Maternity leave rights in the UK could be double-edged sword for women

October 20, 2009 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News, Pregnancy

Maternity leaves of up to a year coupled with uncapped penalties for successful sexual discrimination claims may be costing working women jobs and money.

Ever since Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of J O Hambro Capital Management, told the Treasury Committee that women are in danger of having their maternity leave “backfire” on them, discussion has been very animated across the U.K. Many of the discussions have come in the form of editorials, blogs, and news stories that ask women to be more responsible with their maternity rights.

While the topic has been in discussion for many months, Nichola Pease likely opened the floodgates with her comments to the committee.

“A year maternity leave is too long, and sex discrimination claims that run into tens of millions of pounds are ridiculous,” Pease told the Treasury Committee on October 14.

“What I worry about is that legislation and protection turns this into a nightmare. We’ve got to be realistic and make sure the protection, which has very good motivation, doesn’t end up backfiring both at a female level and at a U.K. competitiveness level.”

Her comments came as the Treasury Committee was investigating the factors involved with why women who work in the financial-services industry earn less than men. Additionally, the committee wanted to address why women gain fewer executive-level jobs than men.

But aren’t women important to the U.K. workforce? Times columnist Eleanor Mills made an interesting observation in her Sunday column.

“It is crucial that we as a society get this legislation right; there are now 172,925 female undergraduates and only 141,643 male ones,” said Mills. “Mothers in the workforce are here to stay.”

With slightly more than 1.2 young women for each young man in the workforce, Mills is right; the U.K. can’t ignore the importance of women in the workplace. But a certain level of responsibility must be had when dealing with maternity leave.

Mills illustrated that point by relating the story of a woman placed in a prominent FTSE company who took a year’s maternity leave, fought for a promotion upon returning, and then got the promotion. Two months later, the woman announced she was pregnant again and would take another year of maternity leave.

Mills isn’t alone in her calls for responsibility. India Lenon, an Oxford University student and blogger for the Telegraph, expressed her own concerns about how the maternity leave policy and women that use it may affect her future. While she ranks having a baby as “low” on her priority list, she realizes that businesses may look at her and other young women as “peak-fertility time-bombs” regardless of priorities.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow that while we attempt, upon graduation, to find a place on the housing ladder, perhaps a partner, but above all a job, the stages of our lives that haven’t even occurred to us yet might be standing in our way,” said Lenon.

She went on to say that “employers who pick a young man over a young woman are not chauvinists; they are using their common sense.”

And many men and women who have commented on the situation seem to agree; there has been a small but noticeable shift from discrimination of women based upon perceived lack of ability to a discrimination based upon capacity of giving birth.

One commenter on Eleanor Mills’ blog mentions his four-year-old business with two young female employees who are in long-term relationships and his concerns about hiring another woman. He fears that he may leave his business “vulnerable” if he hires another woman and one or even two of them take a year of maternity leave.

As more women abuse the system, these fears will continue to rise in hiring managers and working or soon-to-be-working women alike. Calls for moderation and responsibility will get louder as the double-edged sword of the current government maternity policy gets sharper.