Jobs, discrimination and the 'motherhood penalty': what can be done? Come tell MNHQ what you think

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Lots of you will have seen the recent stories about the Equality and Human Rights Commission's report into maternity and pregnancy discrimination, which found that around 54,000 mothers each year are illegally discriminated against at work.

When we surveyed MNers recently about maternity and work, you told us that you overwhelmingly agree that the 'motherhood penalty' exists, and most of those surveyed (65%) believed having children had a negative effect on their career.

So we'd like to hear what you think about how both explicit discrimination, and wider difficulties faced by mothers going back into the workplace, can be tackled, over and above the enforcement of laws that are already in place.

Do you work for an employer (or are you one yourself) who is very successful at welcoming mothers back in to the workplace?

What practical steps can employers take? (These can be steps taken within organisations, between organisations, and between organisations and employees - just for starters...) Do you have any examples of strategies that have worked, either as an employer or employee?

Are there tweaks (or bigger changes) that could be brought in to start to tackle this problem in a more systematic way?

We'd really love to hear your experiences and ideas, whether experience-based or completely blue-sky.

For those of you who like reading government documents, there's also a current consultation into the gender pay gap, and we may use the responses from this thread to help to inform a response to that as well.

Thanks
MNHQ

I agree with the last two posts about costs of childcare and how it doesn't seem to benefit the working parents. This isn't 'having a go' at non-working people; it's addressing the question at the start about jobs and discrimination at the workplace.

We pay £800/month/child at nursery. When we had 2 in nursery for about a year/15 months, it was hell. We both earned sufficient money but it also meant that we had very little fall back in terms of savings and food money etc. We continued to work because it would have crucified us at the workplace, but it wasn't nice. We too don't qualify for tax credits or discounted spaces at nursery.

We lived for the year our children turned 3 and we got the 15 h free nursery care. This week's the last week my child will be in nursery - we would have paid roughly £100,000 for both children to be in nursery full-time.

Dojo

Your point seemed to be that employees were "winning" either way; my response was that is not the case.

It's far more standard to be restricted from working elsewhere than not if you are on a normal contract; you can take this up with employers if you like but unless you are quite senior you probably won't get anywhere.

Those who freelance: if you set up as a company and pay yourself as an employee you can access SMP and childcare vouchers too, if this is helpful. You could probably set up
Two companies and take maternity leave from one but not the other, thereby being able to do more than the 10 KIT days.

Yonic you can only access SMP through a Ltd company if you have been working there long enough, so if someone sets up a Ltd company now and then falls pregnant they still wouldn't be entitled to it.

With the way that dividend taxation is being changed in April it also is likely that even with childcare vouchers you would still not be financiall better off as you're effectively being taxed twice with corporation tax and income tax.

...and there are the extra costs of an accountant for Ltd company. Mine charges £500 for a sole trader and £1,200 for Ltd company so that would wipe out most savings on childcare vouchers.

It's certainly possible to do one's own company accounts.

Salary, NI and CCVs come off profits so reduce corporation tax. You can of course offer yourself enhanced maternity pay if you have the cash in the company. And some people reading this would have enough time to make themselves an employee before falling pregnant and possibly then paying themselves a bonus in the qualifying weeks...

Anyway, this is off topic - it's something potentially worth looking into for some people but isn't a direct answer to MNHQ's question.

Your point seemed to be that employees were "winning" either way; my response was that is not the case.

It is the case that those who are employed get, on average, more maternity pay than those who are self employed. The fact that they are allowed, through government policy, to do as much freelance work as they choose whilst on maternity leave without having their maternity pay restricted does further increase the discrepancy between those who are employed and those who are self employed.

It's not a question of anyone 'winning' so much as treating people differently for no apparent reason - I don't for a second believe that many people, employed or otherwise want to spend their maternity leave freelancing, but for those who need to earn extra money, ceasing MA payments under circumstances where SMP payments continue just seems like an arbitrary difference to impose.

It's far more standard to be restricted from working elsewhere than not if you are on a normal contract;

Perhaps that is your experience, it is certainly not mine, although I would be surprised if there were official figures to confirm either way. If businesses are unreasonably restricting their employees from freelancing then that is another matter which needs addressing by those who have been affected by it, but I cannot speak to that as I have never known it to be a problem for anyone that I know who has chosen to freelance during their maternity leave.

Also, as GoooRooo says, it's not as simple as setting up a limited company and paying yourself SMP if the costs of doing so outweigh the savings.

