LIVE! from The Working Dads’ Summit

0:06Elliott:The Motherkind podcast explores how to feel happier, more confident and empowered in your motherhood, even in our world of pressure, judgment and comparison. I'm your host Zoe Blaski and every week I speak to an incredible expert to share actionable steps and powerful lessons to living your life as a mother with more joy and unapologetic confidence. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, just search Motherkind.

0:42We have a very special episode for you today. Our first live to be a boy podcast recording live from the Working Dad Summit last week. The summit was hosted by my company, Parenting Out Loud, and it was all about how we support dads to be loud and proud about their care and responsibilities at work so they can be equal parents at home. We heard from business leaders, we heard from dads, we had real life men in the audience on stage talking and we had Stella Creasy and Baroness Penn talking about parental leave reform. It was an incredible day, the recordings will be available soon. There's an article on The Guardian which you can check out as well which is incredible.

1:27We spent a lot of time at the summit of course rightly so talking about dads, talking about men and talking about the ups and downs of fatherhood, about dad's mental health, about the impact on the well-being of dads when we are supported to spend time with our children and balance work with care. But it was also really important that we use that opportunity to talk about the motherhood penalty. And of course, there's no one better to talk about the motherhood penalty than our own Jolie Brewery. So for this live recording, I interviewed Jolie and asked her a few tricky questions about the state we are in right now when it comes to working dads, working mums, the intersection of our experiences, and ultimately, why supporting dads to parent out loud has positive benefits to the motherhood penalty, and what that means for boys.

2:23So how does a motherhood penalty impact boys? Well, first and foremost, finances. We already know that 31 % of children in the UK live in poverty. And the motherhood penalty makes that even worse. So we need to make sure we can address the motherhood penalty to make sure households have the finances they need to be able to focus on parenting their sons and their boys and their children. But it's not just the money, it's the stress. Parenting, as you know, is really bloody hard. And the motherhood penalty and the stress that creates in the household impacts the well-being of both parents, which of course impacts the way we parent our children.

3:06And importantly, gender roles. The motherhood penalty reinforces those traditional gender roles of the dad as the provider protector, mum as the homemaker and main caregiver. Now if that's a choice that you make that is fine but if you are forced into those roles it can be quite damaging to the family unit and of course for the boys growing up in their household seeing their dad playing a particular role, seeing their mum playing a particular role. And that is shaping how they believe the workplace works, parenting works, relationship works. And that can have a detrimental impact on them growing up and being equal parents themselves and working to redefine masculinity and working to address the motherhood penalty and create really inclusive workplace and societies and communities.

4:01So this was an incredible conversation it was our first live to be a boy recording let's get into it

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4:41Elliott:Our next session is a special one. This is very, very exciting, ladies and gentlemen. We have seen that parenting out loud can have a ripple effect through the home, through workplaces, and importantly, with the women that they parent with. For far too long, the parenting penalty has disproportionately affected mothers. But as we've seen from our panels and everyone here today, when dads fully step in, when they parent out loud, that discrepancy can be decreased and hopefully the parenting penalty can be completely eliminated. Do we want it eliminated? Yes, I think we do. Exactly. Well, that's exactly what our next session is all about.

5:25Elliott:We have a special podcast recording of the To Be A Boy podcast. This podcast has graced billboards across Leicester Square. It has reached number seven in the Spotify UK podcast charts. And it's the leading podcast in the UK for all things boys, masculinity and modern parenthood. It is co-created and co-hosted by our very own Elliot Ray. and also by the formidable founder of Pregnant Then Screwed and the new initiative growth spurt, Jolie Braley. So please give a work-endowed summit welcome to Elliot and Jolie.

6:07Can we recognise we have the legend Jolie Braley, please?

6:14People ask me, oh, like, why did you start the podcast? And I say, when Jolie Braley asks you to do something, I think you just say. When your parents say to you, like, would you jump off a cliff if your friends did? And I'll be like, well, if Jodie was going to, then yeah, I'll jump off the cliff. Jodie, this is our first live podcast recording. First live podcast. So normally we would interview a guest. We had the episode dropping today, actually. Yeah. With Beyond Equality. We did. We were here. Are they here? Ben is here! Big up Ben, Madden Boys. Incredible episode. Beyond Equality do incredible work, supporting boys that are going to schools.

