Mothers get left behind in the workplace but employing them is actually great for business: Here’s why

The paradox of motherhood 

Motherhood and mothering are a living, breathing paradox, without a name but laden with the expectation; to work as if you don’t have children and to mother as if you don’t work. Where mothers can remain in paid work, they experience the workplace through various career, pay, time, opportunity and visibility gaps. While caring and rearing, mothers are expected to manage the load without complaint. For many other women, the path to motherhood is not straightforward and that in itself carries a gap. The multiplicity of layers and levels of agency women experience in becoming mothers is deeply dependent upon their sexual preference, financial independence and the social and cultural context they find themselves in. When motherhood intersects with race, gender, socioeconomic, marital status or educational attainment, the layers of inequality deepen. 

And while motherhood is presented as a choice, culturally and socially, the silent narrative suggests otherwise. For those that choose not to have children, motherhood is placed in diametric opposition to womanhood. A WHO draft document highlighted this very point in its recent assertion that all women of childbearing age should refrain from drinking alcohol to protect the unborn child’s life. The underlying presumption, all women want to become mothers. The reality, not all women want to or can become mothers. 

The result is that women, and by extension mothers, find themselves occupying a liminal space, struggling with an identity caught somewhere between choice, motherhood and martyrdom. 

But motherhood is not a work-life dilemma, nor is it a problem to be fixed. The way we value work is the problem. Workplaces that expect work to happen between 9-5, Monday to Friday, until retirement, with little to no flexibility, fail us all. 

This way of working means that globally women suffer from a gender pay gap predicted to take 136.5 more years to close. That gap for working mothers is on average 14% greater and widening. While intentions are good and public commitments are loud, the magnitude of the gap is accepted.

To make sense of this uncomfortable data, we create stories. 

– “We have come a long way. It’s not that bad anymore.” 

– “Women are protected in the workplace by law.” 

– “We don’t discriminate in our business, and we have family-friendly work policies.”

– “Mothers have a choice. Maybe the right thing to do is to stay at home?”

– “Anyway, women who are mothers opt out of the workplace, if they wanted to, they could make it work.”

Those stories help mask the story the data reveals.  But does it have to be this way? 

The Future of Work

If more proof is needed as to the value mothers bring to the workplace the World Economic Forum (WEF) in their Future of Jobs Report 2020 tell us that the job landscape is changing. They suggest that the most in-demand workplace skills in 2021 are critical thinking and problem-solving. The workplace of tomorrow, they state, will place an increasingly high value on skills such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. The WEF categorises the top 10 most in-demand skills into four categories, namely problem-solving, self-management, working with people and the ability to use and develop technology. Any mother who has struggled to manage it all and keep things afloat possess these skills in abundance and can give real-life examples. As the boundaries between job categories blur, transferable and cross-cutting skills learned, honed and developed in paid and unpaid employment are the future of employability. 

When the world of work stops trying to fix mothers at work and instead chooses to fix the workplace, the rising tide will lift all boats. 

We have evidence in abundance of the positive impact of mothers shaping this new narrative. These workplaces and these women are shifting mindsets around what it means to be a woman and a mother who works in the paid workforce. This list is not complete but it serves as the starting point to pause and think about when mothers at work are supported the possibilities are endless. 

Ursula von der Leyen. 

Michelle Obama. 

Jacinda Ardern. 

Mary Robinson. 

Mary McAlese. 

Serena Williams. 

Kamala Harris. 

Whitney Wolf Herd. 

Anne O’Leary. 

Chupi Sweetman. 

Liz Cunningham. 

Ranae von Meding. 

These women show strength, fairness, leadership, compassion, humanity and great integrity as they advocate while mothering and working. Their skills lie at the very heart of our humanity that set us aside from algorithms and computers. These skills are developed in paid and unpaid workplaces and are transferable. They are also traits that research identifies most frequently with great leaders.  

These skills are not owned uniquely by either men or women, mothers or fathers, parents or non-parents. They are human skills – skills by their very nature that are capable of being honed, built and developed year after year by everyone in the workplace. Imagine for one second if the G7 leaders gathered specifically to discuss a global approach to recognising the paid and unpaid work that all of us do, the value of that work to the global economy and to consider ways to close the gaps women experience in their working lives? Imagine if they did this instead of, or at the very least in addition to, discussing global tax. This is a G7 meeting worth having, one would benefit all of humankind in all parts of the world for generations to come.

It is now the job of our leaders, in the workplace, politics and society to broaden the narrative to include the skills that women who are mothers bring to the workplace, not just for mothers, but for the benefit of all.