Before she had children, Sam Kennedy Christian threw herself headlong into her career. As a charity communications manager she worked full time, commuting two hours a day to her London office, working long hours and spending a quarter of her time travelling overseas. “I got quite a lot of my identity from work back then,” she says.
Now aged 39, with two children aged six and two, her working life looks totally different; forced down an unplanned path by the demands of motherhood.
Like seven per cent of women, according to the campaign group Pregnant then Screwed, Sam was made redundant while pregnant with her first child. She found another job, but it was at a more junior level. A four-day week of hybrid working and leaving the office on time meant she didn’t see much of her managers. She struggled to get promoted.
Sam, who now lives in Kent, moved into the public sector in an attempt to reignite her career. With that came a salary hike – and a huge workload. Her employer refused to offer flexible working. The result was burnout. Something had to give and, as she was preparing for a second child, it was the job. “I was looking ahead to school and thinking this job is just not compatible.”
Sam quit her job and set up her own business as a career consultant, supporting women facing similar career hurdles to her. Her income is now notably smaller than her husband’s; a change in their dynamic.
“I love my work but I struggle with no longer being able to contribute equally financially and sometimes with how much of the parenting falls to me,” she says. “This isn’t how I imagined things when I was growing up hearing that women could have it all. Part of me thinks when I’m older I’ll go back into a big job, because there are things I’m missing out on like pension contributions, but I’m very aware I don’t yet know what it’s like to raise teenagers.”
Sam’s story is repeated up and down the country in countless households: mothers, shocked by the exhaustion and relentlessness of parenting, are being forced out of successful careers because their workplaces refuse to adapt, then sidelines them. They also struggle to access affordable and reliable childcare.
The campaign group Careers After Babies surveyed 1,000 women about their experiences in the workplace in 2022. It found that 98 per cent of women say they want to work after having children, but that the way workplaces are set up still makes that difficult. In total, 85 per cent had left the full-time workforce within three years of having their first child, and 19 per cent had stopped working altogether.
Those that did stay found their careers took an immediate hit. There was a 36 per cent drop off at management level, and a 44 per cent increase in moves to administration roles. The organisation concluded that women were abandoning their hard-earned senior, skilled roles and re-entering the workforce in lower paid jobs; the only way to combine work and parenting.
The gender pay gap does not exist at age 30, but it grows to 14.9 per cent a decade later, and it takes up to 10 years for a woman’s career to recover from having a child, according to Jessica Heagren, founder of Careers After Babies. “They may as well start again – which is sadly what most women are being forced to do.”
No wonder, then, that just four per cent of FTSE250 CEOs are women, and just 1p in every £1 of capital investment is going to female founders.
The end of hybrid working is creating more problems for women. A recent Deloitte report found that more than a quarter (27 per cent) of women who had been asked to return to the office full time said it had negatively impacted their mental health and 24 per cent said it had made them less productive. Almost half (44 per cent) had asked to reduce their hours as a result.
This is unsurprising considering that the study also found that exactly the same proportion of women who live with a partner and children still bear the most responsibility for childcare.
The Modern Families Index, a study released this month by nursery chain Bright Horizons, found that women’s perception of being supported by their employers fell from 77 per cent in 2023 to 68 per cent at the start of this year. The vast majority of working parents (80 per cent) said they felt too stressed to be able to focus fully on their job.
There is further trouble for women ahead. Economists are warning that the new higher rate for National Insurance (NI) introduced by chancellor Rachel Reeves in the autumn Budget is most likely to hit lower paid jobs hardest, many of which are occupied by women. It could make it even harder for mothers to hang onto employment.
Dr Gosia Ciesielska, professor of management and organisation studies at Sheffield Business School, says that there is much more that most employers could do. “Companies could explore more how they can accommodate at least some of the needs here. Let’s remember that employers have a duty of care and that our private and work lives are intertwined,” she says.
