Stop treating maternity leave as a holiday

Opinion

The collective experience of women returning from maternity leave is an act of corporate negligence, with devastating impacts on women’s careers and the media industry.

It is women who are changing the centre of gravity in the media industry.

It is women who are showing up, shedding outdated ideas, campaigning and collaborating. It is women who are making organisations step up to their duty of care to their people, regardless of the personal cost.

Women like Annabelle Black, who sparked an industry-wide discussion on burnout after she shared a deeply personal story of her own burnout, underline the impossible pressure felt by so many mothers in the creative and media industry.

Women are the oxygen of change. Stepping up and speaking out, even when their voices shake. Women who are dismissed, talked over, overlooked for promotion and routinely criticised because “they care too much”. Women returning from maternity leave are stepping up to an almost barbaric level. Carrying both a disproportionate share of the mental load in their families, while also holding the emotional load of our industry.

It is these women raising the bar, carrying the weight of change in an industry which so carelessly disregards its duty of care to women. Especially at that crucial pinch point in women’s careers: maternity leave.

Redefining resilience

I write for a living, I have two young children and yet I struggle to find the words to describe the grit that women returning from maternity leave in the media industry show.

An invisible, barbaric level of resilience. Like so many parts of motherhood, their experiences remain wordless in an industry built on storytelling. Perhaps because so many of these stories are so hard to hear.

Let’s be clear: things are not getting better for women in the media. In the UK, 54,000 women a year lose their job simply for getting pregnant. 390,000 working mums experience negative and potentially discriminatory treatment at work each year. These numbers have almost doubled in a decade.

Our industry swells with the stories of women who have been let down at a pivotal moment in their career. From the media agency leader who found out she was being replaced on maternity leave by a press release. To the brilliantly talented editor who confided in her publisher after miscarrying at work, only for a long-promised promotion to evaporate in front of her eyes.

Then there is the woman squeezed out of the industry because her boss refused to allow her to leave 30 minutes early to pick her daughter up from nursery.

The collective experience of women returning from maternity leave in the media industry is tantamount to corporate negligence. Media leaders give maternity leave as much thought as a holiday. A minor inconvenience rather than a faultline in women’s lives, and it is women left picking up the pieces.

This carelessness is a rot at the heart of our industry. It crushes women’s careers, drives cynicism and weakens the media industry’s credibility with clients and audiences alike.

The mother of all myths

There is a red thread between the dismal treatment of mothers in the media and the dead-eyed ironed out stereotypes of motherhood that persist in the industry.

I regularly speak to CMOs who are aghast at how little their agencies understand or empathise with parents. There are few more vital, misunderstood, maligned and stereotyped target markets than mothers. Yet ask yourself honestly how many times have you seen the term “busy working mum” in a brief. Then ask yourself if you ever targeted a man so bluntly? Our industry’s bias is bad for business.

It wasn’t until my first maternity leave that I realised just how little mainstream media brands understood or reflected the lived experiences of mothers. We were invisible or plastic stereotypes. An amorphous mass of “mum” that cared for nothing other than “snapping back” into pre-pregnancy bodies and dressing our babies in the most gender-stereotyped clothes possible. Have you even had a daughter if you don’t dream that she will become a ballerina, rather than a striker for Chelsea Football Club?

It was the women who were squeezed out of the media and marketing business. Women like Anna Whitehouse, the founder of Mother Pukka, who reflected modern motherhood and all its sharp edges online.

Imagine what the media industry could have built if it had kept these innovators in our businesses?

The motherhood penalty

Covid presented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the workplace for the better.

Yet so many leaders in our industry are more interested in how many days their employees are in the office, than how they can close the gender pay gap and retain mothers.

While leaders wax lyrical about the creative firepower of working in an office, our industry press continues to report on gender pay gaps as if they are freak weather incidents, not the result of biased policy.

The decline in availability and the increase in cost of childcare has created a perfect storm for mothers, exacerbated by the gender pay gap. By the time a woman’s first child is 12-years-old, her pay is 33% less per hour than a man.

As a leader you have no business talking about inclusion if you aren’t proactively closing your gender pay gap.

I regularly speak to leaders in the media industry who can’t even tell me what their gender pay gap is. Follow the bar raised by Polly McMorrow, CEO of McCann London, who knows what her gender pay is every single day. Like any other business-leading KPI she does not take her eye off the ball of tracking it, monitoring it and considering it daily.

Measure what you treasure.

Businesses need women returning from maternity leave

There is another thread between absence of mothers in leadership roles and our collective failure to step up to the biggest challenges we face as an industry.

From the burnout crisis to the impact of social media on children’s mental health, mothers’ are on the front line. We must listen to their lived experience.

Now is the time to stop stereotyping, silencing and sidelining mothers. Enough is enough.

As an industry it is vital to push forward with more proactive policies and flexibility for all parents. Yet equally we must be intentional in recognising that economically and emotionally these issues currently disproportionately impact women. Now is not the time for whataboutism. Maternity discrimination in the media is an urgent issue. We must stop this colossal drain of talent from our industry. Every single mother leaving your business is a message to how little you value inclusion in your business.

We must change. Make retention a KPI. Promote for potential. Embrace flexible working to close the gender pay gap. Stop pushing mothers out of our industry. Listen and learn from the women in your businesses coming back from maternity leave. Invest in meaningful long-term systemic change in your businesses, not one off initiatives.

Do better. Do more. Do it now.

And for the women facing the sharp edges of this discrimination. The women left questioning if they are enough, when they are giving their absolute all: I see you. After over a decade of writing about the experience of mothers in our industry I know that simply telling you to keep going is an act of corporate gaslighting.

You are doing enough. You are enough. When leaders recognise the problem is looking at them in the mirror, we can finally stop this shameful cycle of misplaced blame, discrimination and burnout.

Women in our industry deserve better. The time to step up is now.

Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in the media. She is now editorial director of Creativebrief. She writes for The Media Leader each month.

Career Leaders: The Media Leader‘s weekly supplement with thought leadership, news and analysis dedicated about media careers, training, development and wellbeing.
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