WHEN she had her second child, Mrs Lim Hwee Hua took four years off work to care for her children.
Juggling career and family was no easy task and the then-26-year-old decided to make her family top priority.
'There's no right or wrong in such a decision. But I was prepared that younger people would get ahead of me and that I might have to work for younger bosses,' she said.
The Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Finance and Transport was speaking to reporters after a dialogue session with more than 70 National Trades Union Congress women unionists on Saturday.
Together with labour MP Halimah Yacob, they discussed issues from the impact of the downturn on women and Singapore's low fertility rate to foreign labour and climate change.
Mrs Lim said that during the downturn, employees could be working harder and this could put extra stress, especially on women coping with both work and family demands.
On helping women get back to work, Madam Halimah said that last year, NTUC's Back-To-Work Women Programme helped 2,300 do so.
This year, the scheme has already helped more than 800 women.
The two women leaders want companies to be more family-friendly and show flexibility in allowing people to work from home.
On whether women would be short-changed in their work appraisals due to the four months of maternity leave, Mrs Lim quipped: 'Man go away for 40 days a year and employers are fine. It's back to how employers want to view it; I'm not saying it's easy, but it can be done.'
