Women give birth and raise children in the environment created by our politics.

And our attitudes to work and employment are creating a very real psychiatric trauma for many mothers trying to do both.  

Right now a combination of entrenched sex discrimination at work, a pandemic that has hit women’s jobs harder than men’s and an ongoing crisis in care is causing working mothers’ mental health to plummet. 

We need women-centred mental health support systems that understand and respond to the specific female experience. We also need to ensure that workers understand their rights, that employees enforce them, and that the government understands gender-blind policy-making has perversely discriminatory effects. 

Just this week the TUC reported that female redundancies in the UK hit 178,000 between September and November 2020 – 76% higher than the peak reached during the height of the financial crisis. 

In the same 2020 period 217,000 men were made redundant – 3% more than the peak of male redundancies during the financial crisis. 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that mothers in paid work prior to the first lockdown were 47% more likely than fathers to have permanently lost their job or to have had to quit. 

As someone who brings a lot of anti-discrimination actions, I have to say these numbers don’t surprise me or my team. We know that Covid is hitting hard the sectors in which women are more likely to work – retail and hospitality. We know that women bore the brunt of schools and nurseries closing, by having to juggle paid and unpaid work more than men. 

We also know that mothers are often navigating workplace structures where the perfect employee is male and childless or backed up by an out-of-sight partner who covers everything on the home front. 

Women are not only trying to hide their childcare needs from employers, but are going home to many more hours of domestic labour than the fathers of their children. 

Before coronavirus, according to the UN, three hours of unpaid work was done by women for every one hour of unpaid work done by men. Now it estimates that number has ‘at least’ doubled.

In our ‘lean-in’, ‘try harder’, ‘be your best self’ culture, too many mums are concluding that their bone-crushing fatigue and inability to compete on an equal footing with male colleagues is their own personal problem rather than systematic inequality. 

But, as Pregnant Then Screwed’s Joeli Brearley so memorably puts it, when a woman becomes a mother, she has a baby, not a lobotomy.  

One of the most common types of discrimination we see is when employers conclude that a pregnant employee or working mother is suddenly less competent or less ambitious. 

Last year the TUC reported that 90% of working mothers faced a decline in their mental health

The legislation on pregnancy discrimination is clear. It stipulates that a mother is entitled to return to her job, exactly as it was, after maternity leave, and that the employer must make reasonable accommodations to make this happen. 

It’s also illegal to ask women if they are planning to have children despite this still being common practice – only a few years ago a study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found employers were ‘living in the dark ages’ when it came to pregnancy and maternity discrimination. 

Beyond overt actions, a discriminatory work environment can manifest in micro-aggressions and gaslighting similar to those often seen in racist attitudes – and we know that women of colour experience double discrimination at work where sexism and racism intersect. 

Employers who are unthinking, or who want to drive someone out without explicitly firing them, have many ways to make the working life and the mental health of a pregnant woman or new mum hellish. 

Crucial meetings can be scheduled later in the day, colliding with pick up, or earlier than drop-off allows. Work appraisals suddenly change tone, going from glowing to mediocre or downright negative. 

Shifts are not given, or given at odd or unpredictable hours, making childcare impossible. Prestigious projects leading to promotions and pay rises are given to others, shunting mothers onto the dreaded dead-end ‘mummy track’. These are seldom coincidences. Record them. Show a pattern, and you show discrimination. 

The problem is that as long as employers consider mothers a second-rate work force, a woman can’t outwork her status as a mother. 

As long as employers see mothers as a liability whose parental status is impossible to reconcile with professional excellence, the solution doesn’t lie with mothers, but with employers and politicians. 

Affordable childcare, equally shared and paid-for parental leave, flexible working practices by default, workplaces that celebrate diversity of thought and experience – these are the foundations not just of maternal mental health but also of flourishing businesses.

This week is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week – time set aside to raise awareness of women’s mental health during and after pregnancy.

As an employment lawyer, I’m here to say that this opportunity can only be truly successful if it looks at the many factors affecting mothers’ mental health. 

Last year the TUC reported that 90% of working mothers faced a decline in their mental health.

Let’s act now to turn these numbers around and ensure the talents, creativity, resourcefulness and flexibility of mothers is seen, appreciated and harnessed for the benefit of all of us.

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