Nowadays, it is actually quite normal that mothers can be successful at work. In fact, many women still encounter considerable hurdles when it comes to combining child and career. This is shown by the answers of working women in a survey by the market research institute Appinio on behalf of the digital marketing platform OMR.

622 women from different areas, from health care to insurance and the automotive industry, were interviewed. Almost half of them (45 percent) had children, the others not (yet). The average age of the respondents was 33 years, about a third were university graduates.

More than one in three women with children stated that it had been made difficult for them to return to work. 38 percent of the mothers even report that they have been discriminated against in the work environment because of their motherhood. This was particularly common among those in managerial positions – about every second mother has experienced discrimination from managers.

The survey did not ask what exactly the discrimination consisted of. But you can read some real examples from the world of work here, for example: Parents report that they were not allowed to return to their old jobs, that bosses were inflexible when it came to working hours or that they were denied salary increases with the argument that they had too many children. having sick days.

Does the decision to have a child have a negative impact on your career? 43 percent of the mothers surveyed say yes. 57 percent deny this. The value is even higher for women without children: almost every second woman (47 percent) fears that having a child would have a negative impact on their own career.

A large part of the problem does not seem to lie with the employer. 83 percent of all respondents state that their employer promotes equality. And of those without children, three out of four say they could have a child in their company without any problems.

The sticking point, on the other hand, often seems to be the distribution of roles in the family. Only one in three of the mothers surveyed says that the care work at home is divided half-half between her partner and her. 62 percent do most of the tedious work themselves, with only 2 percent having their partner do it. No problem at all, one might think, if this division of tasks within the family was deliberately chosen as the desired solution. However, the fact that 78 percent of the women surveyed say that their professional career is important to them speaks against this.