#maternityteacher #paternityteacher @parentalCPD

Over the last few weeks, a number of events and opportunities have given me cause to reflect upon my approach to gender equality and have a calm chat with my inner angry feminist.  It may come as no surprise that the initial motivation behind The #maternityteacher Project was frustration at feelings of disempowerment because of the biological and social expectations of my new role as a mother, and anger that no-one was having the conversations they were having with me about taking a break, relaxing and making the most of precious moments rather than continuing to forge my way up the career ladder, with men.  "It's not fair," I thought, "It is so tough being a woman!  Nobody understands us and something needs to be done!"

The danger of this frustration, in both my personal and professional life, however, has become very evident since giving birth: I am lucky that I have a very understanding husband who is my greatest ally in the battle for gender equality, but guess what?  He hates the word 'feminism' and shuts down whenever I use it.  Beating my angry feminist drum whilst functioning on five hours of broken sleep a night, therefore, was only going to end in tears.  Instead, I chose to empathise with the difficulties of his role as a man in a working culture that forces most men away from their children and which, through absence, de-skills them in the art of early child-raising until many men give up and let the woman deal with it rather than feel ashamed and frustrated at their own inabilities to interpret their child's cries or put on a sling in a lightening flash.

I therefore gave my husband a break and turned this frustration to my professional life.  Deafened by the booming of my own feminist drum, I planned the meeting I would arrange with my Principal to convince him to promote me in January because of all the remote CPD I was completing on maternity leave.  Instead of planning a conversation that respected the school's hierarchies and involved asking questions, listening and coming up with logical solutions that would enable me to work collaboratively with my leadership team for the benefit of our students, I put together a very righteous plan of attack, fuelled - if I'm honest - by the fear that unless I shouted very loudly and waved my arms around, no-one would notice me.

Thank goodness, therefore, for the magic of coaching, and my awareness that I would need some in order to successfully achieve my #maternityteacher goals.  The first two women I consulted began to blow away the feminist fog with professional, objective questions that encouraged me to focus on my role as a teacher, not my anger as a woman, but it wasn't until I asked for a coaching conversation from a man that the elephant in the room was finally pointed out: "Why are you so angry?" he asked me, "And why do you think you're going to get anywhere taking this anger to a professional meeting?"

Now this was infuriating, but very necessary, and since hearing this I have approached my attempt to define my role upon my return to work with greater diplomacy, less anger and more openness, which has, of course, been more successful than shouting at my Principal for being a man.  On how many occasions, I am now beginning to ask myself, has my perception of inequality resulted in a frustration that manifests itself as unprofessionalism?  Is this frustration, though understandable, the barrier that prevents many women from successfully demonstrating their leadership potential because it pushes men away?

As my husband rightly points out, in our society currently, "Men hold the keys", and even though the exclusivity of this key-holding is a huge injustice, directing the anger at this injustice towards the men who are happily welcoming you through the open door will result in the door being barrel locked and women never getting anywhere.  Calm down, inner angry feminist, I told myself, and start having professional conversations that will showcase and make productive use of all the fantastic CPD you have been doing on maternity leave.

Now, a number of serendipitous events collided at this point in my life:

• A coaching session calmed my angry feminist (above)
• As a calm professional, I had a meeting with my Line Manager about how my maternity leave CPD could contribute to the School Development Plan.  It was very exciting and empowering. 
• I read this article by Teach First's Ndidi Okezie that asked, "When the issue of women in leadership comes up, it often ends up being only women talking to women... Why is this?"
• The baby started agreeing to go to sleep in his cot at 8:30pm so I got a chance to have an adult conversation with my gender-equality-loving husband.
• We had empowering couple-team discussions about gender equality and answered Ndidi's question.
• I began to reflect upon the values of The #maternityteacher Project's and its position in the wider move towards gender equality.

The first problem, my husband and I agreed, was semantics: wording like 'maternity', 'women' and 'feminist' are all very exclusive - men don't feel invited to events, movements or organisations that use this language because it's not 'for them', even if they do believe in gender equality.  "I don't have time for that bullshit," my husband tells me, every time I talk about feminism, and despite 'He For She' type shifts in culture, many men are still put off by the connotations of burning bras and female domination that come with this word.  Even I have fallen into this trap with my use of #maternityteacher and @maternityCPD.  Even though they are in the minority, there are teacher-fathers who take responsibility for the majority of the childcare and also want to complete CPD during their time away from the classroom - and I have inadvertently excluded them simply by referring to maternity not paternity leave, or by choosing the more inclusive @parentalCPD.

For decades, it has been necessary for women to use this type of language as an explicit weapon to fight against entrenched sexism, but has the exclusivity of this language now become detrimental and hypocritical? At the very best, it is confusing: do we want to see more women in leadership and therefore more men in the home?  Do we think that only women should be leaders?  Do we think that women can be mothers, partners and leaders, but that men are a little bit useless at multi-tasking and so should just pick one or two from the list?  Personally - like many feminists - I want gender equality, so maybe we should change our language so that it better matches the values we are trying to communicate?

My husband's second point continued this theme of exclusion: walking into a room full of women, even if the event is relevant and interesting, is intimidating for a man, just like doing the opposite is intimidating for a woman.  Despite invitations and the insistence that men are welcome at events designed to empower and discuss "women's issues", male colleagues still ask me, "Are men allowed at these things?", in part because of the aforementioned exclusivity of the semantics involved, but also because men are often invited as individuals.  The trick, my husband assures me, is to invite groups of men so that not only is there a sense of safety in numbers, but also a culture of working towards gender equality, instead of the myth of world domination by women accompanied by the men who were brave enough to attend the first networking event.

In doing so, groups and movements working towards empowering women would move towards more logical concepts of proportional representation.  The well-bandied percentage of women in educational leadership is that female teachers make up 74% of the workforce, yet only 65% of head teachers are women (36% at secondary level).  Now, I'm no great mathematician, but I appreciate that the injustice here is not in the percentages, it's in the proportional representation: 74% of UK headteachers should be women.  Where my maths does come unstuck, though, is wondering how many men there should be at every woman-focused teacher event?  35%? 26%?  Equally, what proportion of any discussion about parental leave and CPD should be specifically targeted at teacher-fathers if 21% of fathers in the UK are currently stay-at-home dads?

The maths is a little baffling, but the idea is simple: discussions about women in leadership and all that goes with it, including The #maternityteacher Project, should aim for gender equality which, ironically, means actively trying to be more inclusive of men.  The #maternityteacher Project is currently about attempting to be a role model for other parents who - like me - want the choice of using their leave to balance their parenting responsibilities with their continued professional development.  I still cannot deny my assumptions that the majority of my audience will be female - but with all of this in mind, I hope you see a more concerted effort on behalf of The #maternityteacher Project to include teacher-fathers choosing to complete CPD whilst on paternity leave.

If you are one of these fathers, then get involved with our discussion and let me know how we're doing!  If you are still a woman, still a mother, still completing CPD on maternity leave, still interested in using this CPD to continue your professional journey despite your 'break', then help me to reach out to those key-holding men - the school leaders, the partners, the colleagues, the CEOs and the politicians - who will be as essential to your success as the groups of women who will support you.