6:47And it's amazing. So thank you Ben for being here. Normally we interview a guest, but today we're going to mix it up. I'm going to interview you.

6:54Elliott:Yeah, that's going to be a bit weird. It is. Should we do our intro? Welcome back to To Be A Boy podcast with me, Elliot Ray. And me, Jolie Braley. And today we're mixing it up. We're going to talk a little bit about the motherhood penalty. We're coming live from the Working Dad Summit. We've spoken a lot about the dad's experience and that's all good. But we need to really make sure we make space and touch on the motherhood penalty, what this means for working mums. And I don't think there's anyone better in the UK to be speaking about. So, Jodie, first question, where are we right now? What does the picture look like for working mums in the UK when it comes to the motherhood penalty, the barriers that exist in accessing the labour market and accessing good mental health and just being happy and healthy and having good wellbeing?

7:46Elliott:Okay. I mean, this is going to sound really doom and gloom, but on almost every metric, things are worse. So pregnancy and maternity discrimination has increased. It used to be 54 ,000 women a year got pushed out of their job for getting pregnant. That's a woman every 10 minutes. One in nine pregnant women lose their job for getting pregnant. So we thought that was bad enough. And then we did the research and found that actually it's increased again. So it's now 74 ,000 million every year get pushed out of their job. We also know that mothers have really bad rates of mental health at the moment, probably because I would say the stress, the financial stress, as well as the fact that we're working longer hours, the cost of living crisis.

8:36Elliott:We're poorer than we were 30 years ago. We're financially worse off. We have worse rates of mental health. Pregnancy and maternity discrimination is increasing. Meanwhile, the motherhood penalty is staying stubbornly the same as it was 10 years ago. So we did some research recently, which found that the pay gap between mothers and fathers over a week of earnings is 33%. Mothers are earning 33 % less than dads over a week. So I'm afraid things are a bit shit. but I'm trying to give it I'm trying to end with a hopeful message which you know the hope is this room right it's everybody here the men who I've met so many nice men today who just are really flying the flag for equal parenting who get it who want things to change this whole room full of people who are here to advocate for better for working parents and Elliot, who's managed to bring this room full of people together who are all, you know, you're not all the same.

9:44Elliott:You're all different people from different backgrounds with different life experiences who all want to go out there and create change. And so, I mean, I just want to give it up for Elliot.

10:01I was going to say, we can drown our sorrows at 5pm. There's champagne and Prosecco. But I think you're right to reflect the reality. You know, there is hope, but at the same time, we can't sugarcoat things. Lots of people go through lots of stress and working mums have it really, really tough. As you mentioned, there's so many different people in this room. And in designing this event, that was on purpose. You know, the experience of motherhood is intersectional. What would you say is the different experiences for mothers when we take into account class and race and disability and other characteristics?

10:33Elliott:I mean, there's not enough data on this, but the data that we have shows that things are worse for black and brown women and they're worse for disabled mothers and mothers with disabled children. There was a brilliant report done by the Fawcett Society about two or three years ago, which found that black women face a more significant motherhood penalty than any other demographic. It didn't look at disabled women or women with disabled children because the data just didn't exist. But it found that black women face this intersectional discrimination because of the ethnicity pay gap as well as the motherhood penalty.

11:16Elliott:and the discrimination, the bias that you experience in the workforce. So we know that black Caribbean women are 11 percentage points less likely to be employed when they have children than black fathers are. For white women, that's only 5 percentage points compared to white men. And Bangladeshi women are 17 % more likely to be unemployed when they have children. Black women are also the demographic that are most likely to be rejected for a flexible working request. So there definitely is intersectional experiences and it's far worse for black and brown mothers. The demographic, I would say, that have it the hardest are mothers of disabled children and they are being systematically ignored by everything that we're doing, the whole system.

