“Women who become working mothers are looked down upon”
Dismissed during her maternity leave, Thi Nhu An Pham publishes “The recovery” (Ed. Payot), an essay to alert on the sensitive period of the return to work.
“Shelved, forced to burn out or resign: the world of work can be very abusive towards women who become mothers when they resume work.” – Thi Nhu An Pham
DR
This article was written by the journalists of “Femina”. Find more articles on Femina.ch
In 2020, author and podcaster Thi Nhu An Pham was announced to be laid off during her maternity leave and she began her awareness of this period of vulnerability and inequality. In 2021, she launched the podcast “The recovery” to make heard the reality of the return – or not – to work after the birth of a child. In June 2023, her eponymous essay, The Recovery (Ed. Payot), was released on the taboo of the condition of women after their maternity leave. Interview.
Can you tell us what triggered your awareness?
Thi Nhu An Pham: I had two children and covers that were very different from each other. Let’s say that my first cover “passed”, without it being catastrophic. I didn’t have a place in a crèche at the time, but I was lucky that my spouse could take time off from his professional career to look after our child. For several months, I was able to rely on him to resume. When I resumed, it was weird, without me realizing at that time all the trouble I was in.
For my second recovery, I was fired during my maternity leave for economic reasons. It was incredibly violent, an explosion in my life. I was in a period of enormous fragility with my son who was born two months premature. From that moment, I opened my eyes to this subject.
That’s to say?
I was right in the middle of the existential questions that can arise during maternity and the question of the end of maternity leave: who am I today, now that I no longer have this job, how do I rebuild myself? All this vagueness led me to launch a podcast on the subject. I told myself that it was not possible that we were all going through these moments of trouble, this intensity of destabilization and that no one was talking about it. Why this confusion and these difficulties were not said?
Was giving a voice to women in your podcast a way of raising awareness on this subject?
Yes, to warn about this period which is fundamental, crucial for women but which we never talk about and which absolutely must be taken into account. I interviewed women, parents, experts, psychologists, lawyers and it felt good to be able to talk about it and hear others talk about it. From the first interview, I realized that I hadn’t realized all this before, it was like something both “normal” and weird.
For what «bizarre»?
It’s impalpable, it’s a kind of feeling of discomfort, of vagueness, I felt like I was floating on a cloud, I didn’t understand why. Before my first child, I had two fingers in the socket all the time, I was a real workaholic, and all of a sudden my colleagues didn’t understand the distance I was taking from work.
They expected to see the Thi Nhu An from before, the one who came home late, worked overtime and got involved in everything. I didn’t know how to position myself in relation to that and I kept it to myself. The same when I saw how my colleagues who were returning from maternity leave were treated, it seemed both weird and normal to me. I told myself that it was not fair, but I had integrated the fact that women who become working mothers are poorly considered.
Until then you were not aware of the discrimination that could exist?
There was a mirror and revealing effect when I started interviewing mothers. Put in the closet, pushed to burn out or resign: the world of work can be very abusive towards women who become mothers when they resume.
Some women only realized this when they confided in me. When I announced my second pregnancy, the promotion I had been told about before I became pregnant was postponed. At that time I did not understand that I was probably experiencing discrimination related to my maternity.
How to explain that this question is so non-subject to work?
There is both a world of work that has been built since the industrial revolution, a strong partition between professional and personal life, as if we were dividing people and we expected people to come to work as if they had no children. The Industrial Revolution sent men to work in factories and put women back into the home.
We inherited that, where presenteeism is king, where we can exploit the worker at all costs, regardless of whether he has a family or not, since we consider that everything related to home or parental stay at home. No other life, no other identity associated with workers. With a very gendered representation of roles within the family.
If women want to work, it is on them that the balance between work and family rests since we consider that it should be on their shoulders. We haven’t always considered things like that, but it’s at this point that we witness the emergence of the grandmother, the housewife…
And the silence that surrounds the difficulties encountered by those who would like to return to work?
Yes, in addition to this separation between professional life and private life, there is also the silence linked to the multiple contradictory injunctions that weigh on women and the fact that we deny and underestimate the difficulties they go through. . It’s: “Perform and shut up, be a mother and shut up, be happy and shut up”
From the moment you become a mother, you are considered a whole woman. The idea that motherhood would bring absolute happiness that everyone would envy us, so we just have to shut up, basically. And if we go back to work after having a child, it’s up to us to assume everything that goes with it. Silently.
Breaking this silence requires the empowerment of mothers, according to you. What do you mean?
First of all, it’s lifting the veil, giving mothers a voice, it allows them to become aware of what they are going through, to put words to pain, to questions. Representing mothers in their reality, their ambivalence vis-à-vis the recovery and the difficulties they encounter, it already allows women to feel less guilty, to realize that there is a systemic problem. Then, it is to let them know their rights, if they feel mistreated or discriminated against they will be able to decipher what is happening to them more easily.
What would be needed at the HR level for that to change?
Respect for the law and rights. A minimum that is not always respected or even known, sometimes. A voluntarist policy of support for maternity also which is to integrate this question into HR policies and into the evolution of the working climate for more benevolence towards parents in general. It is as much necessary to accompany the mothers in this period of transition that is the recovery, as to accompany the fathers who want to get involved.
Today, sexist remarks related to parenthood particularly target women who have become mothers, but also anyone who wants to get involved as a parent or co-parent. It would also be necessary to be more flexible on the return, so as not to be immediately in “overfuel” mode, with less presenteeism, teleworking, adapted schedules: everything that can lighten the daily life of parents during this intensive and energy-consuming period. .
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2023-07-08 09:06:40
#Maternity #employment #Women #working #mothers #poorly #regarded
