The motherhood penalty is describes the impact of having children on women, which can result in lower earnings, reduced career opportunities, and increased work/life challenges.
Julie Keeble, HR director for UK and Ireland at LHH, invited the panel to look at the causes of, and solutions for, the motherhood penalty.
“The motherhood penalty is about bias at its root,” said Joeli Brearley, CEO and founder of maternity discrimination charity Pregnant Then Screwed, speaking to HR magazine.
“It’s really well documented that from the point that a woman gets pregnant, she seems distracted and less committed to a job compared with other types of employees.
“That comes from the fact that, because of the way our legislation works, women will take periods of time off work to go part-time, but it’s because of external legislation.
“Employers and every person within a company, as well as women, [should] acknowledge that bias; [understand] why they have that bias; what they can do to mitigate against it and why they should bother; and why it’s important for the organisation to do that.”
The childcare system in the UK is one of the biggest contributors to the motherhood penalty, Brearley told the panel.
“We have a childcare system in crisis. In the UK, 45% of parents say they have a six-month waiting list with their local childcare provider.
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“Predominantly women are not working the hours they want to because of this childcare crisis.”
Childcare is set to become more expensive, research by Pregnant Then Screwed published on Tuesday (12 November) showed. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an increase in employers’ national insurance contributions in the Autumn Budget on 30 October.
Nearly all (95%) childcare providers have said that they will have to increase their fees as a result, according to the educational charity Early Years Alliance.
A quarter (24%) of working parents reported that they would have to leave the workforce if the cost of childcare increased by 10%, Pregnant Then Screwed research showed. Nearly a third (59%) of parents also indicated that a rise in nursery fees would force at least one parent in their household to reduce their hours or leave work altogether.
“Employers across the board are really concerned about these hikes, and it tends to be women in lower-paid jobs who are working part time or in low-skilled work, who they feel are more expendable and are the ones that will end up being pushed out as a result of these cost increases,” Brearley said speaking to HR magazine.
Women being forced out of work due to motherhood is also contributing to the gender pay gap – a metric used by the majority of employers, Keeble noted.
“Attrition of working parents is a key driver of the gender pay gap,” according to Cecilia Crosley, founder of From Babies with Love, a social enterprise that donates profits to orphaned children around the world.
Employers that offer different childcare options, such as on-site childcare and emergency childcare, could mitigate against this, Brearley added.
She pointed to American outdoor clothing company, Patagonia, which was the first company to implement on-site childcare. “It improved their retention by 100%,” she commented.
“Not only does it improve your retention, it improves your wellbeing.”
Brearley added equal parental leave could impact the motherhood penalty from parenthood onwards.
“From the moment you go for a job, if you are [a woman of] child-bearing age you are less likely to get that job because you are a risk to that business.
“If you have an equal parental leave scheme, it makes men as much of a burden as women.”
A carer’s leave policy could also improve retention of working parents, Brearley suggested, pointing to energy supplier Centrica’s 10 days of paid carer’s leave, which has reportedly saved £3.2 million in retention and lost productivity.
She said: “These policies are really good for business; they attract people, they retain people, they make people happier and more productive.”
Natalie O’Sullivan, talent and planning operations partner at professional services company Accenture, noted that Accenture uses Bright Horizons as their childcare provider, which provides emergency childcare and carer support.
“We have to understand that, with an ageing workforce, some of us have caring responsibilities to adults as well,” she said. In instances where something happens to a loved one, I could get a carer who would be able to go in and support [them]. We have an emergency line we can call, and the person at the other end will do an assessment. The same applies for childcare.”
Crosley added that older workers should also be accounted for in employers’ family-friendly policies.
“We created a guide that contains five themes to create family-friendly workplaces, that has a knock-on effect of supporting retention of all talent,” she explained.
The themes are: a gender inclusive policy; fertility and neonatal care; pregnancy and baby loss; recognising returning to work; and grandparents at work. The latter is the most “underattended data catch by HR”, she noted, and is a key demographic driver influencing caring responsibilities and the cost of childcare.
Read more: Fertility at work: Insights from The F Word at Work live
O’Sullivan told the panel that Accenture also has a career coaching service available for parents returning to work.
“Knowing that my employer understands and appreciate me made me feel so much more confident coming back to work,” O’Sullivan, who is a mother, shared.
For employers who can not afford coaches, HR should assign buddies to working parents as emotional support, Crosley advised.
“Buddying is a lovely way to introduce an emotional support mechanism from within,” Crosley said. You probably know from your HR data who has just come back from parental leave. Someone in your team could do the administration of being a matchmaker in a buddying system.”
Senior leaders should also be encouraged to ‘parent out loud', Crosley commented, to make working parents feel included.
"We still have this cultural barrier to overcome," Brearley told HR magazine.
"There's no use taking these conversations [about the motherhood penalty] to parenting groups. There needs to be a cross- company understanding of the challenges of parenting, and the benefits of making your workplace work for parents. We need to particularly look at dads, making sure that dads are enabled to do caring as well as to do their jobs."
O’Sullivan emphasised that recognising working parents as people was crucial to attracting and retaining women at Accenture. “We had to educate everyone,” she continued. “We needed the whole workforce to be on board. We have allyships within the male population at work; we’ve got a great shared parental leave programme, and we see really strong stories shared from that.”
As a result of these changes, Accenture has increased the proportion of women in their workforce from 40% to 48% from 2017 to 2024 and the number of female managing directors from 25% to 30% in the same time.
Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 3,847 parents who currently have a child in nursery in the UK between 8 and 11 November 2024.
