This past week, a female estate agent won a sex discrimination claim against her employers after they refused to let her reduce her hours to collect her child from nursery at 5pm when it closed.
Alice Thompson walked away with a £180,000 pay out after the employment tribunal panel awarded her for loss of earnings, pension contributions, injury to feelings, and interest, declaring that Alice was at a disadvantage when the company insisted on a 6pm finish.
Hopefully cases like Alice’s and her subsequent win at the tribunal, sends a strong message to companies to take inclusion seriously and make organisations more aware. However, despite Alice’s win, very few women who get discriminated against go as far as to take it to court. Instead, many women speak of how it knocks their confidence, and they do not take action.
This happened to Joeli Brearley who was fired from her job by voicemail when she was four months pregnant and undergoing a complicated pregnancy. Later, Joeli launched the project ‘Pregnant Then Screwed’ on International Women’s Day in 2015, as a space for mothers to share their stories of discrimination. The project quickly grew, and it is now a charity that works to fight the systemic, cultural and institutional discrimination faced by pregnant women and mothers every year.
It was Joeli’s charity that helped Alice Thompson with legal advice to take her previous employer to court. The charity offers legal advice to women in similar situations. If this is something that you have been subjected to or know someone who could need their help, they offer free advice by calling their helpline.
Although it is vital that employers such as Alice’s and Joeli’s work with employees to discover ways of working flexibly and make people feel included, and not discriminated against – there is a call on the government to support both individuals and organisations to help with things such as childcare policies that allow parents to stay in their jobs and careers and contribute to the economy. A recent survey of 20,000 parents shared in The Guardian showed that 96% of respondents believed ministers were not doing enough to support parents with the cost and availability of childcare. The survey also showed that 2/3 of female respondents reduced their hours after having a baby, compared with 26% of men.
In the article, Elliott Rae, the founder of Music Football Fatherhood, said: “Extortionate childcare costs reinforce traditional gendered parenting roles and make it difficult for dads to have flexibility in their work and be fully active and engaged fathers.”
This is an important point to remember, not only is flexibility and inclusion about making sure women and mothers are not discriminated against, but it is also about both the government and organisations embracing organisational culture and policies that benefit both sets of parents, and enable fathers to be the parents they want to be too.
Diversity, inclusion and flexible working are all hot topics for many of our clients at People Lab at the moment. Let us know if your company needs help with an evidence-based approach to work through challenges you face at the moment in your organisation. We would be happy to help!
How have you combined working and parenting? How well does your organisation support flexible working? We would love to hear from you!
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