The everyWoman Blog: A Nanny Should Be Part Of The Female CEO Pay Package

Taken from here.

Mary Poppins may be going corporate. Ita Buttrose, hailed as the publishing queen of Australia, said if Australia adopted more of a nanny culture, it would help women stay in work and continue to climb the corporate ladder. Buttrose, 69, told The Sunday Mail having a nanny to help her with childcare when she founded the popular magazine Cleo helped her career tremendously. She thinks companies should offer women nanny options as part of their payment packages. ”I am a great believer in packages that include some support for the mother, whether it is a nanny or a housekeeper or whatever. You might not get the shares, or you might not get the car, but you balance one out against the other. Of course companies can do it. Women who want to continue their careers and have families should ask for that package from their employer and the workplace needs to think about how they are going to offer it.”

Having a nanny is a better option than putting a child in daycare all day, according to Buttrose. ”Having a nanny made my life infinitely easier and certainly having someone in my home caring for my son was much better than me dropping him into day care. It means there is always someone with the child and if the child is sick and there’s an important meeting, you can still get there. If you occasionally have to work back late your child is not going to starve,” she said. If companies are not offering this option then women need to demand it. ”You are in charge of the routine then and you know what you are doing with your baby, whereas when you drop your baby into day care it is a different routine.”

We have explored the benefits of companies that are working-mom friendly such as flexible schedules and being allowed to bring your child to work. This is another extension of that. Offering childcare on this level may be another way to help get and keep women in the boardroom. When working moms are better able to control their work environment and adapt, work-related stress is less likely to become a family issue,” said Dawn S. Carlson, a professor of management at Baylor University. She and her colleagues also found that working women with new babies were more likely to stick with their jobs if they have job security and can make use of a variety of their job skills, while the effects of work-related stress on their physical and mental health increases the risk of them leaving their job. OnlineSchools.com, a digital resource for online education from kindergarten to graduate school, found that of the 100 women on the Forbes’ List of the World’s Most Powerful Women of 2011 88% of them have children with 2.5 children being the average. The study didn’t show this but I bet a lot of them had a nanny at one point or another even it was only short term. It should also be noted that six of Forbes’ top female executives worked at companies ranked as most friendly to working moms by Working Mother Magazine. What is especially interesting about the women on this list is that many of these women work in family-friendly companies like Kraft Foods and Morgan Stanley, who provide fully-paid maternity leaves. Other good companies included JPMorgan, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont and IBM.

After all, it does take a village to raise a child. And if you have the help of a village then you can focus on your career. ”Don’t forget running the business, being the CEO, is really the big role women should aim for,” said Buttrose.

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