“I recently had to attend a parent-teacher meeting at my daughter’s secondary school, conveniently organised for 2.00pm on a Monday afternoon. Preparing to slink out guiltily for two hours in the middle of my working day, I was relieved to receive an email from a male colleague, telling me that he would also be off that afternoon, as he had to take his daughter to the paediatrician’s. Similarly, a member of our Executive Committee was recently unable to chair a team meeting, as he was on childcare duty while his son’s day care centre was closed due to Covid-19 and his wife was working.
These are two small, but immensely refreshing examples of the way in which traditional male and female roles seem to be shifting, in Western Europe at least. Having juggled full-time work and motherhood for the last decade, I am used to being the one having to postpone meetings or rush out of the office at short notice when one of my daughters has a doctor’s appointment, or the school calls me to announce that they have a temperature. It turns out that my male colleagues are increasingly doing the same and it feels like progress.”
Extract from the article in English written by
Lucy Saint-Antonin, Head of Communications & Marketing at TLScontact