The lack of flexibility in the modern workplace is such an issue that many women who have spent years developing professional skills are being forced to abandon or sideline them.
Natalie Ormond, 42, from Leeds, was a social worker for 14 years before leaving the profession in 2022 to set up an online retail business. She was able to negotiate flexible working after her two maternity leaves, but there were other issues. “The hours could be unpredictable and of course clients would be in crisis at times when my kids were sick and needed picking up from nursery,” she says, adding that there was an expectation she would manage an almost full caseload in three days a week and she missed out on promotion opportunities.
She thought that running her own business full time was the solution but, although it fits well around her children, now aged 11 and eight, the reality has been different to her expectations. “In many ways it’s far harder,” she says. “I’m not answerable to an employer so I am the default parent if the kids are sick. My husband earns more so my work always comes last and so I haven’t had the time to grow the business.” When sales slowed she took on part-time work for a charity using her social work skills and mentored students.
But Natalie’s income and pension contributions have both taken a significant hit – as has her self esteem, and her relationship with her husband. “Even though I know it’s sensible for our roles to be as they are, it’s still annoying. I feel bad that when he got quite a big promotion I wasn’t as pleased or supportive as I should have been because my own work and income aren’t where I want them to be,” she says.
Whatever choice women make, it can have a very long-term effect. “The longer a parent is away from work, it is impacting their income, overall pension savings and also future prospects and job opportunities,’ Dr Ciesielska says. “A break in career (maternity leave and part-time jobs) widens the gender gap. Although since 2010 maternity leave period counts in full towards a state pension, private employers funds are a different matter.” Pension saving losses can reach £183,000 according to the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Office for National Statistics says women near retirement age have around 35 per cent less savings than men.
Dr Ciesielska also warns that the solutions women find to cope are not always best for them. “Part-time work is often a conscious decision to allow for better work-life balance, but it is also often the only work women can find and associated with less job security, often poor wages, and sometimes poor working conditions,” she says.
Even those in skilled industries with well-paid jobs can struggle to retain their seniority after becoming a mother, because of old workplace expectations of long hours and presenteeism.
Instead, they are seeking out other ways to protect their careers. Research by Dr Ciesielska together with Dr Grace Gao of Northumbria University and Dr Ana Lopez from the University of Newcastle found that Millennial women in IT professions are choosing freelancing, digital nomad working and working through self-built collaborative groups because in-house support in a male dominated industry falls short.
Setting up a solo business is a common route for stretched mothers in every sector seeking to retain an independent career. But careers advisors warn this can be a dangerous route and push women further out of the workforce. Combining employment and self-employment is one option.
Charlotte Butterworth-Pool, 34, from West Yorkshire, worked her way up to be a senior manager in clinical trials at a large US pharmaceutical company by her late twenties. Working for a US firm meant that when she had her daughter, now aged six, she was only paid for the first six weeks of her maternity leave and was expected to stay in touch throughout her postpartum recovery.
When requests for flexible working were turned down, she handed in her notice. “It was a very hard decision,” she says. “I was in a high-powered role with teams in the UK and US, doing a job I really enjoyed.”
She found part-time work at a small medical trial operator while also building her own private business as a doula. “It was an extreme step down but it was close to my house and they agreed to a three-day week. I’d been three months without work so I accepted it. But my pension pot is significantly lower than my other half.”
Career coach Laurie McPherson warns overstretched working mothers to think hard about their long-term financial prospects before ditching employment altogether. And she doesn’t recommend building a small business; a “tough love” approach which sees her help the women she works with to find the right employer, rather than try to change an anti-parent culture from within (“that never works”) or becoming self-employed because that rarely replaces the income a woman previously earned.
“It’s really important to me that women are financially independent because I’ve watched so many women at the other end with not enough pension. Keep your foot to the pump,” she advises. “Protect yourself because we just don’t know what’s coming round the corner.”
What is being done to combat this?
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