political imperative to build a government reflective of the people it represents. Counter arguments from the other two panelists (the barrister and another business owner) challenged the assumed successes in Scandinavia, and pointed to the risk of undermining women by accelerating them into positions and systems for which they are not adequately experienced, and so on. All were unanimous in recognising the need for better childcare to create and sustain the family conditions necessary to help women overcome the barriers to participation in the boardroom and the ballot paper.

Like the elusive representative government that will unlikely exist in my life time, it would be impossible for a discussion panel to be wholly representative of the gender group being discussed. But at some point during the discussion, it was not unreasonable to expect someone to pick up on the mention of qualifications strewn throughout like conversational confetti. Ireland may have an impressive number of women with a third level qualification, but its record in supporting women in working class and low-income families into third level education is abysmal, and they are still heavily disadvantaged and excluded from getting on a rung on the ladder where the issues of childcare and family supports are the only issues that matter. If we’re serious about mobilising a diversity of women into the boardroom, then that must include commitment to paving their way into the higher education classroom, whether as young students or mature return learners. ‘Career’ and choice can’t be the preserve of those with letters already trailing their name.

Additionally, the near obsessional over-emphasis on those qualifications in Ireland as a benchmark for ability and experience further compounds the status quo for women on the margins, and for those whose qualifications have gone past their sell-by date through participation in the home. Talk of women’s qualifications speaking for themselves is all very laudable, but it is not representative of the reality of a vast majority of women. The higher educational and class biases within these debates often serves to erode the quality of them. And the neat equation of qualification equaling the right to – and the demand for – employment, with little value placed on education for its own sake is worryingly Tory.

In highlighting the risks of appointing women beyond their capability, the barrister panelist pointed to the new Arts Minister, Heather Humphries, as someone inexperienced who came into office on the back of preferential treatment based on apparent gender and geographical factors. And it shows. I couldn’t help but feel Humphries must have surely been hanging her head in defeat knowing that the only person present to defend her appointment was her colleague, Mary Mitchell O’Connor. An elected representative who proves that irrespective of quotas, the electorate are not to be trusted.

Perhaps Ivana Bacik was already booked last night, but given she has been driving legislation on gender quotas, her input would’ve been timely. Whether or not the audience agreed with her, at least she would’ve been relied on to broaden the discussion to highlight the need for other critical supports necessary for the participation of women in politics as well as childcare etc. Because politics is not the preserve of ballot seekers or political parties, it belongs to all citizens in common. Jump-starting women’s politicisation begins in schools, where politics and philosophy occupies minimal curriculum time, if at all. Another missed opportunity to cite the inarguable strides made in Scandinavia. Political reforms don’t happen in a vacuum. It is no accident that gender equality there is head and shoulders above its European neighbours. They have a systematic approach to citizen engagement with the inclusion of critical thinking from a young age upwards.  Building maturity takes investment and effort. Ireland lags embarrassingly behind on many fronts.

Pathways to politics no longer rely exclusively on higher education, though those in office have traditionally emerged from places of privilege. In drawing gasps at the mere suggestion of quotas, the amnesia concerning our long tradition of tinkering with democracy through political family dynasties never fails to amuse.  Perhaps it informs the resistance towards them from some.

Whatever one’s view on quotas, meaningful civic democratic politics are built from the ground up through effective consultation with women, open debate in which policies and issues concerning them are rigorously scrutinised and torn apart to flush out the range of competing views as diverse as women themselves. Add to this, community development programmes and empowering leadership opportunities that seek to inform and support the participation of women from all backgrounds in politics and ensure the labours of working class women undertaking critical work on the ground in their communities are converted into a place in public debate in the round. Women whose political labour is often invisible, unpaid but heavily depended on, or insecure, underpaid, and a form of employment in a sector subject to the most catastrophic funding cuts.  Severing commitment to grassroots political participation guarantees the further exclusion of swathes of women from having their voices heard and assuming their rightful place at the high table of decision-making. Whether that is as an elected representative, or not.

Gender quotas – always worthy of debate, but a more rounded discussion would be worthy of refraining from shouting at the TV for. There’s only so many times my fella can read the paper.

Twenty years ago as my twenties shifted into second gear, I gradually found myself the receptacle for sharp intakes of breath at the state of my finances. My eyebrows. My employment prospects. My singlehood. My doublehood. My hair. My ovaries. My leek and pasta bake.

