High-flying women break free

A couple of weeks ago, Roisin O'Boyle had an extraordinary day. She walked to the national school near her home in Delgany, Co Wicklow, picked up her six-year-old daughter, Alannah, and together they enjoyed a congenial stroll home.

"I am two years in this school and this is the first time we've done this," says Alannah, putting her arm around her mother and purring with pleasure. "That said it all," says Roisin, who, at Easter, left her job as the high-powered managing director of David Allen Outdoor Advertising to spend more time with Alannah, Roddy (4) and Daisy (2). Due her fourth child any day, Roisin is determined to enjoy the gentle run-up to the birth: "It's the first time I haven't had to work right up to the day the baby was born." Career achievement doesn't mean so much to Roisin anymore. "As Alannah started to develop I realised that I'm not working for the money, I'm working for the buzz, which is legitimate and fair, but if I have to weigh up the buzz from my job against the buzz of being with Alannah, then it's a bit of a nobrainer. "You can't be selfish about it. There's no point in us continuing to have kids if we don't have time to spend with them and fortunately we are in a position to make choices."

Something unsettling is going on in corporate Ireland. Women are smashing the glass ceiling only to find that the penthouse office suite is a beautiful trap. The list of talented women who have left prestigious posts in search of more fulfilling lives reads like an honours list of the best and brightest. Barbara Patton (39) left her job as general manager of Irish Permanent after her first baby was born a year ago, although she continues as voluntary chairman of the Marketing Institute and is keeping her options open.

Francis Marsh (41) was, until last month, the managing director with Universal McCann, an organisation she describes as "like family". She is planning to be a "rugby Mum" to her 10- and 12-year-old sons, and to work on the garden at her new house in Gorey, Co Wexford, where she is looking forward to hearing the birds singing. "Everybody is waking up and realising that everyone is working harder and harder, for not much more return. It's ironic. In the early 1990s, people were talking about more leisure time. I got tired of waiting for it," she says. Lucy Gaffney (40) - who recently acquired £3.6 million when Esat was sold to British Telecom - will say goodbye to her starring role next month to spend more time with her two young daughters, although she will remain active as an Esat director. While she'll talk for hours about Esat, she is reluctant to comment on her personal life because she feels "overexposed".

Ann Riordan, head of sales and marketing at Microsoft, has already been interviewed by The Irish Times about her decision to take early retirement in her 50s, with her children grown, to take up voluntary work.

The trend is international and there is status involved. The more privileged the woman, the more likely she is to take a career break to focus on family and personal fulfilment. (British celebrities Naomi Campbell and Zoe Ball have taken career breaks merely to conceive - "conception holidays".)

Family responsibilities may be eclipsing career success as the badge of honour of the successful woman, but Barbara Patton, Francis Marsh and Roisin O'Boyle all feel slightly guilty that they have been able to make the jump, when so many women are trapped in the grind of combining child-rearing with work. Roisin: "I know too many women who are getting up at 6.30 a.m. and taking babies out of warm cots to bring them into creches, then getting home wrecked at 7.30 p.m. in the evening. It's almost worse than in Dickensian times. I know so many women who are working for almost nothing after they've paid their childcare - if you can find the childcare.

"I've gone down this route with every politician for the last six years. I've badgered and bickered and cajoled. The last couple of PD and FF manifestos promised to tackle issues - but it's a fudge. It's a politically unsavoury project to tackle. It's very complex, but somebody's got to have the balls to do it," says Roisin. "I'm not holding my breath."

While the desire to spend more time with family is genuine for these women, there is also a certain disillusionment with corporate life and materialistic values that the excuse of family politely covers.

"At 41, I have started asking myself, where am I going? What have I done? Do I need the extra money?" says Francis Marsh. "You get into a chase all the time. I'll always want something. I'll never stop wanting it. You achieve one ambition, and you keep setting new goals." Yet while questioning her former lifestyle, she still intends to find a new and gentler career path in the future. "I haven't won the Lotto and I'll be back working before I'm 60. I intend to review my options in September," she says. For some of these women, the family issue is actually an excuse to have a good old-fashioned mid-life crisis and re-evaluate priorities. "Women can hide behind the family issue, or use it as an excuse, but I had got tired of the corporate thing and it was more acceptable to say it was for the family," says Barbara Patton. "Probably if I had not had a child, I would not have had the nerve to leave. The family issue is the most significant factor, but there are other factors as well."

She doesn't want to be seen as someone who gave up corporate life to become an earth mother and believes that women should not be pigeon-holed. She sees herself as having 20 years of working life ahead and wants to find a new kind of flexible working in which her family can be central. "I would detect in a lot of men the same type of longing," she says.

However, the truth is that it is the working father who keeps many of these women afloat. For Criona Cullen, who left Drury Communications two years ago, to devote her time to her three children (aged eight, 10 and 12), her husband's successful architecture practice gave her the chance to be a full-time mother, although the decision continues to involve financial sacrifice. Criona would like to ease back into the sort of flexible working that would not detract from her family responsibilities: "I think the future for women is having a skill you can sell on your own terms". Aldagh McDonogh agrees - and she has turned the trend into a money-maker. Aldagh saw the "groundswell" of women leaving corporate Ireland as an opportunity for a home-based business. She left her job as global marketing director at Baileys in February to have more control over her time - and thus more to spend with family. But she had another agenda.

WITH Sandra Lawler, Aldagh has developed Alternatives, an employment agency which places skilled glass-ceiling breakers in the marketing area with corporations on a contract basis - in jobs that have part-time work, term-time working and other family-friendly regimes as part of the deal. Such contract work agencies already exist in the financial and information technology services areas, where jobs for life are now seen as liabilities.

"The economic boom is driving people's self-confidence. At the same time, the sense, which we used to share, that you are so lucky to have a job is being challenged now. People are asking, `we've never earned so much money, but what is it for?' This ability to question is a luxury that previous generations never had," says Aldagh.

Contract work is more focused and efficient, so that women can earn more money in half the time, enabling them to spend more time with family and pack more into life. Employers benefit because rather than putting bodies into buildings, they can buy precisely the skills they need for particular tasks for specific periods of time.

Women such as Aldagh, Francis, Barbara, Criona and Roisin are role models who have a message for corporate Ireland: women have valuable skills and creativity to offer, but want to participate on their own terms. But will the "groundswell" be enough to change corporate values? As long as workers define themselves by their job description and car registration, probably not. However, the introduction of family-friendly contract working is at least changing the way corporate Ireland employs in the financial services, information technology and marketing sectors - so that's a start.

For more information on working from home in marketing, contact Alternatives at 01-2965354 or email amcdonogh@eircom.net