Motherhood Revisited: In Defense Of Andrea Leadsom

Although Andrea Leadsom  had to withdraw her candidacy over her suggestion that Theresa May could not become prime minister because she has no children, it is encouraging to see that for once motherhood gets its due recognition as one of the qualifications for a top job.

Indeed juggling motherhood and career in today’s world requires the kind of creativity and resourcefulness that leaders should possess. The following is a an inspiring, yet somewhat disturbing, example of the challenges of an Israeli mother, in the relentless business world. Her daughter celebrated her birthday at the preschool and had warned the  mother that if she failed to show up to the party on time, she would dismiss her as a mother.

On the appointed day the mother had to attend a meeting which was due to end fifteen minutes prior to the party. As it was rush hour, she knew that she would never get from the center of Tel Aviv to the party on time. Desperate times called for desperate measures, thus she had planned ahead and hired a delivery motorcyclist who waited for her at the end of the meeting and raced  through heavy traffic to the school: She wasn't late.

That time the mother found a solution, but I have to wonder about all the other instances when she couldn't, and about the high price that the mother and her daughter have to pay, so that the mother could keep her job. Most mothers are not praised for their resourcefulness, it is part of their job.  Moreover, this type of solving problem is silenced because it may hint to the fact that those women don’t have their priority straight. Even in the 21st century mothers are still expected to be at the birthday early with an elaborated home made cake and a big smile.

The story demonstrates a  brave mother who thinks outside the box and comes up with innovative solutions. Those are rare and sought after qualities in both the business world and in politics. However, it is also a  sad comment on our society when a mother  has to literally risk her life to get to a her daughter's birthday party on time.

For generations women have been wrestling with the issue of combining home and work. The great Feminist Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, (1953) was against women's employment and argued that combining home and work meant a burden of the ‘double day’ which underpinned the subordinate position of women in society. She further details the hardships in store for women, at all professional levels that attempt to combine marriage and work.

Things have not changed much, whether you are a young mother balancing work and children, or an older mother attempting to get back in, the workplace in general is not a friendly environment for mothers of all ages. De Beauvoir, who wrote about the plight of working married women, never married; it was her way of never facing that problem.

Obviously Andrea Leadsom should not have said what she said about a fellow sister, and of course women without children could be great leaders.  But it is high time to recognize motherhood as one of the  achievements listed on a woman’s CV.

The essay appeared in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/motherhood-revisited-in-defense-of-andrea-leadsom/

Between Victoria and Gatwick Or The Bearer Of Good News

As students we never had enough money, so when we were accepted to graduate school at  the University of Toronto, getting there from Israel was a challenge. We looked for a cheap flight and were lucky: a year earlier in 1977, the British enterpreneur Freddy Laker started the first low-cost, "no frill" airline, operating low-fare scheduled services between London Gatwick Airport and New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

The option of booking tickets in advance did not exist, and in order to board a flight one had to line up for a ticket in one of the two Laker Airways centers --in Victoria Station and at Gatwick Airport.  We arrived at Victoria with our suitcases; the line for tickets was very long and we were told that we might be able to catch a flight in two days time. Efficiently people got organized into groups and each one had a coordinator who was in charge of communicating with the airline.  Since there so many people waiting, some  groups camped around the station in an orderly fashion.

My husband Tzvi and I didn’t look forward to the possibility of spending two days camping in the street. We asked our coordinator if he knew anything about the line at the other ticket center at  Gatwick Airport. He didn't, but said that he assumed that it was the same thing. We decided to check for ourselves; Tzvi took a  train to Gatwick and I stayed with the suitcases in Victoria. It took several hours but then he came back bearing good news: the line in Gatwick was short, there was a spacious waiting area,  and we could fly to NY that same night.

We were delighted and anxious to share this piece of good news with the rest of the. We were convinced that many people would choose to take the train to Gatwick. We were wrong, no one did, the two of us left and everyone else stayed behind.

The real reason why no one joined us remains a mystery, I still cannot understand why people preferred to remain outside the station in the heat and pollution of London in August.

But I could specualte, perhaps they didn’t believe us, most of them were Americans and we were strangers and spoke with a foreign accent. The sociologist Georg Simmel defines  "‘stranger’ as a person who comes today and stays tomorrow, whose position in a group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it which do not and cannot stem from the group itself."  Thus even though we were part of a group, we were viewed with suspicion.

Another reason could be that they felt comfortable and safe within their group and didn’t want to leave; it could be that no one wanted to be the first to go so they all stayed with their group.

Sometimes when I encounter people who are reluctant to do the one thing that, I believe, will get them out of a difficult spot, like leaving an abusive relationship, or quitting a job which they hate, I think of the Victoria vs Gatwick  story and reminded once more that what seems clear to me could be far from obvious to someone else.

PS. About Freddy Laker and Laker Airways.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2283244.stm