Joeli Brearley on: The Motherhood Penalty

Every fortnight on the GOOD on Purpose podcast, people who have made a conscious decision to lead a life with Purpose share their inspirations, motivations and life advice. Here, Joeli Brearley, author and founder of Pregnant then Screwed, shares hers…

Putting an end to the ‘Motherhood Penalty’

We want to see an end to the motherhood penalty. And a lot of people don’t know what that term means. It’s a term coined by sociologists about the systematic disadvantage that mothers face in terms of pay, perceived competence and benefits compared to childless women, and men.

So essentially the motherhood penalty is the gender pay gap. The motherhood penalty probably contributes to about 80% of the gender pay gap. We know that by the time a woman’s first child is 12 years old, her hourly pay rate is 33% behind a man’s. What we know from the gender pay gap data is that there really isn’t very much of a gender pay gap up until the age of 30. 30 is when it really starts to widen, and it just widens more and more as women get older. Now, of course, this is the age when women have children. And the problem is that we are head butting repeatedly these structures and systems that work against us and prevent us from having children and a career. And they are complex and nuanced. And they are embedded in every structure and system that we interact with. So this isn’t a problem that’s easily solved. There are some easy things that we can do to reduce the issue. But I don’t expect this problem to be solved in my lifetime. I think it’s going to take a long, long time. And we’re at the beginning of that journey.

The impact of lockdown on the Motherhood Penalty

Price Waterhouse Cooper estimated that women’s unpaid labour increased by 31 hours per week during lockdown. That’s another full-time job. The same wasn’t happening for men. The Institute of Fiscal Studies found that for every hour of uninterrupted paid work done by women, men were doing three hours of uninterrupted paid work. And the only time the unpaid labour in the house was shared equally between a mother and a father was when the father had been furloughed. So he wasn’t doing his paid job. And the mother was continuing to do her paid work.

And these are pre-existing issues. Before the pandemic, women were doing three times the unpaid labour of men, whether they work full time or not. And so it just moved over to the pandemic, where we were still doing three times the amount of caring, but the amount of caring required shot up. So we were seeing women losing their jobs. They were being pushed out of their jobs because they weren’t performing at the same rate that men were. And also they were having to reduce their hours and therefore reduce their income.

The need to improve policy for childcare and paternity leave

If we address these two issues, we will see the gender pay gap reduce without a doubt, and we will see women’s careers improve. We won’t get rid of the motherhood penalty entirely, but we will make a massive dent in it. Not only will we reduce the motherhood penalty, but we will also reduce the poverty gap and the attainment gap. These are really big issues and it’s about the government prioritising these issues.

The call for ongoing support

We’re hoping to do another big protest at some point this year that we would like everyone to join. We just need to keep hammering home the point and making as much noise as we possibly can. And if you’re not a mom or a dad, or if you’re a person without children, then we want you to understand that this isn’t just an issue that affects moms, it affects everybody, it affects all of us. This is about creating a society that is equal and fair. It’s about the way that we view women and their roles in society. If you are a woman and you haven’t had children, you are still facing the motherhood penalty because you are judged simply for having a uterus. A third of employers avoid hiring women of childbearing age, your career is being impacted. Just because you’re you are a woman. So this working with us supporting our campaigns is important for all of us, and we’d love your support.