Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Pregnant Pause

The motherhood penalty not only punishes women, it hurts the entire workforce.

While great strides have been taken for women’s equality in the Canadian workforce, working moms are still at a disadvantage. Many women face a “motherhood penalty,” which is the “systemic disadvantage that mothers face in terms of pay, perceived competence, and benefits compared to childless women and men,” according to Joeli Brearly, author of Pregnant Then Screwed: The Truth about the Motherhood Penalty.

From employers expressing disappointment and annoyance when an employee announces her pregnancy to expectant mothers getting passed on for employment or promotions, working women experience penalties in a way their childless counterparts (and fathers) do not. According to data from a My Parental Leave Canada survey,

- 95 percent of women were not offered any formal support during the maternity leave process,

- 58 percent of women said their employers were not prepared for their return to work, and

- 80 percent of women were not provided clear direction for how their return to work would be managed.

4 Ways a Woman's Career is Affected by Motherhood

1. Pay gap
According to a 2015 United Nations report, having a child decreased a Canadian mother’s wages by five cents per hour compared to women without children. This pay gap disproportionately affects low-income women, particularly minority and Indigenous women, and is more pronounced in Alberta and Nova Scotia. This is likely because mothers take the majority of family leave and are therefore absent from the workforce longer than fathers. Although most Canadian fathers are allotted five weeks of paternity leave, only about a quarter use it.

2. Hiring bias
The 2001 study that first coined the term motherhood penalty found that prospective employers called mothers or expectant women back about half as often as nonmothers; fathers were not disadvantaged at all in the hiring process. Further, a 2015 University of Toronto study found that maternity leave still affected a workplace’s hiring decisions. “The probability of receiving a callback from potential employers decreases initially with a maternity leave,” the study stated.

3. Competence perception
The 2001 motherhood penalty study also found that there’s an assumption in the workforce that women are not as ambitious in their careers when they have a child, assuming they’ll take a step back from their careers or leave the workforce altogether. A similar study in the Journal of Social Science showed that after the birth of their first child, a mother’s chances of being a manager declined slightly, while a father’s chances rose steeply over the long term.

4. Maternity leave penalties
While Canada may have generous maternity leave policies, many women are penalized for taking it. In a 2021 Maternity Leave Experience Report by Moms at Work, one-third of mothers reported facing discrimination due to having children. The report also found that 58 percent of workplaces don’t have formal policies around maternity leave and return-to-work practices. Forty percent considered quitting during the return-to-work process.

Looking forward, unless employers, hiring managers, and team members are more conscious of their biases, women will continue to be punished for their decision to have children. “Women’s experience of maternity leave and return-to-work shows us the immediate need to remedy these issues,” states the Moms at Work report. Until then, workplaces across Canada will miss out on the diversity, richness, and wisdom that mothers bring to the workplace.

Source: hrreporter.com

Pregnant Pause

4 Ways a Woman's Career is Affected by Motherhood

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