Inequality within a business regarding maternity issues!

[vicks18]

Hello, I am a student from Chipping Campden School in Gloucestershire, I am currently doing an extended A Level project which has to be based around one of subjects which we are looking to take on further to higher education and in my case this is business studies.

For my extended project I am currently looking into the topic of inequality within a business. I am breaking it down into sections one being -

How/why/what issues occur within a business due to maternity leave and how it has affected many women!

I would be very grateful if anyone has any information or opinions which they are willing to share in order to help me out with the research side of this project in order for me to be able to put the research together in order to write a type of essay!

Other questions I will be also looking into are:

Is the inequality gap closing?

Do female employees feel if the inequality gap is closing?

What is the evidence that it is closing? and What is stopping it close?

If anyone is able to help out at all even if it is a sentence or two it would be much appreciated!

Thank you

You will get massively diverse answers as the situation depends so much on your sector and employer and role and so on.

It's also hard as you aren't pregnant all the time so for eg I got shafted when pg by my company but it was 9 years ago, they may have changed, but I don't know, and I work for someone else now, and they seem great, but I haven't been pregnant so don't actually know! A lot of this stuff is not apparent til it happens.

Still I am sure you will get plenty of opinions not trying to put you off just giving a viewpoint!

If you do an advanced search I bet there have been loads of threads on this before so that might be a good source for you.

Also there are regular stories in the press about women being discriminated against when pregnant (losing jobs) I don't know if you have seen that I'll see if I can find a recent one for you.

here

Has something called the "pregnant then screwed" site with loads of stories (I haven't looked at it)

And it says "In a few months' time the Equality and Human Rights Commission will publish results of a £1m study that campaigners say will show a huge rise in the numbers of women suffering discrimination because they are pregnant or taking maternity leave." the report is from may so it might be that has been published worth looking into if it's not on your list of sources

The government released a report about this not long ago - you can read about it on the Maternity Action website.

You may also want to look at the impact for employers - women aren't only employees after all - and compare it with other types of absence and how these are treated. Either other caring responsibilities, like for older people or spouses, or non-caring absences such as for surgery or career breaks.

Btw although I reckon you could easily cobble an essay together purely from stuff people say on Mumsnet, you do need to do some proper research as well. Hope you find this an interesting area of study.

I'm an employer and I feel that what would help would be if you could actually claim back mat pay from hmrc. I know they say you can but in reality there are only a very small number of employers that fit the criteria.

At the moment if an employee is pregnant, I have to pay her mat pay, plus pay a replacement plus pay for the training for the replacement who will only be here for a year. I just think it would soften the blow if all employers cold reclaim mat pay.

I didn't realise they couldn't, rightguard. I thought SMP could be claimed back? I'm sure you're right - I only employ myself so haven't had the issue.

have a look at the acas guidance as a starting point for your essay (Google acas pregnancy and maternity discrimination). This explains the rights of pregnant women in the workplace and was very useful for me when I was made redundant whilst on maternity leave. The relevant legislation is the equality act 2010.

I know you've mentioned mat leave a lot, but will you be looking at what impact the new Shared Parental Leave legislation is having on the issues that you mention? It's still fairly early days, but it was introduced to help support new not just women. I work in HR and would be happy to help answer any questions I can

Actually I may be wrong. Haven't had to pay mat pay for several years so I guess things may have changed

Good point about shared parental leave - you might want to contrast it with other countries which have had it for longer, notably Sweden. Despite this they still passed legislation to make it mandatory for the man to take at least three months of the leave, which has annoyed the crap out of some of my (male) friends, much to my amusement.

As an employer, you can usually reclaim 92% of employees’ Statutory Maternity (SMP), Paternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Pay.

From gov.UK
www.gov.uk/recover-statutory-payments

There was a recent mumsnet guest post about maternity discrimination. Definitely look into parental leave. I hope that will close the gap as more men take it up. It would be interesting if we could get to a point where take up rates between men and women are similar. So employers won't have the subconscious idea that women will take more leave.

Unfortunately I suspect the usual justifications will get trotted out for men not taking it:

• as the higher earner, the loss of income is too severe (in fairness until employers offer enhanced parental pay this is actually true)
• as the higher earner/more ambitious one of the partnership, taking the time off the career track will be more damaging
• it's seen as 'normal' for women so for a bloke to do it will mark him out much more intensely as a shirker (see above)
• the woman has to do the first bit anyway due to being the one giving birth, so why disrupt two employers instead of only one?
• it falls right in the middle of vital project [x] what a shame, the world will end if I have to leave it for someone else to finish
• er, it's boring.

rightguard this government web site doesn't give the impression that there are exceptions. It says you get 92% of what you pay out, or 103% if you are a small employer. Is this wrong?

Oh I forgot one: all the social stuff (baby groups and whatnot) are set up for women, I feel intimidated being the only guy. To which I respond: try being one of two women in a department of 90 for most of the last ten years and then we can talk.

I thought small employers got 103% back, but this was something I was told some years ago. I think we should let the OP investigate and report back as part of her research training

Thank you all so very much, all of your comments have been helpful and had given me many starting points into my further research!

If any of you come across something relevant it would be much appreciated if you would be happy to share it with me!