Moms in tech: how motherhood can enhance your career

Neringa Daugėlė - a Recruitment Operations Specialist responsible for making our company's recruitment processes run smoothly. She is also one of the several soon-to-be moms on the team.

Justina Kuprienė - an Accounting Data and Process Analyst, who returned to work after a 1.5-year break, taking care of her newborn baby, and since then, has been juggling childcare and tasks at work.

Lina Glazunova - a Document Management System Implementation Manager. While she's responsible for implementing DocuSign CLM across the organization, she's also looking after her two sons, aged 2 and 4, who now are her CEOs of life after work.

Personal growth driven by motherhood challenges

Thanks to technology, nowadays, it's easier than ever before to pursue motherhood and a career. That's why more and more women are less afraid to return to work after their parental leave. Although it's still challenging, such an experience helps them acquire new skills and grow professionally. Moreover, studies show that they can even become more productive than their children-free peers.

According to Justina Kurpienė, one of the biggest things to tackle when being a mom is time management:

"I had to improve my time-planning skills because you can't explain to a 6-month-old baby that mommy needs to work or rest. So I started to plan everything for weeks and even months ahead. The truth is that a baby doesn't take a vacation from being a baby. Hence to keep up with everything I do, I had to make some sacrifices".

She also adds that having a child has not only improved her time management skills but also taught her patience, which helps a lot with her work tasks. This combo of skills encourages her to tackle more ambitious projects with the confidence that she'll succeed.

Lina Glazunova shares that motherhood is like a separate career - every day, you can expect a more complicated problem to solve. In a way, it teaches you how to solve more and more complex issues from scratch:

"The major challenge of raising children is that they grow and develop at such a fast pace that as soon as you solve one big challenge, another pops up the next day, leaving you again with no experience or a clear idea of how to handle it. My work also presents me with constant challenges that give me wisdom and fulfillment along the way. And you know what? I love all of it because it's the best way to grow as a person and professional".

But it's not just mums who benefit from a professional career. The Harvard Business School study shows that having a working mother improves children's prospects. It also allows children to understand that mothers' contributions at home and work are equally valuable as fathers’.

Stereotypes that need to go

Despite all the challenges mothers face every day, they are also surrounded by numerous stereotypes. Here are a few examples that moms in tech have encountered:

• Women who plan pregnancy seek employment to get social security allowances

  

  Neringa Daugėlė

"I won't lie - I was a bit afraid to tell my manager and the team that I am pregnant after only working at Nord for four months. This fear came from the things I've heard before. According to it, those women who become pregnant directly after entering a new job get employed because of the higher social parental allowances. I didn't want people to think of me that way. And you know what? When I announced the news of my pregnancy, I realized that I was worrying for nothing. So now, I can only confirm that in such globally-minded company like Nord Security, the news of a woman's pregnancy is greeted just the way it should be - cheerfully, without any judgment or prejudice," shares soon-to-be-mom Neringa Daugėlė.

• Working mums can't simultaneously be good mothers and be good at their jobs

  

  Justina Kuprienė

"One of the most widely known myths is that mothers can't be good at two things simultaneously: working and raising children. However, I was quick to bust this myth as being a mother required me to do ten things at the same time while maintaining excellent quality, not only in terms of my work but also in terms of my baby care," explains Justina Kurpienė.

• They put work before the family or vice versa

  

  Lina Glazunova

"Working moms care less about their children on one end, while on the other, they care less about their work. Well, neither is true. Working moms care deeply about both, and every day they give their all to find that work-life balance," debunking the stereotype, says Lina Glazunova.

Battling outside opinions can put extra strain on women trying to harmonize professional life and parenthood. Therefore, company support for working moms is more important than ever, not only because it's the right thing to do but also of the benefits such actions bring to the organization, like increased innovation, talent retention, and productivity.

Supporting moms in tech

With the talent crisis in tech community, tech organizations are putting their best efforts into making motherhood easier for their employees, like Adobe providing breast milk delivery services for mothers traveling on business or NVIDIA setting up mother and baby rooms on its premises and offering expectant mother parking services.

At Nord Security, women make up more than 40% of the company. Therefore, it’s important for us that they feel secure in pursuing motherhood and a career at the same time. For this reason, we’re constantly looking for ways how to make that work-life balance achievable and add to the list of our benefits for parents:

1. Flexible working hours and the possibility of balance between home and office - to make the juggling of tasks and responsibilities easier.

2. Well-being team support - so the women can care for their physical and mental health before and after childbirth.

3. A private kindergarten and child-friendly co-working space - for kids to play together right next to their working parents in our soon-to-open office in Cyber City.

4. Gifts and events - to congratulate mothers once they go on maternity leave or have a baby, and special celebrations for families, like Christmas cookie baking with a chef, etc.

And while more companies start to adjust their perks list to parents, the key element is supporting all choices and making it easier for your team to have successful careers without taking out from their personal lives:

“I’m happy to work in a company that pays more attention to working mothers and makes it easier for them to decide to pursue not only a career but also motherhood," rejoices soon-to-be mom Neringa Daugėlė.