The concepts “motherhood” and “successful career” remain mutually exclusive to many women who are unable to find the balance that allows them to go through life fulfilled in both areas.

Whether motherhood and career can be successfully combined remains a contentious question that has offered an endless source of guilt to the growing number of working mothers in the west, who are increasingly gaining more high-powered positions.

“Career Women Make Bad Mothers” screamed a poster plastered across London buses recently. It was meant to be a clever ad campaign, but it backfired after it fuelled the guilt and ire of women across the city. In Germany, there is even a word for working mothers who don’t pick up their school-age kids over lunchtime: Raven Mothers.

The question continues to spark debate in a changing corporate world driven by an increased presence of women, shifting parental and gender roles and a growing focus on work-life balance.

Recently, the debate also flared across the Belgian political landscape, with several members of parliament, both federal and regional, being or about to become mums. Flemish minister of energy and social affairs, Freya Van den Bossche (photo page 1), and MP Leen Dierick (CD&V) recently gave birth, while MPs Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen!), Sarah Smeyers (N-VA) and Meyrem Almaci (Groen!) are all set to become moms in the near future.

This is not to mention those who are mothers of growing children, including Flemish minister of culture and the environment, Joke Schauvliege, and federal minister of employment and equal opportunities, Joëlle Milquet.

In a sector where image is everything, where being in Brussels at the crack of dawn and staying for marathon midnight meetings are par for the course, it begs the question: can motherhood be combined with a career in politics?

Even though both the federal and Flemish parliaments today include more women than ever before, the expectations a politician must meet are still largely based on the image of the parliamentarian of yester-year: a middle-aged, white male, with a supportive stay-at-home wife running the household and looking after the kids.

Politics lag behind modern life

But the political landscape has changed significantly over the past decades, and the new global trend of introducing gender quotas has seen many more women enter the political arena. Today, almost 50 countries have legislated quotas, and many more make use of voluntary party quotas on electoral lists.

For a very long time the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) were alone at the top of the world ranking when it came to women’s political representation. But that is no longer the case. It may come as a surprise that the top spots are now occupied by Rwanda, at number one and South Africa at number three. (Sweden still ranks high at number 2.) Belgium comes in at 12th place, but western countries like Switzerland, Austria and the UK all lag far behind Burundi (number 22) and Tanzania (number 23) when it comes to the percentage of women in their parliaments.

Belgium’s efforts to rectify the gender imbalance in its political system began in 1994, when it adopted its first gender quota law. It stipulates that a party’s lists of candidates could not have more than two-thirds of either gender. In 2002, the quota law was amended further, stipulating that on electoral lists the number of candidates of either gender cannot be greater. This also applies to the top candidates put forward by the party: they cannot be of the same gender.

Although the effect of the quota law is visible across Belgium’s political landscape today – 39% of Flemish parliamentarians are women, up from 20% in 1999, and Belgium’s federal parliament is 38% female, up from 25% in 1999.

Despite this radical change, the laws and regulations that govern the political workforce have stayed the same. Belgium’s current political culture, especially in the upper echelons where key decisions are made, remains inhospitable to working mothers. Case in point: politicians have no official employment statute and hover somewhere between having the rights of an employee and those of an independent contractor.

This means that when it comes to maternity leave, their rights are vague and undefined. Result? Minister Van den Bossche was all but lynched by the media earlier this year for taking four months maternity leave due to difficulties during the last weeks of her pregnancy.

Myriam Van Varenbergh, spokesperson for Alice, a Flemish action group for gender equality in corporate and political functions, acknowledges that top level politics is harsh when it comes to combining career and family – and not only so for women.

“We had two very telling cases in the Netherlands recently, when two top male politicians, the vice-premier and minister of finance and the minister of transport, both resigned to spend more time with their families. This shows that there is a fundamental problem with the reality of a political career for both men and women.”

Van Varenbergh thinks that the problem – and its solution – is to be found beyond the political arena: “We need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about worklife balance and about men’s and women’s responsibilities in raising their families that go far beyond the question of making politics more female-friendly,” she says. “There is a fundamental flaw in our economic system that goes beyond questions of gender representation in political roles.”

Women politicians talk

Flemish MP and Groen! party member Tinne Van Der Straeten, 34, is pregnant with her first child. “A career in politics demands a lot,” she tells me. “You always have to be available and have an opinion ready at any given moment. It also demands long hours: debates, meetings and social visits all take place after business hours. Before my pregnancy, I was often away from home four nights a week. When you grow a visible belly, people find it the most normal thing in the world that you take things a little slower. But I do notice among colleagues who have small children that once the ‘visibility’ of pregnancy has disappeared, one has to guard the balance between work and family much more closely. Personally, I hope that I won’t have to return to working at the break-neck speed of my pre-pregnancy days.”

Meyrem Almaci, also of Groen!, is due to give birth to her second child in August. “For many women, being a stay-at-home mum is a luxury the family can ill afford, and that’s no different in my case,” she says. “Like most women, I simply have to make it work somehow; so to me, having kids automatically comes in combination with holding a job.”

When asked how she will manage her job with caring for two small children, Almaci states what many working mums will confirm: “I can only do it with the support of my partner, by making clear agreements, adhering to a tight schedule and optimising the time when the kids are asleep.”

Most telling perhaps is the fact that Almaci recently decided not to put herself forward as a party candidate. “Being a party representative comes with enormous responsibility and, of course, a significant increase in the demands put on one’s time. Knowing that the workings of our federal parliament don’t really take our private lives into consideration, I decided that it would be best for the party, for myself and for my family if I did not make myself available as party candidate. I have carefully considered all aspects and am sure that, considering my choice to have a family, I can be of much better use to the party in other roles than that of party representative.”

Fundamentally, all three women raise the same point: we’re asking the wrong question when we ask if motherhood can be successfully combined with a political career. Instead, we need to debate the definition of a career, the role it plays in our lives and the flexibility we allow people in defining it according to specific priorities at certain points in their lives.

Although it doesn’t make the issue of who’s minding the children any less valid, the question governments should be putting to themselves is: who’s going to work for them when parenthood becomes impossible?