12:05Elliott:It seems to be getting far worse for mothers of disabled children, but we just don't have the data to tell you what that looks like because nobody's bothered to collect it, which I think speaks for itself. But yeah, things have... Things have... Shit. Sorry, this is really depressing. Can you ask me a nice question? What song would you play today to your children that sums up motherhood? Oh, God. When Nicola asked what song sums up your motherhood, the first song that came into my head was Thriller by Michael Jackson. Do we do the dance? We did the bait. Should we come on to music and do the dance?

12:42Maybe later. Maybe later. We'll see. I think that's an important point. Too often when we're doing inclusion work, regardless of the focus, we don't go into that intersectionality. We don't focus on different groups. And what I've loved in your work through Pink and Scrooge and now in the work that you do is that you've always looked at that. You've always looked at the wide range of motherhood. And I just want to really encourage everybody in the room that does this work to make sure we're going to that level of detail to make sure everyone's included in the conversations. So we've spoken today about dads parenting out loud and being equal parents at home.

13:16What impact from your perspective does that have on the lives of mums and weddings?

13:23Elliott:I mean, I'm not going to say anything that's going to shock anybody in this room, but we, I mean, we know that if dads take time out to care for their kids, like a decent chunk of time, that it reduces the bias in workplaces. Of course it does, because if both men and women are equal risk, then there's no point in having a negative bias towards women. And that negative bias is really well researched. So we know that mothers are seen as 10 % less competent than women without children. 37 % of employers say they would advertise jobs for men only if the law allowed it. It's one of my favourite stats.

14:06Elliott:And the Government Equalities Office found that mothers are half as likely to be promoted as any of the demographic. um i mean you know it doesn't help when we have like we have people going around saying things like the children of working mothers are more likely to mug you anybody know who said that boris johnson um and the you know the most powerful man in the world the president of the united states said in an interview i think that for the most part mothers are better off staying at home looking after their children i mean we're seeing from america as well this whole sea change in the way we talk about women in the workforce and it's very much you know we really shouldn't be working because your job is to be at home and that's really scary i've gone off on a bit of a but the the point being the point being let me get the point that if we have a system like sweden where paternity leave is ring-fenced and properly paid, then you will see men take time out in their droves to look after their kids, because it's not that men don't want to, they're desperate to spend more time with their children, but the whole system prevents them from being able to do it.

15:22Elliott:And once they take that time out, then we know that the bias towards women reduces, the gender pay gap starts to close. We found in some research we did, it would close our gender pay gap by 4%. if we gave dads six weeks paternity leave at 90 % of salary that is massive um and uh we you know kids would be happier everybody would be happier we'd all be happier dads would be happier kids would be happier marriages are 40 % more likely to stay together if uh men take time out in those early days to spend time with the kids that everybody will be better off and women's careers would flourish so why the hell we don't have a system that enables that is beyond i'm sure any of us in this room thankfully we have people like baroness penn and stella cruisi who are fighting the good fight inside parliament we're going to hear from them shortly as well one thing that's very interesting today we've been talking about dad's parenting out loud and i'm very aware that the bar is so low and if a dad does the basics changes the nappy leaves early then they're praise they're like a fantastic dad congratulations here's a medal often for women expressing the same is penalized so how do we encourage dads to parent out loud without reinforcing that idea that dads need to be praised for it and when women the mothers do the same thing they are penalized i mean i think dads are praised for it in the general public but i don't think they are in the workforce i think if dad's trying uh use flexible working or take extended print to leave they're often viewed with suspicion like why would you want to spend time with your child this is insane to me surely you want to just be at work and we know that dads are much more likely to have a flexible working request tonight and i've heard some shockers some really awful stories about men requesting to take extended leave and the things that their employers say to them, like, oh, shall I buy you a dress while you're at it?

