There's a dream that most working mothers of young children have. It's called 'an interesting part-time job in my chosen field, with career prospects'.
But part-time jobs have traditionally been low-paid and dead-end, making it difficult for all but the most energetic mothers - usually with supportive partners and the good sense to live close to their work - to fulfil their employment potential.
Employers' attitudes to more flexible work arrange-ments may be changing, however - hopefully enough to weather any coming recession. It was Sue Unerman's male boss, for example, who suggested she work a four-day week because he sensed that she needed to spend more time with her children. Sue has two children aged three and five and is head of planning at a media planning and buying company. 'I was incredibly unrealistic about being a working mother,' she says. 'I had an intense ambition to keep on going at the same level. But my boss said, "It's not the money that's important, it's the things you can't buy. You'll never have this time again".'
Advertising is a fast-moving world, with 80 per cent of its staff under 40 and a reputation for being hard on mothers. Sue remembers that when she first joined the company in 1983, 'everyone worked from 8.30am to 8.30pm and went to the pub afterwards. You didn't go home until your boss had gone'.
Now, together with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) is publishing a guide on 'work-life balance' and has done a survey of managers in the agency world. 'I was very encouraged by the majority of members' recognition that there is a problem, and that it needs industry wide action,' says Ann Murray Chatterton of the IPA. 'This would not have happened five years ago.' From a business point of view, she says that allowing people to reduce their hours retains the talent of the over-35s in advertising, while at the same time reducing costs.
