You may be aware that in the past year my husband and I had a baby. Yet, I’m still here and participating in the community. That’s no small feat and is due in part to the help and support of my family, my managers and my employer (Red Hat,) and many of my peers who are also moms in tech.
My friend Kathryn Rotondo recently put together a proposal for a new podcast – the Motherboard Podcast – to provide ideas and advice for other women in technology, like me, who would like to start a family but are worried about how it might affect their career, or who are already trying to balance both and are feeling alone. She will interview women with children who are working at tech companies; they will discuss the challenges they ran into, solutions their families came up with, and other issues. I think we need more role models for women in technology in general, but especially role models who are able to raise a family while continuing their career, so the interviewees for this podcast will be a great start.
The podcast will be available for free and will tentatively be licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Kathryn also put together a great video introducing the podcast project and making the case for it, so please have a look.
Anyhow, please support the Motherboard kickstarter if you can, and help tech moms like me feel connected and supported!
It’s too bad that it’s only mothers that have to ask themselves these questions.
There are of course good reasons for the mother to have a longer parental than the father, but after that parental duties should be evenly between mother and father. If that were the case, even a longer leave (e.g. in Europe a 9-12 months leave is not uncommon) should not have any long-term career impact. Unfortunately we’re really far from both targets.