It’s not physically having children that affects women’s careers. It’s being the main carers for them that, in many cases, stuffs our chances of progression and earning.
I’ll jog right past the fact that as many as 54,000 pregnant women lose their jobs each year because of unfair and unlawful treatment.67 I’ll also swerve criticisms of our statutory maternity pay as among the lowest in Europe.68 Instead, I’ll fast-forward to the part where we’ve given birth, taken time off and want to get back to work. The longer we’re off, the harder that’s going to be because, in the fast-paced world of alpha culture, we’re often seen as irrelevant when we’ve had time out – despite the skills we’ve acquired along the way: multi-tasking, an ability to look at the bigger picture and keeping a cool head under intense pressure.
If that CV gap is a barrier we can overcome and we return to work, it’s likely to be in a less skilled and lower-paid post than we held before we had children: three in five mothers are at risk of this – and will earn up to a third less.69 As we know, we’re also more likely to work part-time.
The effect all this has on women’s earnings is there in black and white. Younger women now out-earn younger men but the gender pay gap starts to open after we hit forty, when many of us have dependent children.70, 71 It’s widest by the time we’re in our fifties, and the average woman will be earning almost a third less than the average man twenty years after having her first child.72, 73
But wait for this.
The real kicker is that many men’s wages rise when they become fathers. Apparently it’s because they often put in increased hours and effort, particularly when their female partner reduces her hours, but also might be because they’re seen as more committed and responsible.74
So there we are: dropping our hours to care for kids, grappling with everything from sleep deprivation to loneliness, impacting our future earning potential, and our male partners are getting pay rises.
The depressing moral of the story is this: if you’re a woman who wants to keep up with men’s earnings, don’t get married or have kids. That is the painful truth.
So how do we solve all this?
Well, there’s no getting around the fact that women give birth to children and, aside from the superwomen who are speed-dialling the office even as the gas and air is wearing off, most of us want time at home to recover physically, get into a routine and bond with our baby. Breastfeeding is also a physical tie.
But once that’s done, we need to help women get back to work more quickly – and good-quality affordable childcare is key to doing this.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? It’s not.
Childcare in the UK is among the most expensive in the world. For instance, British parents spend a mind-boggling eight times more of their income on childcare than Swedish parents.75 Childcare costs have risen four times faster than average pay since 2008.76 And there aren’t enough nursery places so thousands of grandparents – particularly grandmothers – are filling in the gaps.77
Those working outside a normal nine-to-five pattern, like nurses or shop workers, face even bigger problems finding a place because most nurseries work Monday to Friday and close at 6 p.m., and less than a fifth of areas have sufficient spaces for disabled children.78, 79
In 2017, the UK government put a record £6 billion into childcare funding and introduced new policies, including thirty hours of free childcare per week for working parents, who earn less than £100,000 per year, of three- to four-year-olds.80
But, despite the record investment, the UK’s problems are far from being solved. Low-income parents are still struggling to pay – even with the free care they get.81 And providers are closing because the money the government pays them for the ‘free’ care doesn’t cover what it costs to provide.82
Meanwhile, the argument for improving childcare couldn’t be clearer. If just 10 per cent more mothers worked, they could generate an estimated additional £1.5 billion for the UK economy.83 Universal free childcare could earn the nation up to £37 billion through higher tax revenues and lower benefit payments.84
High-quality childcare also does children good. Those who have it in their early years do better emotionally, physically and economically – particularly if they’re from disadvantaged backgrounds. That seems to me a good way to make society more equal.85
But even though many of us are struggling with this situation every day – from finding a place to paying for it – we’re not getting that angry about it. Instead, we’re all beavering away uncomplainingly to pay childcare bills that parents in many other parts of the world don’t have.
Fox-hunting got way more people frothing at the mouth than childcare provision ever has. And someone, some time, needs to explain this to me. Why haven’t we been out on the streets marching in protest about it? Or, at the very least, demanded that our MPs take it a bit more seriously?
Everyone from France, Norway and Germany to Spain, Slovenia and Chile invests significantly more of their GDP in childcare than we do.86 They’ve been doing it for years because they believe it’s money well spent.
The ultimate irony of our eye-watering childcare costs is also that it’s mostly women on low pay who are providing it. Nursery workers must be qualified but may also be required to have anything from first-aid skills to knowledge of the kinds of nature activities that children do at a forest school. And what would they get paid for all this? £8 an hour?
A McDonald’s ‘crew member’ aged twenty-five or over gets that to flip burgers.87
Unpalatable as it may be, better-paid parents of both sexes are relying on poorly paid women to look after the home front. Collectively, we need to work out a way not only to put more money into caring for our children but also to pay properly the women who are doing the job because it’s scandalously undervalued.
But, for now, one thing is pretty clear: women face huge employment barriers simply because they care for children.
To those who still try to peddle the old ‘women-aren’t-ambitious-after-kids’ line, I say this: there will certainly be some women who self-limit, but I’m pretty sure they often do it because of the lack of affordable childcare – not because they suddenly want to get home early every day for a Monkey Music class.
Going up the ladder also usually requires more hours, mental commitment and stress. And I think we’ve got quite enough on our plates juggling all this, thanks very much.
Some women make it work. Of course they do. I am one of them. I didn’t have any parents to help out or understanding bosses, but I was lucky to be successful early in my career and paid enough to afford at-home childcare throughout my children’s lives.
But for many women it’s often down to a large salary, or two good salaries, a lot of hard work, some good luck, an empathetic boss, a husband who’s willing to pull his weight at home, and someone like a very involved grandparent who gives free care, or any combination of the above.
It means that our career outcomes are often based on chance because the structure that should be in place – from affordable childcare and more flexible working opportunities to a more positive culture around sharing care for children – isn’t there most of the time.
And here’s my thought: should our success as working mothers really be down to this kind of lottery? Some of us get a winning ticket thanks to all of the factors I’ve mentioned, but those who don’t are held back.
Some will insist that after decades in the workforce we are now competing on equal terms and things would surely have changed if we really wanted them to. That women are somehow complicit in the status quo.
But it’s hardly a level playing field, is it? We’re playing with one foot tied to the other, as far as I can see.
And there are people who know exactly how it is for working mothers and are happy to perpetuate the situation. I was once at a working dinner with a man who’d had various chief-executive jobs during his career. As we discussed recruiting the best talent, he leaned over the table towards me. ‘I like employing mothers,’ he said, whispering conspiratorially, as if he was giving me the numbers for a winning lottery ticket. ‘You pay them for three days and they’re so conscientious, so worried about being accused of slacking, that they do five days’ work in that time.’
I just managed to stop myself hurling my coffee across the table at him.