I’ve been out of the job market for so long that I didn’ t know college students were making hiring decisions now.

…another study, led by a professor at Ohio State University, suggests that women who do get married and have children will see their job prospects diminish. Two hundred undergraduates were asked to make hiring and promotion recommendations for a law firm based on r?sum?s that differed only as to sex and whether the applicant was married with children. The result: women with children were less likely to be hired and promoted than either men or childless women, whereas men with children were actually favored in hiring over their childless male counterparts.

~The Atlantic, April 2005

Common sense would indicate that these results have a grain of truth. But with this attitude, companies will lose out on a tremendous source of brain power and abilities. Fortunately, some are catching on.

Allstate’s policy toward working mothers won the company recognition from a national magazine. Working Mother magazine named Allstate to its top eight list of best companies for women of color with children. Allstate topped the list, which also included JP Morgan Chase and Co., Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, American Express Co. and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

~NBC5i.com, June 2, 2005

*****
“Working mothers, in my opinion, provide much higher results with flexible hours than average guys do who could be there 60 hours a week,” says Donald Murray, chairman and CEO of Resources global Professionals Inc.

The CEO says he has observed “that no one can juggle things or multi-task like a professional woman with children. But many employers don’t acknowledge that.”

{snip}

Indeed, “motherhood has a positive impact on women’s ability to lead,” writes Moe Grzelakowski in her book, “Mother Leads Best: 50 Women Who Are Changing the Way Organizations Define Leadership.”

“Motherhood has helped women executives change from good leaders into great ones,” the author says.

“Children transform ultrahigh-achieving women, leavening their highly focused, intensely driven, tough-minded traits with character and compassion. … (They) become softer, yet stronger; more confident, yet more humble; more directed, yet more tolerant. All in all, children not only give them a greater capacity to lead, but they stimulate a greater capacity to love.

“Leadership, coupled with love, is very powerful.”

~Lansing State Journal, May 30, 2005

One of the skills I’ve developed as a mother is the ability to work with constant interruptions and a little voice in my ear demanding something every other second (like now). Shouldn’t be too different in the workplace.