Where to from here?

I'm changing tack here today to talk about something a little more serious than the usual decorating finds and baby things...

It's not often that I check Twitter anymore, I find I'm suffering from an overload of social media and something has to give. But last Friday I had a quick look through and came across this article in last week's Financial Mail by Andiswa Maqutu.

What prompted me to read it was the teaser about how women of the Millennium Generation are going to change the workplace faster than any of their predecessors, a topic that particularly interests me. But, I found I was disappointed in the story once I had finished reading it.

"Millennial women are more career-focused than their mums and delay having children into their 30s."

Being of the Millenial Generation (born between 1980 - 1995), I completed my postgraduate education and embarked on a great career which took me to amazing places and allowed me to enter into a management role at a multinational company in London. Yet, I still decided to have children before the age of 30 because, well, that was my decision. This does not mean that I am not 'career-focused'.

As many of my friends enter into the world of motherhood, some of whom had children before 30 or some after, some of whom have taken a few years off their professional careers, and some of whom have returned to work directly after their maternity leave period of 4 months, we are all finding out how very inflexible and quite frankly, inhospitable, the workplace is.

I know many extremely talented women, all with professional or post graduate qualifications and experience sitting at home or in coffee shops, or in dull mornings-only jobs. Their expertise and experience dormant, for the simple reason that it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find work that is flexible and meaningful, and allows you to fulfil your role of mom.

What we are looking for is stated in the FM article: "alternative employment models," something which sounds so very simple and yet is still very slow in coming to this country. However, the writer does make an encouraging point about women in the Millennium generation: "They are also output-driven and know that they don’t have to be seen in the workplace."

So now if we can only convince everyone else.