Working mothers in the UK still feel like they need to apologise for their existence

There's no denying that we're had significant progress for women in the workplace over the last few decades. Equal pay and opportunity were legislated in the 1970s, as was mandatory maternity leave and reinstatement. Despite these advancements, equality for moms has not been achieved. Some businesses try to skirt the legislation by re-grading jobs to avoid equal pay claims, making women redundant while they're on maternity leave, or encouraging long hours and presenteeism.

 

In 2017, when new regulations required employers to publish their gender pay gap figures, the extent to which women continue to cluster in lower-level jobs and lower-paying areas of the economy was vividly highlighted. The biggest disparities were in banking and finance, where men still dominate top positions and often walk away with eye-popping bonuses.

 

The worst offender was Ryanair, with a 72% wage difference for UK personnel. Women made up two-thirds of lower-paid cabin personnel but only eight of the airline's 500-plus pilots.

 

For working mothers in the United Kingdom, difficulties in the workplace are exacerbated by a long-standing lack of affordable, high-quality childcare options. Of course, fathers who are primary caregivers face similar issues. Nonetheless, the reality is that women continue to handle more of the childcare and housework responsibilities than men. 

 

According to the Office for National Statistics, women are estimated to perform 60% more unpaid labour than men, and in terms of childcare, mothers put in more than double the weekly hours. 

 

Shared Parental Leave is a good start, but with only 2% of new fathers taking it, true equality at home and work may be a long way off.

 

 

Plenty of Room for Improvement

Even in today's world, pregnant women are still denied time off for antenatal check-ups and safe, comfortable breastfeeding facilities at work. Chatrooms such as Mumsnet provide a window into women's fears about informing line managers of their pregnancy or discussing their children at work.

 

Allison Pearson gathered horror stories of misogyny from working mothers for her best-selling 2002 novel, I Don't Know How She Does It. They experienced being side-lined following maternity leave and felt pressured to prove their loyalty to the firm.

 

One mother even discovered that her male coworkers had dosed a container of expressed breast milk stored in a common fridge with vodka as a joke. These are extreme cases, but they illustrate dynamics that make a workplace feel hostile to moms.

 

Pregnancy discrimination, according to the law, is when a woman is treated unfairly because of her pregnancy or a pregnancy-related condition. Pregnancy discrimination can take many forms:

To prove pregnancy/maternity discrimination, you need to show that the treatment was due to your pregnancy or absence on maternity leave. Visit How-To-Sue.co.uk for additional information on this topic.

From day one of employment, you are protected from pregnancy and maternity discrimination whether you're an employee, contractor, freelancer, agency worker or casual worker. 

 

In 2015, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission launched a formal investigation into discrimination against pregnant women. According to their final report, 54,000 women are driven out of work each year as a result of pregnancy discrimination, one in every five moms has faced harassment and unfavourable comments because of their pregnancy, and one in ten mothers has been discouraged from taking time off for antenatal care.

 

Denial of a pay increase, refusal of promotion, being required to accept lower-paying work, exclusion from training, and being denied time off for antenatal care were the most common areas of unfair treatment.

 

Women who took part in the in-depth interviews reported a wide range of negative workplace experiences, ranging from subtle shifts in colleagues' and managers' attitudes to unfair redundancy, dismissal, being denied opportunities for career advancement, as well as sexual and verbal harassment.

 

Half of the UK's Working Mothers Denied "Right to Request" Flexible Work

 

According to a survey conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the campaign group Mother Pukka, half of working mothers in the UK do not receive the flexibility they request, and those who do work flexibly face discrimination.

 

The TUC secretary general, Frances O'Grady, argued that this survey reveals the system's failure, despite the fact that the legal "right to request" flexible working has been in existence for two decades.

 

When asked about discrimination and disadvantage at work, 86% of women who work flexibly admitted to having experienced it, while 42% said they feared discrimination if they asked about flexible work in a job interview.

 

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) proposed in September that employees be given the right to request flexible working from the moment they begin working and that employers be required to consider what options they might be able to provide.

 

Unions argued that the proposals do not go far enough and that job advertisements should specify the options available for the role instead of making people request flexible working arrangements such as working from home, agreed predictable time, condensed hours, flexitime and job sharing. 

 

The TUC, in partnership with other organisations such as Mother Pukka, Fawcett Society and the Young Women's Trust, is calling on companies to include flexible working arrangements in their advertisement so employees know their options from day one and can appeal unfair rejections. 

 

The survey, which comprised 12,855 responses from working mothers, found that most participants would be more likely to apply for a job if it listed the exact types of flexible working available in the advertisement and wanted the government to grant all workers the right to flexible working from the start of their employment.