The new challenge: Career and kids

The Tongariro National Park was a stunning place to work. Photo/File

It was International Women's Day last Saturday, and I celebrated by sleeping in ... with two young children. It's a weekend treat my husband and I share.

When's International Men's Day some cry? The cheeky answer is every other day, but actually there is a men's day - 19th November - so keep your pants on.

In New Zealand, like the rest of the world, men still dominate leadership positions in most sectors and organisations (except, perhaps, the Green Party with its clear structure of male and female co-leaders and a minimum of 40 per cent men or women on its MP list).

Apart from short periods off when my boys were born, I've always worked.

I can't remember my first job as a teenager - it was working picking berries at Windermere Gardens, a rite of passage for most Whanganui kids, or scoring a job at the new Foodtown supermarket in the 1980s, or my coolest job, working at Jack Hodge Music Bank on Victoria Avenue.

When I was growing up, it was all about "girls can do anything".

Now I'm the mum of boys, I need to adapt it to "anyone can do anything" - which I know isn't entirely true - for boys or for girls.

The epidemic of childhood poverty in New Zealand is putting up barriers that only a few successfully overcome, and our society is not even-handed in how it treats men and women.

The latest campaign to challenge this is www.banbossy.com. It seems that when boys step up and show leadership traits they are praised, while girls are often tagged as bossy and knocked back. As one of the "bossy" ones, however, it didn't slow me down.

I was first a manager at the Department of Conservation at the age of 27. I remember getting frustrated with the occasional call to take the minutes when I thought I was being picked out for my gender and age, but mostly I skated through with little direct affronts.

At 32, I became the DOC manager overseeing Tongariro National Park. This was a fantastic experience, not least going to work at the stunning location of Ruapehu every day. I was one of few women in these roles, and young to boot. I was conscious of my limited field experience more than my gender or age, but with a good team alongside, it was a fantastic, albeit challenging, two years.

Today I work from home, part-time, in a senior role for global consultancy AECOM. And it's the first time I've really become conscious of the challenges in "trying to have it all". What's changed?

Now I'm a mum.

Yep, now I'm struggling with having both a career and being a parent, even while I have the most supportive and flexible working conditions of anyone I know.

But I want to be able to travel with my job and work extra hours on special projects and do more study that strengthens my suitability for a promotion.

But I also want to be there for my kids. It turns out I can't have it all without giving something up. That's what Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Lean In, speaks about in her latest www.ted.com interview.

I don't think it's the same for men - unless they are that rare beast, a stay-at-home dad. When I meet someone and they ask what I do, it's no longer all about my paid work - it's being a mum too. When I fill out a form and it asks for my occupation, I want to write mum as well.

For me the challenge lies in how society, employers in particular, support dads to be part of the solution for women who want careers, without creating new problems for those dads.

How can we manage our work differently to share the load?

This International Women's Day, it's not about whether I can push through the so-called glass ceiling as a woman - but as a mum.

Nicola Young is a former Department of Conservation manager who now works for global consultancy AECOM. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.