Soaring numbers of women lose jobs while pregnant or on...

Research from Pregnant Then Screwed, in partnership with Women in Data, estimated that potentially 74,000 women a year are fired or made redundant while pregnant or on maternity leave. Instead of enjoying bonding with her newborn during maternity leave last year, Rhiannon instead found herself scrambling to find a new job, stealing an hour at a time between breastfeeds to apply for work or to interview.

Image Credit: The Independent [The research also found that nearly half of all women who were pregnant, on maternity leave or who had recently returned to work had a bad experience in their job]

“It completely changed my maternity leave,” she said of her experience. “I made quite clear to my employer I was going to take a full year off this time and enjoy it and not think about work. I was robbed of that.”. Rhiannon, who only wanted to use her first name to protect her privacy, was made redundant alongside several other women who were also on maternity leave or who had babies within the past 18 months.

Image Credit: The Independent [Campaigners say the government needs to collect more data about maternal discrimination]

“I was applying for jobs the next day. My baby was not three months old, and sitting at my desk with me,” Rhiannon said. “I should still be off. I was planning to be off until March 2025, but I actually had to return to an alternative role in November last year just to secure employment and the ability to feed my kids and pay my mortgage.”.

Rhiannon and her colleagues were among a rising number of women who lost their jobs while pregnant or on maternity leave last year, according to new data. Research from Pregnant Then Screwed, in partnership with Women in Data, estimated that 74,000 women a year are potentially fired or made redundant while pregnant or on maternity leave, a sharp 37 per cent increase from the 54,000 women in that situation in 2016.

Pregnant Then Screwed founder Joeli Brearley said even before the research was completed, it was clear the situation was only getting worse. “Our free advice line is ringing off the hook, it has reached a point where we simply cannot cope with demand,” she said.

“To find that 74,000 mothers a year are being pushed out of their job for daring to procreate is not surprising, but it is devastating.”. The research, which used a nationally representative sample of 5,870 parents, found that 12.3 per cent of women were sacked, dismissed or made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave, or within a year of returning to work.

It also found nearly half (49.5 per cent) of women who were pregnant, on maternity leave or who were returning from maternity leave had a negative experience at work, and one in five of those women subsequently left their employer. More than a third of women (35.9 per cent) also said they were either sidelined or demoted while pregnant, on maternity leave, or shortly after their return.

Rhiannon said her bad experience began the moment she told her manager she was pregnant. “I didn’t have a good time during my pregnancy. There were lots of problems with my manager scrutinising my appointments regarding my pregnancy, just making life hard work,” she said.

While new laws were introduced in April last year to improve redundancy protections for pregnant women or those on maternity leave, Ms Brearley said the government needed to do more. “In 2016, the coalition government commissioned a report to better understand how widespread pregnancy and maternity discrimination is.

“The report found that things had significantly deteriorated over the previous 10 years. Despite committing to repeat the research every five years, this has not happened. “What sort of message does this send to women – that the government cares so little about this issue that they can’t even be bothered to collect the data.’’.

On Thursday Pregnant Then Screwed and Women in Data launched a campaign urging companies to make their workplaces more family-friendly through actions including increasing paternity leave offerings, advertising jobs as flexible and collecting data on maternity retention.

Taisiya Merkulova of Women in Data said: “Collectively, we need to close the gender gap and remove the challenges women face to achieve equality of opportunities in the workplace and reduce the burden of the unspoken ‘tax’ on mothers from additional unpaid labour as carers and in the home.”.