Unfair treatment at work..help please?

[slowroast]

I'm due to return to work after Christmas after taking 9 months maternity leave and I was on furlough before my time off (ever since covid started so haven't worked since then). Everything's been sorted with work until my boss called me on Friday and said that I have to go into the office to work but no one will be there as everyone's working from home. They're saying that I cants do the same because they don't have any spare laptops to give me so I can also work from home. I'm looking to get a second opinion on this as I'm not sure if IABU. I feel as though I'm being treated differently to all the other employees and and that it's unfair that everyone is allowed to WFH full-time...but me. I've even offered to use my own laptop at home but they've refused. Am I overreacting? What do I do?

If there are other women working at home, then no it does not smack of sex discrimination, in fact it would be hard to win a case if that is so. Also protection from maternity discrimination does not last forever, it lasts for twenty six weeks after giving birth and OP is already past this point.

Rather than immediately defaulting to a discrimination case, OP would be better of working through the issues, perhaps answering some of the questions that have been raised, such as is this a temporary thing due to worldwide laptop shortages. And the next step might be a formal flexible working request.

@Aprilx

Not difficult to prove if it immediately follows maternity leave. Many precedents here.