Allison Pearson - How Hard Can It Be?

Everything about Sadie, from her figure to her dark bobbed hair, from her matching taupe bag and loafers to her South African accent, was clipped, with no unnecessary waste. The person she most reminded me of was Wallis Simpson – immaculate without being in any way appealing. Or human. I found myself wondering what it must be like to have such a controlled and controlling creature as a mother. Looking across the circle, I could see that Sally was having exactly the same thought. She rolled her lips back and forth as if she were setting lipstick on an invisible tissue, and her eyes glistened with what might easily be mistaken for concern, but was actually closer to disdain.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure about joining the Returners. I mean, I’ve never cared for the lazy assumption that women have shared preoccupations and views, like we’re some kind of endangered minority group. There are good, decent and feeling women, sure, millions of them, but there are also Sadies who would leave your child for dead by the side of the road if it meant getting an advantage for her kids. Why do we insist on pretending otherwise? Just because she has ovaries and a vagina (probably steam cleaned), doesn’t make Sadie my ‘sister’, thanks very much.

Like so many of the all-female events that I’ve attended, there is something mildly apologetic about Women Returners. With no men in the room, we are free to be ourselves, but maybe we are so out of practice that we tend to overshoot and end up giggling like nine-year-olds or, inevitably, talking about the kids we actually have. Women get so easily bogged down in anecdote; instinctive novelists, we make sense of our lives through stories and characters. It’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t make us any good at single-mindedness, at shutting out the day-to-day stuff and going for what we want. Imagine a group of men ending up talking about their wife’s mother’s heart bypass. Never happen, would it?

Today will be different, however, because a man, a well-known employment consultant called Matthew Exley, is here to talk to us about how best to market our skills. ‘Call me Matt’ is clearly enjoying being the only ram in a flock of ewes. He begins with some research. Studies show, Matt says, that if ten criteria are listed for an advertised job and a man has seven of them, the man would be willing to ‘have a go’. By contrast, if a woman has eight, she will say, ‘No, I can’t possibly apply for the job because I don’t meet two of the criteria.’

‘Now, ladies, what do we think this is telling us?’ Matt beams encouragingly at his flock. ‘Yes, Karen?’

‘I’m Sharon,’ says Sharon. ‘It’s telling us that women tend to undersell themselves. We underrate our capabilities.’

‘Spot on, Sharon, thank you,’ says Matt. ‘And what else can we deduce? Yes, the blonde lady over there?’

‘That men generally assume they’ll be good at things they’re rubbish at because their experience of the workplace proves that mediocre men are consistently given positions beyond their capabilities, while highly able women have to be twice as good as a man to have any chance of being given a senior position for which they are infinitely better qualified?’

Every so often at Women Returners, I’m sorry to report that a cynical, world-weary and, quite frankly, abrasive voice ruptures the happy bubble of feelgood reinvention and shared sisterhood.

‘Ah.’ Matt looks to Kaylie for support in dealing with this party pooper.

‘C’mon, Katie,’ smiles Kaylie valiantly with her too-white teeth. (You guessed it was me, didn’t you?) ‘I think you’re kinda taking all the negatives onboard. We’ve talked before about how women are tough on themselves. I know how perfectionist you are, Katie. What Matt is trying to say is that we need to give ourselves permission to think that, even if we’re not the perfect candidate for a job, then being a seven or eight instead of a ten may be good enough.’

‘That’s right,’ says Matt with obvious relief. ‘Your CV doesn’t need to be a perfect fit to have a shot at a job.’

‘Sorry, but I think what Kate was trying to say …’ It’s Sally speaking now. The group turns with interest to its shyest and most tongue-tied member. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what Kate was saying is that the reason men have a lot of confidence applying for jobs is because the odds were, and to some extent still are, heavily stacked in their favour. They think they have more chance of succeeding because they actually do. You can’t really blame older women for having low self-confidence when that reflects the opinion the world has of us.’

‘I hear you, Sally,’ says Matt.

(In my experience, ‘I hear you’ is a phrase used only by those who are completely deaf to any sound but their own voice.)

‘But things are much better than they were even five years ago,’ he goes on. ‘Employers are much more aware of the qualities that women returners can bring to the office. You will all have noticed that work–life balance has moved up the political agenda and many firms are beginning to see that a more, shall we say, enlightened approach to taking on older females, who have taken time out from their careers, may not damage their business. Quite the contrary, in fact!’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ says Sally uncertainly. ‘My friend’s daughter took nine months off work from an investment fund with her second baby and no one batted an eyelid. That would have been unheard of when I was at the bank. Even four months’ maternity leave … Well, your job might still be there when you got back, but someone else would have the title. You might be allowed to assist him. My bank sent me to the Middle East when my boys were very small, to see if I would give up, probably.’

‘When I told my boss I was pregnant with my second,’ Sharon chips in, ‘he went fucking mental. He said, “But, Sharon, sweetheart, you’ve already had a baby.”’

Everyone laughs. The secret, subversive laughter of the servants below-stairs at Downton Abbey discussing their masters’ funny little ways.

‘Listen, guys,’ says Kaylie, ‘I think Katie is being way too pessimistic. Like Matt says, firms are more open than ever to the idea that activities outside of the office can give you transferable skills. Seriously, the Mum CV is now a big thing in recruitment.’

I look around the circle at the women’s eager faces. They nod and smile at Matt, grateful for his assurances that the employment they left during the years of raising children will welcome them back, that the ‘skills’ of nurturing and running a small country called Home are transferable. Maybe that’s true if you’ve been out of the loop three years, five max. Privately, I think the ones who are in the worst position are those who kept no work going at all, who gave up every last bit of personal independence. When the chicks fly the nest, at eighteen, they take with them their mother’s reason for being. And the women turn to look at the men they’ve lived with for the past twenty-four years and they realise the only thing they have in common any more is the kids, who have just left home. The child-rearing years are so busy, so all-consuming it’s easy to ignore the fact your marriage is broken because it’s buried under the Lego and the muddy dungarees and the PE bags. Once the kids are gone there’s no place for your relationship to hide. It’s brutal.

At least my freelance stuff gave me a slender handrail to hold onto in a rapidly changing jobs market. Plus, I’m one of the younger ones here, and even I will have to lie about how old I am to stand a chance of getting back into my industry.

I think of how I felt sitting in Gerald Kerslaw’s office with my own ‘Mum CV’. Watching his eyes flick down my activities outside the office for the past six and a half years. Work for the school, work for the community, for the church, backbone of society, carer for young and old. I felt small. I felt diminished, irrelevant, unregarded. Worst of all, I felt foolish. Maybe ‘Call me Matt’ is right and attitudes are changing, but, in my line of business, a forty-nine-year-old who’s been out of the game for seven years might as well walk through the Square Mile ringing a bell and shouting, ‘Chlamydia!’