“Make the Credit Union your friend”.

“Have you thought about waxing?”

“Don’t knock the Public Service”

“Have a bit of fun, you’re too young to think about settling down”

“You’re not serious about him, are ya?”

“What did you ask the hairdresser for? A Herman Monster cut?”

“Don’t leave it too late”

“You’ve loads of time”

“That is delicious”

I had only asked these people whether they wanted a cuppa tea. But life is never that straight forward.

Reading some of the commentary in the aftermath of the US corporate offer to keep female employee eggs on ice, one would be tempted to conclude otherwise.

Mechanisms for media commentary are generally set up in favour of polemics, so there was the predictable rush to panels with contributors enthusiastically for, or adamantly against, the proposal. Nothing wrong with this; every “much needed debate” needs a starting point. When I first heard the announcement, my first thought was “wankers” as I worked up an appetite for the ensuing discussion.

The problem with a much needed debate is that everyone tends to have their own terms of reference for what that should be. Inevitably, the dominant strains of consensus wrestled one another to present the “greatest disservice to women”. Given their vantage point, the loudest voices tended to come from those already with children.

There was much level-headed concern regarding the messages the ‘perk’ was sending out on the status of women in the workplace; the inadvertent pressure; the need for employer measures to combat inequality through more equitable parental leave, and corresponding work/life balance supports. Cogent arguments in favour of assisted conception were forwarded by women who “for various reasons” are not in a position to start a family. Insurance measures, however unreliable, are nothing to be sniffed at, or a rule of compliance.

Between the jigs and the reeling, the “various reasons” were neatly stacked up in the shape of a greasy pole for which women are deferring family life in order to have a crack at climbing. From what I could gather, the biggest disservice to women is the attempt to prop up the myth that their fertility is safe under the sphere of human intervention. Oh and women are not sufficiently supported to have children in their prime.

I don’t doubt these career-climbing compromisers exist. I rarely meet them, if ever. But then I don’t tend to move in corporate circles. Even so, most of my band of contemporaries would likely be considered relatively successful, somewhat driven, with a college education and some semblance of a career behind them. Or at least a failed one, or the slowly dying embers of a fantasy of one. Most of them broke, many bitter. All overworked regardless of ambition.

Women are wise to implore their peers to become attuned to their bodies and the sobering realities of decline in fertility, but is this really instructive? Do women not draw their own conclusions? And for how many are the warnings relevant? Far from exploring the “various reasons” women “delay” having a family, we’re given the “career” as a shorthand answer, with the idea of “delay” freighted with the assumption of choice.

Having starred down the barrel of childlessness in my late 30s along with many of my peers, I can’t help but feel the biggest disservice to women is buoying up the myth of the go-getting woman forever hedging her fertility bets, therefore masking the topsy-turvy complexities of her life in the prime of child-bearing years as it is actually lived. Formulae rarely apply.

Kate Spicer attempted to shine a light on this during the debate with Sarah Carey and Kathryn Thomas on Friday night’s Late Late Show. The main weaponry she had in her artillery was a quiet philosophical sense of regret, a succinct reference to the instability of modern relationships, and a pair of shrugged shoulders. These don’t make for raging debate, but they do define the silenced reality for many women who find themselves the receptacles for a great deal of warnings of which they are acutely aware.

Mainstream media is flooded with profiles of challenges to fertility and the personal journeys of couples on the turbulent road to IVF, adoption and so on. Rightly so; they’re important, they’re common. But there’s a distinct stench of silence around the legacy of childlessness pervading the lives of many women in their 40s who desired another outcome but didn’t get there for failure of a relationship. Or having their confidence or financial security pulled out from under them, and umpteen other unanticipated collisions along the firmament. The complexity of women’s lives doesn’t square with the narrow commentary of the go-getting careerist. It’s a pity so much of their experience is silent but where would the women start to articulate their loss, to whom, and how? Theirs is the quietest voice in the room. Add to this the number of women who sought abortions in their earlier years and a further dimension may potentially have relevance. Or not. We don’t know.

In an era when the realities of mental health awareness are no longer fresh, in a world where we’re heading towards one in four women being childless, with many more confronting that prospect, it’s not possible to reconcile women’s fertility with the threat of decline. Or the pros and cons of engineered conception. Or the introduction of more family friendly incentives. It demands another reality check and support of a different character. It’s a much needed debate.