MBA Graduate, Zina Sanyoura, Successful Business Woman and Mother

TopMBA.com has been seeking women in business to discuss what it’s really like to be a working woman with the added strain of family and children and what is being done to help working mothers who are balancing their careers and their children.

Zina Sanyoura graduated from IMD in 2008 and has since been working as a senior investment manager at Bamboo Finance in Switzerland which manages a US$250 million private equity fund in emerging markets globally. She is currently working part-time with a 60% workload in order to spend time with her newborn son after five months maternity leave. So, what is it like to readapt to the workplace?

Running a family and a business

No one asks Bill Gates, successful businessman and father of three, how he balances work and fatherhood so why does a successful business woman with children often get asked this very question?

The simple answer is because it is women who still undertake the majority of the work involved with having a child, not just in the nine months prior but also in the years to follow. In a recent TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead reiterated this point: “If a man and a woman have a child, the woman statistically does twice the amount of housework than the man and three times the amount of childcare.”

For this reason then, it is unsurprising that working mothers are asked the question: “How do you cope?!” on a daily basis.  And the answer Zina Sanyoura has is not easily – but one just sort of gets on with it.

“It’s been hard and it does take its toll on you, especially if you are coming from a lifestyle which was very active and all of a sudden you have this situation where you spend most of your day doing baby stuff, it is very different. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but it is quite an adjustment.”

Getting back to being a successful business woman after children

Perhaps the hardest part for women in business when returning to work after having a child, according to Zina, is managing logistics. “If I had a desk job and worked 8 until 5 every day, I think it would be a lot easier,” she says. “Before I got pregnant I was traveling for one or two weeks every month or so, and that was easy because there were no logistics to manage. Right now however, it takes a tremendous amount of effort because sometimes you can plan and sometimes you cannot, and, when you have a partner who also travels, having a child does not work naturally with this so, now, we have to plan, plan, plan.”

When asked whether the toll of having a child is often bigger for the mother than the father, Zina answers matter of factly; “Well, if you spoke to my husband he’d tell you ‘no’, he’d say it was the same. But the reality is that I took maternity leave. The reality is that I spent five months at home and he didn’t. The reality is that my husband’s life didn’t change much; he went to the office every morning and he had adult conversations while I stayed at home.”

Although forthright in her assertion that having a family was a joint choice and that it was clearly inevitable that either her husband or herself would have to take a step back from their careers to be with their son early on, Zina still admits that if the current system was different, she may have adjusted quicker.

“If my husband had the option to take paternity leave maybe it would’ve been different, but, right now, working 60%, I still spend a lot more time with our son than he does and so it has impacted my life much more,” she explains. “If paternity leave were encouraged, there may be a quicker adaption for new parents returning to work. Currently there’s no paternity leave [in Switzerland] and so obviously women are expected to take their maternity leave on their own but it’s not a coveted time off, where a family is allowed to adjust in ample time. And it may be a bit idealistic, but if we could push towards having more paternity leave, a couple can better share the responsibility.”

Gender equality in the workplace

Despite slight misgivings regarding taking a step back from her career as a successful business woman, Zina is happy with her position and feels the company has been very flexible with her maternity leave as well as her gradual return to full-time work.

The question of gender equality is not one at the forefront of her mind, due to the fact that the company is managed in such a way as to be flexible for all. Of the team of 24 at Bamboo Finance, almost half are female meaning the working environment is ultimately very gender neutral.

“They’re just as accommodating to men,” she says, giving the example of her manager taking some time off to be with his wife and newborn twins. “There’s the idea that everyone works pretty hard to deliver and, if a company wants to retain its staff, they’ve got to be flexible. For me, if they were being inflexible about day care I would have had to leave my job.”

Advice to women in business looking to raise a family

“The simplest advice would be to be a bit realistic about what you can and cannot do,” Zina advises women in business looking to start a family. “Unless you are able to outsource childcare completely, day and night, I think it’s very unrealistic to assume that the two careers [of you and your partner] will be unaffected. At some point a couple has to decide that one of them is going to have to take a step back for a while. If you assume that nothing is going to change it would be very difficult to adapt to the new life.”

Even a 60% workload is a struggle to juggle with motherhood, but Zina manages by choosing what she spends her time on wisely. “Right now, I have a limited amount of time and energy and I need to maximize efficiency,” she says. “Although my son spends a full day at daycare, I have a very limited work day. Because of this I’d say [since returning to work] I’ve taken a more pragmatic approach. I need to be efficient, so I choose what to spend my time and energy on, and try and delegate as much as I can.”

Useful links for women in business

Women in Banking and Finance is a non-profit organization founded in 1980 and run by volunteers from executive and management committees. Corporate affiliations include major banks, global financial services companies and other industry firms.

Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) is an organization that reports on and takes stock of everything to do with gender equality in the workplace, including, women in STEM industries and support to women in business who have been sexually discriminated.