17:33Or a guy who told me that his boss used to email him

17:37Elliott:while he was on parental leave and start the email, hello, nanny. You know, all sorts of sexist crap. And so I think in the workplace, it's very different to externally. But, you know, anybody here will know that when you see a dad out with their baby and he's like, oh, nice. That's so nice that you're doing that. And the mum's like, oh. Staggering behind and gets nothing. It's even better if you've got a puppy. If you're out with a puppy, by the way, it's crazy. Everyone thinks you're this great human being because you've got a little puppy. So you've spoken quite a lot about a lot of the, like where we are and the negative impacts on us not sharing care and stuff like that.

18:23What do you think would be the changes? Like, what do you think would make the most impact to working mum's experience?

18:31Elliott:Six weeks potentially 90 % of salary. Like, if there was one thing that would radically change everything, that would be it. I mean, companies are doing that and they're seeing changes in their workforce as a result. We've got the data. So we know that that is going to make the biggest difference. In addition to that, because we've talked a lot about paternity leave, the other policy that I know changes things radically is paid carers leave. So companies that have up to 10 days paid carers leave not only see that it's good for the bottom line, but Centrica did some research on this. They implemented 10 days paid carers leave and they found that it contributed 3.2 billion, no million not billion that'll be a lot million to their bottom line in terms of increased retention improved recruitment increased productivity so they're the you know it's good for businesses to do this but we all know like if you when you put your kids in nursery they're gonna get sick because they all go to nursery and they start licking each other and then like they come back with like all these insane diseases that we thought had died out in the Victorian era like hand foot mouth and slap cheek and what's the other one that's yeah like scurvy and stuff and that's you just get the call constantly and so to know that your company has a policy where not only are they saying that's okay we expect this and that's fine you take that time off but also you've not going to lose out financially because you've just come off trying to lose so you have no money radically changes things as well so many people i'm sure everyone in this room knows you from your incredible work at Prenton School.

20:16I'll never forget that image in Trafalgar Square, giving it to the government with about tens of thousands of working mums and dads surrounding you. Incredible work. Now you are leading Growspur, a new company. Woo-hoo, yeah. So my main question is the name. Where did the name come from?

20:36Elliott:I love when you need to die. Growspur, like you talk about kids having a Growspur. So I thought, well, also the whole point of this is for parents to grow. Like this is a growing period for humans when you have a kid. So, yeah, it came from that. And talk to us about the transition. So I understand the initiative, the business is all about supporting parents back into the workplace. Talk to us about what you think that transition into the workplace looks like. and why do so many mothers at that point just not enter the workforce or find it really difficult and ended up leaving? Yeah this is a big question I'll try and not waffle on too much.

21:22Elliott:We talked about this a bit before when you had the employer panel and there were loads of companies doing these really great policies but actually when you go back to work you feel a bit like you've lost your mind and I did I had a really supportive employer a man who didn't have kids he was dead nice though when I came back and really told me it's fine we expect it to take a while for you to get your head back into work I just thought when people talked to me it was like you know on Snoopy when he's down the phone it was I didn't know what anybody was talking about and I cried in the toilets every day for three months and you know I was desperate to get back to work actually after and time to leave so the fact that I felt like that means that the vast majority of people are really struggling when they go back to work and the data shows that they are we did a research project with five and a half thousand parents who've returned to work in the last three years 89 % of them said returning to work is really hard and the the vast majority it's more than three quarters said they didn't get the support that they need only 30 % said that they felt their employer understood what it's like to be a parent only 30 percent and one in four left their job as a result so this is an it's an economic problem as well as a problem for parents so I just I just think this is really solvable like I don't understand why we haven't solved this and so that's what growth spurt is trying to do and I think it's not about you know you can have great policies but this is about support it's about giving parents that support that they need when the return so it's career coaching she talked about being like it really changes things and it's also peer-to-peer support so companies do try and do peer-to-peer support programs internally and they do work a bit but the vast majority of employees that I've spoken to say there are power dynamics that interrupt that ability to have to feel like safe to support each other so it's Pitch to Pitch support.

