As a man, it never occurred to me to plan my job changes to coincide with the births of my kids. Two months after starting Eightfold, I learned that my wife was pregnant with our second child. While she suffered through nine miserable months of pregnancy (it was a particularly difficult one), I continued with my life. While she worried about things like iron deficiency anemia, gestational diabetes, depression and anxiety, fetal problems, high blood pressure, infections, hyperemesis gravidarum, and nausea, I was busy working and building Eightfold. As I reflected on the last few years, it became very apparent to me that there is a massive imbalance in our society — one that is preventing women from achieving true equality. Women are the primary caregivers and are expected to both take care of family and manage their careers at the same time.
Providing a few months of maternity leave is not enough. And neither is saying that paternity leave should be the same as maternity leave. What women endure through pregnancy, childbirth and nursing is just not the same as what their male partners do. And societal expectations of primary caregiving are not the same. How often have you heard of “soccer mom” (15M results on Google) vs “soccer dad” (just 1.2M results)?
Our commitment can’t be limited to maternity leave and some returnship related services. We need to do much more so that women in every stage of motherhood can thrive in their careers. So we couldn’t be more proud to introduce Liftery — a platform providing holistic support across all stages to enable moms to rise higher in their careers. Stay tuned!
