Strong women can do anything – but sometimes they shouldn’t have to.

Once in a while, LinkedIn will show me a post about a woman bringing her infant to work, accompanied by a photo. Underneath these posts, people applaud these women: how they are able to tackle everything, how they can have a career and somehow juggle motherhood on the side. Personally, I feel torn about these posts. There is no doubt that these women are doing an incredible job and deserve all of our respect. But I cannot help wondering: how many of them actually wanted to be in the situation they found themselves in, versus how many of them simply did not have any alternative? Very likely, the latter is the case for the majority. But how can it be that, in 2026, women still lack the basic support systems they need to be able to do their jobs? What is most striking to me personally is the disconnect between the message we send young girls growing up and the actual reality of our society. Bringing these two together still requires quite some work. What do I mean by this? During my time in high school, some thirty years ago, it quickly became clear that I had a knack for mathematics. While my teachers (all my maths teachers were male) would raise their eyebrows in surprise when they first discovered my abilities, they would all end up supporting me and cheering me on. Not once did I feel that there was something I could not accomplish because I was a girl. While this is not the case everywhere in the world, at least in our Western society I feel it is increasingly becoming the norm. Thanks to these teachers, my interest in maths and science was nurtured and my confidence was built. After graduating from high school, I decided to continue on this path and went on to study bioinformatics, which at the time was still a relatively new field. At the same time, growing up, I observed the mothers around me. "How can it be that, in 2026, women still lack the basic support systems they need to be able to do their jobs?" While many of my friends’ mothers were working, they were the ones I would see at school activities. They were the ones organising birthday parties. They were the ones preparing cakes for fundraising bake sales. And then there was my own mum. She had moved country for my dad’s job and, unfortunately, her degree was not recognised. While I was in primary school, she went to evening school so that she could enrol at university and study. I was definitely inspired by her persistence and determination to follow her passion. And a big shout-out to my dad, who supported my mum along the way and encouraged her to go after her dreams. However, somewhere deep down – and subconsciously so – I registered that being just a mum was not enough. And even more than that, I felt that having a full-time job and a career was incompatible with being a mum. If you had asked me in my mid-twenties what I wanted to become, I would have told you that I wanted to be a researcher, a scientist. And if people asked me about children, I answered quite frankly that I did not want any. Fast forward to today: I am now a mum of a girl and a boy, and I am very glad about it. When I met my husband, it soon became evident that he wanted to have children. This forced me to rethink my stance on motherhood. Should I really leave him, even though he seemed like the perfect match for me otherwise? Or was there perhaps a possibility that, while I was terrified of the idea of having children, not having any might be something I might regret further down the line? I also knew that if I wanted to try having kids, I would want a partner who was hands-on and would pull his weight. And I knew that my husband would be that kind of husband and father. He proved me right. For both our kids, he requested unpaid leave after my maternity leave. This allowed me to go back to work without the nagging feeling that I was abandoning my kids and handing them over to complete strangers. Another nice side effect was that both my kids were happy to be cared for by either one of us from a very young age. This gave me some freedom to spend an evening with friends or travel for work when needed. Even today, we share the chores at home. Not all of them equally – we both have our preferred ones – but overall, we make sure that we both do our part. And when the kids were small and got sick, we alternated staying home with them. Being out on maternity leave twice did not negatively impact how I was perceived or recognised at work. I even got promoted around one of my maternity leaves, and I remember feeling surprised and immensely grateful at the time. I know, though, that I have been very fortunate. I know friends who were made redundant shortly after coming back from maternity leave. Friends who struggle to find childcare because they are not working, leaving them caught in a vicious cycle. Friends who wanted to temporarily reduce their workload after maternity leave, only to be refused the opportunity. So, long story short: while I think we have come a long way in acknowledging that girls can do anything, we still have a lot of work to do to support them when they grow up and want to become mums. And it starts with us. We need to teach children from an early age that, in a relationship, both partners need to share the mental load and the chores. We need to teach girls not to be afraid to voice what they need from a partner. Girls are often taught to be quiet and not too demanding because we don’t want them to scare anybody off. We need to teach them that these conversations need to happen before getting married and having children. We should not have to figure these things out only once a child is already on the way – or already in the world. We also need to teach our boys how to take responsibility and that care work is for everyone. There are plenty of books encouraging girls to take an interest in STEM, teaching them about strong women in history and encouraging them to follow their dreams. But there are far fewer books showing male role models doing care work or everyday household chores. But we also, as a society, need to demand change. We need better access to childcare for everybody. High cost of childcare is pushing women to stay home and take care of their children because working and paying for childcare simply does not make financial sense. On top of that, in many places, there are tax benefits when one partner stays at home or works part-time – and that partner is usually the woman. We need to make sure that this family model remains a viable option for people who want it. But taxation should not become such a burden on dual-income families that it simply no longer makes economic sense for both partners to work. Otherwise, we are actively pushing mothers out of the workforce, with detrimental effects on their later career opportunities, pension plans and financial independence. I am only scratching the surface here, and there is a whole lot more to it. Bottom line Let’s not only teach our girls that they can become anything they want. Let’s also build a world where this still holds true for them when they choose to become mothers. Tamara Maas has been working in biotech for more than 10 years, helping hospitals around the world bring genetic testing based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) into clinical practice. She is passionate about the potential of genetics to improve healthcare and enjoys working at the intersection of science, technology and people. Outside of work, she is a mum of two children, aged 9 and 6, which keeps her busy in an entirely different way! She is also an enthusiastic book lover and runs a book club at work. Whenever she gets the chance, she likes to be outdoors - running, hiking, and spending time with her family. Tamara is one of CoworkHer's Founding Mentors.