23:26Elliott:And then there's a course that goes through pregnancy right the way through to winning return. So we're testing it at the moment. And it rolls out next month. And I really want it to be used by people who really need support and for it to change the way they feel about returning to work. I know it will. I know it will. Hope. Let's talk about hope. You're a hopeful person. I'm a hopeful person. That's why we do our work. If you have to have an ideal scenario in five years. Can we not go five? I'll go two years. Let's say two weeks. Yeah. We've done the work. We've implemented six weeks at 90 % of eternity leave.

24:08We're doing more career coaching. How would you want to see the world? What would be your vision for the world when it comes to equality for mothers?

24:18Elliott:How I would want to see the world and where I think the world will be might be slightly different. I'll be honest that I the employment rights bill will change a lot of things for the better so within the employment rights bill you have miscarriage leave you have changes to flexible working laws that I think will genuinely make a difference we will enhance protections for women when they're pregnant from redundancy and while they're on parental leave and parents when they return from work so that will be a real game changer as well we will have the parental leave review which we're going to come on and talk about in a minute which should say what we're all saying repeatedly over and over again i don't know why we need a bloody report and more investigations because we all know what needs to be done we believe that will uh conclude that we need six weeks return to leave at 90 percent of salary and then we'll have that and the world will be wonderful that's the ideal um i also think what gives me hope is the fact that we're not standing for it anymore and we've now got men you know it used to just be women shouting about this stuff And now we're seeing more and more men join with us to fight for changes.

25:28Elliott:And that will make a big difference because I hate to say it, men, but you are more listened to than we are. So you need to keep shouting, please, and supporting these changes. I'd love to hear from people here, actually, what gives them hope about the future, because I think we don't talk about that enough, particularly at the moment. And we've got time for a question. It's our first live recording and we're going to hand it over to you. Do we have a question for Jolie or for me or for both about what we've spoken about today and the mother penalty experiences? Kelly's hand went straight up in the background there.

26:00She is not shy.

26:02Elliott:I've been spending the last 18 months in small businesses. I think it's been a great sense that it's 16 % of the workforce working businesses under 250. And in my experience, this stuff is, well, it's not easy, but it's been a year in large businesses. is how we can reach that 60 % beyond this lobby world. There are companies with less than 250 staff that are doing some amazing, amazing things. Companies that don't have a gender pay gap, they implement really great policies. I think it's really about priorities. And then there are massive companies there. I cannot mention any names of companies because I'm legally bound not to, but companies that win awards for being gender equal but behind closed doors, you get pregnant and you're out and you're wearing, you're signing a non-disclosure agreement.

26:55Elliott:They'll be banned next year, non-disclosure agreements, so we'll be able to expose their baskets. But I think it's not just about policies, it's about care and it's about having a leader who gets it and that does filter down and makes a big difference. One last question, Agnes. spoken a lot about the intersectionality and you also spoke about the law that are coming in but how would that still protect black and brown women because oftentimes what happens is new laws and new policies come in play but actually they end up widening the inequities for people that are already disproportionately more likely to experience them in the world so what can we do around that I'd love to hear from you what you think because I feel like you've got something you're not saying there there's like something that's that you have thought through that you're like a lot of policies come in and they sound really great francis logo and so forth but actually a lot of working class women a lot of black environment don't get to benefit from those policies and it just becomes um kind of like a kind of a washboard on the outside like yeah we've done this thing now let's get the bond and people are still feeling the bond so i think to just, I won't really say there's an answer, but I think if it's really important for people in this room who are working in this place, just like what you said earlier, to really understand that there are unintended consequences that sometimes we seek a problem that we seem to give us the problem, but the people, especially the people, who are facing the ground of these issues, just are not taking this place.

28:30Elliott:I mean, we saw that with Sheph and Talib, didn't we? When Sheph and Talib came in, and we've looked at the data now, dads who are from low-income households are much less likely to use sharepoint to leave it just benefits people wealthier families the child care system benefits wealthier families it doesn't benefit lower income families I think the way that you should design policy and the way that you test policy is about firstly data and analyzing the data as you go and then you know changing policy if it's not working, but also having people round the table when you're designing policy to input on it.