Basia McDougall MPhil.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

employees or design effective policies (for example: Buzzanell and Lui, 2005). Another issuecommonly raised by women as a barrier to progression within an organisation, is the longhours working culture prevalent in the UK (Court, 1995). This not only restricts women’sprogress if they have family commitments but more importantly leads to a negativeperception of the woman if she does not join in and work the 40, 50 or 60+ hours a week(Acker 1990, Dick 2010). Organisations often perceive this lack of physical presence as alack of commitment (Stone, 2008), which hinders promotion prospects. Furthermore,research on organisational citizenship has found that it is exactly this input of the extra hoursthat demonstrates commitment and the ‘added effort’ becomes the norm, which workingmothers cannot or will not subscribe to (Singh, 1999). This leads to a masculine workculture, reinforced and perpetuated by the lack of working mothers able to join in. Suchcultures were typical in Stones’ (2008) case studies of high flyers who ‘opted out’, or asHewlett describes it in her book, women who go ‘off-ramps’ (Hewlett 2007). The lack ofawareness of rights and male-dominated culture begins to shed light on why maternity leaveand flexible working are not good news for women. For some organisations, women who areworking part-time, unable to show “commitment “- and therefore already marginalised - areperceived to be further distancing themselves when they take maternity leave (Hewlett,2007). The story of the glass ceiling is common and has filtered through from academicwriting to popular culture and discussion articles in newspapers, for example: ‘Pease sparksthe mother of all rows suggesting a year’s maternity leave is too long...’ where the one yearmaternity leave option was described as damaging for careers – and organisations (Walsh2009).It is worth highlighting here too, that the current recession may prove to be a greater factor inthis complex picture than initially assumed. Jobs are being cut in public sectors, traditionallyassociated with higher percentages of women (TUC 2010). Career breaks for women havealready been linked to the inequality issues in the workforce (Arun et al 2004). Right now,however, career breaks are being embraced by organisations affected by the recession.Some organisations have offered career breaks across the board as a means by which toreduce costs at critical times, thus reducing the need for redundancies. Examples includeBritish Airways where 4000 people took up the offer of an unpaid break (Taylor, 2009). Timewill tell whether such broadening of career breaks lessens the stigma attached to taking timeoff work. It is feasible that the new extended demographics of those taking career breakscould lead to a change in a general change in approach to women taking career breaks toraise children. However, acceptability of career breaks is not a panacea - problems womenface of displaying organisational citizenship and demonstrating commitment from anorganisation’s perspective will not be resolved solely through more career breaks being14