Many mothers look for part-time and flexible work so that they can manage all of this extra unpaid work, but only 10 per cent of jobs are advertised as part-time, with just 1 in 4 jobs specifying any type of flexible working,9 so many women are forced to work in jobs that are well below their skill level. On top of this, part-time work is paid at

Brilliant, skilled, hard-working women are being pushed out and pushed to the edge by a system that ignores their needs and by employers who undermine their abilities. The rising cost of living, and a benefit system that doesn’t consider caregiving to have worth, forces women into poverty for doing the most important job there is – raising the next

‘A mother’s choices are limited by extortionately priced, inflexible, inaccessible childcare. A mother’s choices are limited by maternity pay that is well below the national living wage. A mother’s choices are limited by the rising cost of living, which means most families need two incomes to cover their basic costs.1 A mother’s choices are limited

‘Well, it’s the usual suspects: Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden. The countries where childcare is properly subsidised, where ring-fenced, properly paid paternity leave means dads are far more likely to take time out to care for their children, and flexible working is the norm for all employees. In these countries, mothers report far higher levels

‘If you look at other countries, which have very different legislative frameworks, women in those…

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Even before the pandemic threw a microscope onto the inequalities experienced by pregnant women and mothers, our ability to progress had flatlined. We can see this from the gender pay gap statistics, a decline of only 0.6 per cent from 2012 to 2019.14

Problems are messy and complicated: you can’t give a full answer as to why women have unequal access to the labour market in 90 seconds. It…

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‘In the UK, parental-leave legislation favours mothers taking time out to care for children over fathers. In fact, thousands of working dads have no access to any paid paternity leave whatsoever. This means that, in nearly every family, the mother is the main carer,…

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What many don’t see is the severe impact this is all having on women – the damage of pregnancy and maternity discrimination on our mental health, the pressure to be perfect, the physical exhaustion of attempting to do it all, the struggle with the lack of power and control because the system doesn’t work for us. It’s all too much.