I vividly remember the moment I listened to a voicemail which said that my employment had been terminated. The day before I had informed my employer, the CEO of a children’s charity, that I was expecting my first baby. There was no sugar coating it – I had been sacked because I was pregnant. The person who sacked me was a woman.
After trying, and failing, to access justice, my anger at the situation led me to set up Pregnant Then Screwed. The UK’s first charity which works to end the motherhood penalty. Now, 10 years on, I have made the difficult decision that it is time for me to step down as its CEO.
I wish I could tell you that I came to this decision because the job is finished – that pregnancy and maternity discrimination is no longer an issue, that women’s careers no longer suffer because they dared to procreate. but if I told you that it would be a lie. My charity, Pregnant Then Screwed is needed now more than ever. We cannot cope with the demand for our services. This demand will only subside when we have better laws which protect new mothers from redundancy and enable people to access the flexible working they need. When we have better systems so that parents can access affordable, high-quality childcare and properly paid parental leave. But we also need to deal with implicit bias that still exists towards mothers – perfectly articulated last week by Tory MP Christopher Chope who accused Kemi Badenoch of being less capable of leading the Conservative Party as she is too distracted by her children, without any evidence for this whatsoever.
No, I am not stepping down because the job is done. I am stepping down because it is the right thing to do. Pregnant Then Screwed is a powerful force, thanks to the incredible community who support our work, the brilliant staff team, and the hundreds of volunteers who give their time to help others. But those who are disproportionately impacted by the motherhood penalty are young mums, single mums, mothers of disabled children and global majority mothers. I am a white woman in a relationship, who is described as ‘’very old’’ by my children. Now aged 8 and 10, my kids are no longer in childcare, and I no longer have to personally deal with many of the disadvantages experienced by women with young children. Sometimes, leadership isn’t about leading, sometimes it’s learning when to get out of the way.
I’m not going to pretend that’s the only reason I am stepping down. I am tired. Running a campaigning organisation, particularly under the last Government and through a pandemic, takes chunks out of you – mentally and physically. It is all consuming. I can’t remember who I am without Pregnant Then Screwed. I need to figure that out again.
But although it has been hard, it has been enormously gratifying. In 2021 we launched a campaign with Grazia and The Juggle to demand an independent review of childcare. Over 100,000 of you signed our petition, triggering a debate in Parliament. It was the start of something magnificent. After we staged the biggest global protest of mothers, March of the Mummies, ran a billboard campaign about the childcare crisis with Saatchi & Saatchi, and encouraged thousands of people to write to the Chancellor, the Government committed to invest £5.2 billion in our childcare system. Childcare across the UK is far from fixed, but it was a historical investment and a profound step in the right direction. We achieved this together - journalists stuck their neck out to give this issue the coverage it deserves, parents signed and shared our petition, MPs supported us behind the scenes, mothers came out on the street – babes in arms – and marched and chanted and demanded change. When women organise, we are unstoppable.
With a new Government brings renewed hope for genuine and lasting change. The employment bill was full of promise but without the detail it is relatively meaningless. Women need to organise to ensure these legislative changes aren’t all fur coat and no knickers. And in my new role as ambassador for Pregnant Then Screwed, I will be back again to support that fight in any way I can.
If, like me, you care deeply about the unnecessary barriers experienced by mothers, then I implore you to join the fight, or to even start your own campaign. Harness your anger, because anger gets things done. It pushes us to the edges of discomfort, the place where real change happens. It is the fire that tells you something’s wrong. And not just wrong for you. Wrong for the world. It’s the canary in the coal mine of your conscience, saying: Pay attention.
Harnessing my anger meant building an organisation that has supported over 300,000 mothers with free advice, changing laws, and helping secure billions of pounds of Government investment – now it’s your turn.