The Big Brake: Part 3
15 solutions for the motherhood penalty
In The Big Brake Part 1 and Part 2, I wrote about how research shows that one in ten women are sacked, dismissed or made redundant whilst pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of returning from maternity leave.
Faced with such a complex issue, it can be tempting to think it is just too hard.
My call to women in this life stage is: don’t give up, the world needs you. Your unique strengths, experience and attributes, and the leadership skills, empathy and resilience that you’ve cultivated whilst doing the hardest and best job in the world: parenting.
Now, we need some solutions to tackle this issue. A lot of them! Here are my top fifteen, and they involve several parties working together: women, men, employers and government.
15 solutions to address the motherhood penalty
What women can do:
Build a toolkit for the strongest version of you.
If you’re one of the women committed to being a present, loving parent but also driven to have an impact outside the home, then you can do this, but you will need to build some new tools that will help to sustain momentum irrespective of setbacks. Mid-career, these skills may be as essential as the knowledge and degrees accumulated to that point.
Your toolkit needs to include the following actions:
Moving your body.
The single most important thing that will help you to move forward is exercise. It is the silver bullet that flushes out the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, releases mood-enhancing chemicals, and often becomes the catalyst for momentum in other areas of life.
Moving your mind.
If you’ve been sidelined professionally after having a baby, or if you’ve let your inner imposter win, process all that muck so it doesn’t weigh you down in the next phase. Work through every last bit of anger, shock, sadness, and fear until it no longer has power over you. Journal, talk it out with a friend or psychologist, write unsent letters, or record voice memos to yourself.
Moving your soul.
This is all about refuelling, because you have no capacity for anything more than survival if you are depleted. Inject some joy and connection back into your life. Immerse yourself in something that energises you: a walk in nature, theatre, music, seeing a friend. Lose the guilt about doing something for yourself - you can’t pour from an empty cup.
Use your village.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, yet these days we insist on doing it alone. Whether it’s to job hunt, prepare for an interview, or to figure out what you actually want, you need the gift of time: so take up those offers of babysitting from family and friends.
Stop self-sabotaging during interviews.
It’s disappointing that we have to hide parts of our life during recruitment, but the reality is that the subconscious gender bias in all of us is too strong not to. Your children are not relevant to your ability to do a job effectively, so save that for sharing with your colleagues once you’re in the door.
Speak with your feet.
You are worthy of a workplace that sees you as more than just an employee number. Don’t underestimate the power of choosing to walk away from an employer who doesn’t support working parents.
What employers can do:
Include women in the conversation about return-to-work plans.
Managers should avoid making assumptions about a pregnant woman’s return-to-work intentions. Women on maternity leave should be given information about workplace changes that may impact their role - at the same time as other employees. Return-to-work agreements need to shift from being done verbally to being agreed in writing, and this must be before day one of maternity leave.
Think beyond paid parental leave schemes.
Women (and men) who have reached the highest levels in organisations should be advocating for creative approaches that support working parents beyond the first year: flexible work arrangements, cleverly-planned job share arrangements, and a gender equity network that collates real-time feedback from working parents.
Take a pulse check on the company culture around paternity leave.
Organisations with low uptake for paternity or partner leave schemes should include a section on the parental leave culture in their employee surveys. Too often, a culture exists where men are seen as weak or lazy if they take up parental leave.
What men can do:
Recognise the power of a single conversation.
The men I worked with around the time of having my children were incredibly supportive, with one actively helping me to secure another senior leadership role after I was demoted on maternity leave. One conversation with the right person can change a woman’s entire career trajectory.
Step it up at home.
A common barrier to mothers returning to the workplace is the issue of the domestic load, estimated at being the equivalent of a full time job in itself. In families where both parents share the domestic and parenting duties, women are more likely to successfully maintain a career throughout the early parenting years.
Lead the change in workplace culture.
When fathers start asking for part time or flexible work arrangements, it becomes less of a “women’s issue”, and fewer women will have each work day truncated by drop-off or pick-up obligations.
What government can do:
Shift the cost of maternity leave to the government, not the employer.
This should be the full cost, not the statutory minimum wage solution in place in many countries already. This is all about shrinking the maternity-leave-shaped target on the back of mid-career women.
Increase job protections for women in the postnatal phase.
I don’t usually advocate for “big government” solutions, but having been demoted from senior leadership roles during both my periods of maternity leave, I’m convinced that we need greater legislated protections for new mothers.
Commission an annual research survey.
A survey measuring the rate of involuntary changes to a woman’s level of seniority around the time of maternity leave will start to track data that is not captured by broad metrics like employee turnover. An incentive scheme could reward companies rated by employees as showing a commitment to supporting working parents through retention of women post maternity leave or flexible working schemes.
Establish a childcare rebate scheme that actually works.
Affordable childcare is a significant barrier for the primary carer to return to work (in 70% of cases, this is the mother), yet it is an essential enabler to women’s workforce participation after having children. Governments need to rethink the way childcare rebate schemes are structured, and avoid blunt tools like separate income tests for each parent.
Finally, this last one is a call to women, all over the world:
Vow to support other women. Always.
Former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, famously declared that, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”. If you’ve been put through the wringer professionally when you had your babies, vow to never leave another woman alone in that experience. Talk about it, change what you can from within, and commit to being part of the group of women who know that there is nothing more powerful than a collective of women supporting each other to shine.
Which solutions do you think would be most effective? Do you have other solutions to share? I want to hear from you in the comments below!