I never said it was "as simple as" - I said it might be worth looking into for some people. It's what I do as well as other family members and it's the most economic set up for me.

Back to the topic...

I think the government's plan to create more "funded" places (which are actually funded at well below market rate) is likely to fail as there aren't sufficient providers who can run at a loss with even more spaces. I don't know what their goal is with that.

We need more SAHD's, then women will feel less of a motherhood penalty.

Do I find it hard to juggle motherhood with work? Not with a stay at home husband I don't....

Except I do, because the process of pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period left me a shattered wreck of a person with no self-confidence or coping ability. So we might need to fix the way women are treated during childbirth as well....

I would love MNHQ to do a survey on that in fact...

Did having children change your confidence/psychology

a) for the better
b) not at all
c) for the worse

if c) was this:
a) unavoidable
b) avoidable

Yy ice

I worry that enabling women to work flexibly full time just means that working mothers come under more pressure to do so rather than going PT and/or that it takes pressure off their partners to help?

I work FT with a young child and a lack of flexibility had meant DP had had to modify his working hours so that we can juggle childcare. Compared to other parents I know I would say we parent fairly equally, but I am sure that if my employer was required to let me work sufficiently flexibly the default would have been that I would have to deal with working round childcare while DP stuck to 9-5.

It has to be the norm that fathers also work flexibly and are equally expected and enabled to adapt their career to care for children, rather than running the risk of just enabling women to take on even more!

yonic I was sitting listening to somebody saying that there were some things that would always be different about becoming a parent for men and women and nodding along...and suddenly realised most of it is only true because we completely fail to treat childbirth like the serious (potentially fatal) process it really is.

I'm currently 11+6 and I've only told my line manager. Scan's later this week so I'll tell others after that. So far my manager's been mostly supportive of time off etc. However she did mention it at my 6 month review in a 'I don't know what your grand plan is, or whether your focus is on being off next year...' which I found really unfair, especially as I've been trying so hard at the moment to do what is expected of me/more where possible.

I find, for me, the real issue is going to be that I just won't be able to afford to live on SMP. I have a fairly generous maternity package and will get 90% pay for the first 18 weeks, which is more than many women get, however I would like to take 6-7 months ML which would leave me on SMP for 3 months. SMP is just not enough to cover my mortgage payments, let alone include food and fuel in the mix. If the 90% rate of SMP lasted 6 months for all women, rather than 6 weeks then single mothers like myself might not have to give up work and exist on benefits. (For the record, I'm not planning on giving up work, I'm just not yet sure how I'm going to be able to afford to live for those three months. I have 6 and a bit months to figure it out.)

This second part is probably a bit off topic for this thread; it's not my work being discriminatory, but rather something I consider a fault in the whole working mother support system.

Fluffy, I think all measures now are aimed at parents not just mothers. Agree fathers doing more is key.

Blue, with 700,000 babies born pa and an average salary of £26.5k (rounding down to 25k as women paid less) the national cost of an additional 4.5 months of 90% SMP could be up to £6bn pa.

I dare hardly put my head above the parapet here but let's live dangerously.

There is a problem where the needs of the business requires organised out-of-hours shift or night or weekend working. Some parents, mothers more than fathers and LPs obviously in particular, do not grasp that everyone has the same right to a private life and to the same quality of private life. So no, you cannot be excused your equal share of the early, late, night, weekend shifts, even if your colleagues have no children (yet) or grown-up children. And if you worked Christmas Day last year (and are in the same job) you should not even be asked to work it this year.

I know it's hard but you can't solve your problems at the expense of your colleagues whose private life is different to yours.

I don't really expect it to happen, Yonic, although thanks for putting it into real figures for me. I knew, as a concept, it would cost the Govt more in a time of necessary cuts, but hadn't done the sums to work out just how much more. Possibly, then, a means tested SMP, taking into account living costs, but again that would take a lot of admin time to monitor, and would cost more from the budget to subsidise. I don't have an answer.

I'm just very aware that I'm going to have a really difficult time, potentially involving a loan/a family loan, just for wanting to take a full 6 months of ML. I earn above the average salary, but live in an expensive part of the area (it's the village I grew up in, and because it has some very good transport links, and is still green and countrified, house prices are high, especially when there's only one income in the household) so I'm frustrated because I considered myself to be doing fairly well, and at 30 didn't want to put off starting a family when I didn't know how long it would take me to get pregnant, but it turns out there's this window of 3 months that I won't be very solvent, and there aren't many pleasant options to deal with it; I either get a loan from somewhere, or I skimp on all the baby things I would like to buy, so as to put enough money aside to cover it. It's far from a big and serious problem, but it's going to hit me very hard at a time I would like to be making as easy as possible.

