While I often read about the awful things that happen to women during pregnancy, maternity leave and upon returning to work, I never thought they’d happen to me. Not with the qualifications, experience and work ethic I have, and not when I work at a large, ASX-listed organisation, for a boss who is a father of daughters. But how naïve I was.
After six months’ maternity leave for my firstborn, I received a phone call asking if I could come back. While I didn’t feel quite ready to, I was so pleased to be needed, I accepted. However, there “had been a few changes” so I would report to my replacement instead of my former boss. I had been demoted! I’d be doing the most menial tasks – perfect for someone with “baby brain” and a “new set of priorities.” Perhaps I did have baby brain at the time, as I didn’t question it. Instead, I felt grateful for the opportunity to start back part time.
Listen: What’s the best way to tell your boss you’re pregnant? Monique Bowley and Bec Judd discuss on Hello Bump, Mamamia’s pregnancy podcast.
I completely underestimated how emotional it would be leaving my beautiful baby daughter on those days, especially to do work that could’ve been done by someone with little or no experience at all. During my lonesome lunchtimes in the breastfeeding room, where I would relieve myself from excruciating breast pain, chow down some lunch, and check emails, I had to wonder if it was all worth it.
Over the next year or so, I increased the number of days and hours I worked, until one day my new manager (i.e. my former replacement) announced she was pregnant. I was offered my job back! Albeit, temporarily. And under different conditions. I wouldn’t be paid as highly and my role wouldn’t be backfilled by somebody with my level of experience, but instead, a graduate, who I’d have to train. So, there it was – proof that when I was demoted after maternity leave, it was right back down to entry level.
Interestingly, around the same time, DailyLife published an article on a job ad that had been posted which “Would suit a grad, but also a mum looking to return to the workforce”. I was starting to see that the things you read about really can happen to you. And it became clear that the unwarranted negative stigma associated with mums returning to work was rife. Discriminatory assumptions are evidently made about new mums that they are not interested in the same challenges that once motivated them, the same demands that they previously took on.
I wasn’t about to give up on my career just yet, so I took my manager’s role when her baby was born and have never worked harder in my life. Late nights and early mornings in the office, and laptop at home every night, despite one strain of flu or gastro after another (thanks childcare!).
Fast forward a year or so, and I was pregnant again. When my last week in the office came, my boss sat me down to wish me all the best. It all felt very déjà vu, until he went on to say that when I was ready to come back to work, there most likely wouldn’t be a need for me, as I had just proven that the role can be done by “a mum and a grad”. Despite using the word redundancy about five times, but not providing any paperwork or certainty of a payout, I think I was expected to be grateful for the heads up?
I left work that day severely bewildered and more than a little crushed. Any sense of achievement I felt about my efforts the past few years had been quashed. Any sense of certainty about what I would be doing at the end of my mat leave, completely disappeared. And any sense of hope for a successful career (as a working mum), gone. While I tried to quickly turn my mind to the excitement of spending time with my daughter and the impending arrival of my second, it was hard not to feel like motherhood had sent my career on a steep downward spiral. Giving up and opting out suddenly looked very attractive.
Putting aside that both demotion and redundancy, while on mat leave, are most likely unlawful, the hardest part to understand is how the perpetrators of such treatment don’t consider how they’d feel if the same thing happened to their wives, daughters or sisters. But then I think, we shouldn’t just be treated fairly because we because we might be someone’s daughter, wife, mother, girlfriend or sister.
We should be treated fairly because we are simply people.
Top Comments
I had this happen - not due to having children, but due to taking some sick leave (which I had plenty of owed to me) to take care of my mental health after the suicide of my stepdad, and at the same time going through a longrunning rape trial. I'd worked for this man for almost 5 years, long 12hr + days, not taking holidays, working public holidays without penalty rates etc, and he treated me like something he'd stepped in. Fortunately for me, I knew what he was up to, and contacted Fair Work Australia asap and they guided me through the processes to get my statutory entitlements paid at the higher managerial rate I was on (he'd demoted me and put me on part time at lower wages to try to get out of paying out my holidays etc at the higher rate), reimbursed holiday time he'd made me take when I tried to return to work, AND got me the redundancy payout he'd tried to avoid paying.
I work in HR and can say that discriminatory attitudes towards parents continue to be rife. I've refused to implement scenarios like the ones referred to in this article. I'm pleased to say now HR practitioners have liabilities if they do. The problem is much bigger - individuals fear career retribution if they take on employers & many flexible working practices are lip service but are convenient defences in the case of a claim.