“I had just started a new role, and it was created for me to keep me in the organisation based on how good I was at that role, and the second I announced I was pregnant, everything changed.”
Rhiannon is diabetic and had to have fortnightly medical appointments, which she says her managers deemed “inconvenient”.
“I’m entitled to them, and I do need to keep my baby alive and well,” she stresses. “You’re allowed that time, and companies need to be held to account to make sure they’re following that procedure and you’re not being discriminated against because you’re pregnant.”
Half (49.5%) of pregnant women, those on maternity leave, and those returning from maternity leave say they had a negative experience at work, according to Pregnant then Screwed.
Of those who had a negative experience, one in five (20.6%) chose to leave their employer. A third (35.9%) of women claim they were sidelined or demoted. But just 2% of women who experience discrimination raise a tribunal claim.
Rhiannon urged companies to recognise how “debilitating” pregnancy can be. “I really suffered with morning sickness. Believe me, before I was pregnant, I used to think people were putting it on as well. But it’s difficult to imagine spending an hour of your morning stewing and then going into work.”
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Rhiannon remembers one time her manager rang her three minutes after 9am, asking her where she was and why she was not at her desk. “I was spewing in the toilet,” Rhiannon recalls.
The mum of two says she rang her HR department in tears once a week, and she got an occupational health assessment to show that she was suffering with health problems during her pregnancy. She brought her maternity leave forward, using her annual leave, during which she was made redundant.
And she was not the first. A colleague who had a baby a week before Rhiannon, and two colleagues who had recently returned from maternity leave, were also made redundant. They were told the company, a consulting and professional services firm, was going through a restructuring process.
Rhiannon cut her maternity leave short to secure another job – she was due to be off until March but she went back to work in November last year. With her first child, she had suffered from postpartum depression and she had promised herself she would take more time off and enjoy the newborn stage more.
“I was robbed of that, really,” the 34-year-old from South Wales says.
“It’s my own personal choice to have a baby, but my body is going through significant physical changes. It just feels like pregnancy is completely discounted. And the recovery from that – I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a mental breakdown after having a baby. The return to work process is atrocious, even if you’ve got an amazing employer.”
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A new law came into force in April 2024 to extend redundancy protections to pregnant women and those returning from maternity leave. However, the findings from Pregnant then Screwed suggest there is more work to be done.
“I don’t plan on getting pregnant ever again,” Rhiannon says. “It has scarred me for life.”
Another mother, Kate, went through a similar experience.
Kate was asked to join a call by her HR department two weeks after she had given birth. She had been going into London from Newcastle for work until she was 35 weeks pregnant, once fainting on the train, and she had her son prematurely at 36 weeks by C-section.
“When I went on the Zoom call, it was the CEO reading from a legal document,” Kate recalls. “My little boy was lying next to me. I can’t even remember the words. It was such a blur. I was gobsmacked and totally blindsided.”
Kate was told that the UK part of the business was being closed, but she later saw her role advertised on Linkedin.
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“It was horrendous,” the 32-year-old from Newcastle says. “I was so emotional. I wasn’t even going to be off that long, because it was remote working. I was hitting revenue targets. The business was flying. And it came from nowhere. I broke down because I was so confused.
“I didn’t even get a goodbye. I didn’t get anything. It was just: ‘Right off you go.’ I signed my settlement agreement, because I needed the money to last for my little boy, and that was it.”
In 2016, the coalition government commissioned a report to better understand pregnancy and maternity discrimination, which found a “significant deterioration” over the previous decade. It committed to repeating the research every five years, but this has not happened.
“What sort of message does this send to women? That the government cares so little about this issue that they can’t even be bothered to collect the data,” Brearley claims.
Until companies are held accountable, more women are likely to lose their jobs like Rhiannon and Kate.
“It’s just horrific because you’re in such a vulnerable state, and you want to be able to trust your employer to be able to let you go and enjoy your time, and you don’t want to be stressed,” Kate says.
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“You’re already stressed with a newborn baby and barely any sleep for the first six weeks. It’s obviously horrific. And I just was so emotional. For the first couple of months, I was really stressed and not enjoying the newborn stage. They sort of ruined my experience.”
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