Many start a new role already pregnant to ensure they qualify for some form of maternity pay with little regard that they have wasted recruitment time, a replacement needing to be found and trained yet again etc.

Doubtless you have statistics to back up this sweeping claim. Care to give us a number? I presume you're already aware that they won't be getting maternity pay as such either, only maternity allowance which is not the same thing.

I would be shocked if that's the case. Many women considering starting a family deliberately don't go for new jobs or promotions as they don't want to be judged and there will may well be prejudice against them in hiring anyway. Of course, if made redundant etc then they may have to seek new roles, how very unreasonable.

Absolutely. Previous redundancy is why I rocked up to a new job 4 weeks pregnant, in fact. Of course I totally did it deliberately, after all why would anyone want 6 weeks at 90% when she could just go straight onto the £135 a week flat rate?!

May I ask where to post questions about returning to work and whether/how to ask for part time etc? Can't see anywhere obvious but prob being dense.

My tuppence ha'penny on the above is that employers should trust that ambitious women are going to work double hard to keep career on track post baby but simply need option to come in later/stay later/work from home. Legislation requiring more flexibility for parents should be passed.

The only way you'll get rid of the 'motherhood penalty' IMO is if there is a cultural shift away from the 9-5, five day working day for men and women. I know my DH would love to spend more time at home with the kids and I am going back to work part time after two years. Theoretically he could drop a day and I could take on more hours but it is unheard of in his industry for a man at his level to request part time hours. He wouldn't even ask for fear of the impression he would give.

He also earns more than me so financially it would be harder for us, but on a deeper level I think I chose a career path that was more family friendly (read traditionally female and lower pay) with an eye to one day having kids. The attitudes are so entrenched against working mothers. I've been told in interview 'you don't get quality staff on part time hours'. I have friends who have sat on interview panels being told 'she's getting married this summer, she won't last in the job a year before she's off on ML'.

We need to campaign for more flexible working, working from home and part time work for men and women. At the moment the focus on solving the problem through childcare, seems to revolve around enabling women to work full time to maintain their careers whilst simultaneously have a family. It is evident that for a lot of families this is not what they want or where their priorities lie and many women's careers end up second to caring for their children at home.

Northern, there's a returning to work topic but I think employment issues is the best place.

cakeandcustard One of the most female-dominated lines of work is health-care of every sort. It's also a line where there is less scope for working from home than in many others - it's literally hands-on - and more need for out-of-traditional-hours work than in most.

I do, in all honesty, see problems. You cannot excuse people with children their share of the nights and weekends. And if you did, given the demographic of that sector, it would be largely women pissing on other women.

Andrew - but the thing is, there's this one pattern of shift work, where you're on days, then lates, then nights, and it goes round in a rota. It's proven to be terrible for your health, it's a night mare to arrange childcare around etc.

In my experience, if you just asked, you'd probably find people who would work permanent nights (my brother does at a supermarket, he gets a pay bump for it, and gets time off in the day when it's more useful around sleeping). When I was childless, both DP and I worked weekends, Christmas etc, and had days off in the week because it was better for us. Now I work one day at the weekend, so we only need 4 days of childcare.

There's no good reason for this permanent rotation in shift jobs, there's no need in many other jobs for 5 day weeks (if DP and I could both do compressed hours we could have 2 days off together, and then both do a solo day of childcare, and only need 3 days provided for example)

This insistence on doing things the way we've always done it, instead of looking at alternatives harms and hampers everyone.

When it comes to me - I'm lucky I freelanced, I kept up my reputation, and I've landed a dream job mainly working from home, and all the people I work with are parents and so we all understand when we take meetings on the school run, or with a toddler on our laps, or if someone's sick and needs to skip something. That's how everyone should have it, and they don't.

You may not be able to work at home in health care but you can work part time and as chunky says, its often not the type of work but the insistence that it needs to be done in a certain way. People are stuck with the idea that if you're not putting in the hours your not doing the job properly and we end up in a long hours culture which is no good for family life.

Someone please come along with a study demonstrating long hours and lack of flexibility is bad for productivity (I'm sure there are loads).