A feminist discriminating against women.....

Erm..... I think you really need to look at why you have your own business if you cannot take a holiday and your clients will dump you if you had a child.

Frankly, this sounds like you are being exploited by your clients in a way they could not do if you were their employee.

Is this one of those creative industries where a lot of people have been 'outsourced' which is code for dumping employees to cut costs and then rehiring them freelance, paying them less and demanding they work like dogs and be at the beck and call 24/7?

"of course it is not the end of the world having only 2 weeks ML but i hear about what other women get & it is completely alien."

That's about running your own business, not about maternity leave! Like working til 11 at night, never taking holiday, waking up in the night wondering about how to pay bill X etc, etc etc.

And also not having a boss, being able to walk out of the office & go for a walk if there's a quiet day, making the decisions yourself, rather than implementing someone else's ideas, and all other the good bits :)

Brilliant idea Posie.

I just think that you ought to find out in detail what the various entitlements are, before making any decisions.

And TBH your main beef seems to be that as a self-employed person with your own business you can't take mat leave in the same was as an employed person can.

But that has nothing to do with whether you employ a woman of child-bearing age or not - it's a completely separate issue.

You say you don't begrudge employed women their entitlements, but it is starting to sound like actually you rather do!

Real tilly....How about being ageist instead and employing a few older women? Surely these are the most overlooked group in employment and have loads to offer. Then you don't suffer from an all male work force?

Tilly - it's the difference between trying to operate in the world actual, and thinking about how things should be.

Whether we like it or not this is true for many employers. Why wouldn't it be? You spend a whack to interview and train and then they piss off for six months, leaving a gap. In addition many women come back part time or not at all. Until the system is fairer for both employer and employee it will always be the same.

To be honest, I think the op is also falling into the trap of assuming that a female employee has a well paid man behind her and is just working for pin money.

Yes you can take 12 months mat leave, and yes you can get 39 weeks paid at the SMP rate, but in practice the hypothetical female employee may well be the main breadwinner in her relationship and not be able to afford to take more than the initial 6 weeks paid at 90% salary.

So not that much different from the poor op.

As someone who earns considerably more than my partner I would love to see the law changed to allow me to share leave, although I'm lucky enough to work for an employer who has an enhanced maternity package and family friendly policies.

Still don't get how the original post relates to the op's subsequent complaints about maternity benefits for the self employed though. Unless she's not employing women because they might get (as she sees it) more than her - which isn't particularly feminist.

Not just re pregnancy etc, but long-term sick leave, holidays etc etc

It is still designed (as we know) around the model of man at work, woman in home. That's why it not work.

And it is a real problem for small businesses in particular.

Tilly, I think you have to separate three things:

a) maternity leave for a potential employee
b) whether as a self employed person your maternity leave is funded by the govt
c) whether functionally you can leave your own business for an extended period.

TBH, and speaking as someone who runs a business, there is nothing that anyone except you can do about c). Either you are able to/wish to develop other employees to the point where they can replace you when you are not there, or you can't/won't. We haven't (so far) and therefore I worked from when dd was about 2 weeks old, which was fine as DH & I run the business so we split childcare & work 50/50, and we were working from home.

b) if you set up the business as a ltd co so that you are an employee, then you receive employees' benefits. We used to be self emp (partnership) but we are now employed by the company. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides (from a tax POV etc).

Re. a) - from a purely practical POV I see mat leave as an opportunity to scope out a new potential employee at the govts. expense - beyond that, it has to be on your conscience (sp?) I guess.

What the OP really highlights is how rubbish the entire structure of work is in this country, and most others, and how unaccommodating and unrealistic it is with regards to human beings.

Excellent posts SardineQueen

Poor hiring indeed.

agh, ^s didn't work.

'if you are employed, you have a right to 52 weeks maternity leave from work. If you run your own business 52 weeks off work is impossible (forget about being paid for the time, your clients will move on and/or the competition will overtake you).'

OP - I really don't see waht this ^ has to do with whether or not you would employ a woman. And I don't see how you can stop this happening if you want to both take time off and^ retain your client base.

" If you run your own business 52 weeks off work is impossible (forget about being paid for the time, your clients will move on and/or the competition will overtake you"

Your hiring policies are obviously pretty rubbish then if you think the whole thing will go under if you are away for a while.

"if you are employed, you have a right to 52 weeks maternity leave from work. If you run your own business 52 weeks off work is impossible (forget about being paid for the time, your clients will move on and/or the competition will overtake you)."

Only 39 weeks of it is paid.

If you are self-employed you get the same amount of money for the bulk of mat leave ie SMP which is about £100 a week. Many women cannot afford to take a whole year off on this wage and so return much earlier than a year.

"if you are employed you have a right to go back to your original role or equivalent. the more time most women running a small business take, the less of a company they have afterwards."

I am not sure what the point of this is. You can pay someone to cover you while you are off, with the money you would otherwise be paying yourself. Unless you don't pay yourself anything, but given that you are in a position to employ others I assume you are getting money out of it.

As the boss you are in a stronger position than many employed women. You can give yourself flexible working to fit around your new role as a parent. Many women approach their company with their legal request for flexible working and find it turned down for often rather spurious reasons. So they end up without a job at all (if they really can't do full time / long hours that they were doing before).

Take some legal advice on this. What you are suggesting is illegal.

BUT, if you have your own company, I'm pretty sure you can have it set up so that 'the company' (a separate entity) employs 'you'. Thereby you become an employee of 'the company' even though you run it. And all laws and provision for any other employee will also apply to you.

What utter rot. If you take a risk to start a business then you understand the risk and gain concept don't you?

If you run a business then you can create wealth that exceeds what you could earn as an employee.

I don't think you have what it takes OP you don't even understand Maternity Leave and the payments that can apply.

You could for example, put in a return to work bonus to encourage a woman to return after maternity leave.

If you are an employer you are NOT beyond the law, and yes those laws still apply to YOU.

Anyhow as I say - good luck with telling your child/children about how you discriminated against women.