Pregnant Then Screwed protects and supports pregnant women and parents who encounter pregnancy, paternity or maternity discrimination and is ultimately working to end the motherhood penalty. We talk to founder Joeli Brearley about how a grant from Rosa has helped her organisation.
I sent up Pregnant Then Screwed after my own experience of pregnancy discrimination. When I told my employers that I was pregnant with my first child, they sacked me the following day by voicemail. I was working at a children’s charity, which shows it can happen anywhere. I tried to do something about it, but was scuppered by the three-month time limit of raising a tribunal claim from the point of discrimination and I had a high-risk pregnancy and was advised by the doctor not to get stressed. After my baby was born, I started talking to other mums and discovered my experience was not unique – 54,000 women a year are pushed out of their jobs due to pregnancy or maternity leave. I realised I had to do something to expose the problem.
I decided to document women’s stories and release them around International Women’s Day in 2015. They had to be anonymous because women were silenced by having to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA); we received a grant from Rosa’s Voices From the Frontline programme to run a campaign about this. NDAs are being used by employers to cover up sexual harassment, racism, and pregnancy and maternity discrimination. We want to stop employers using NDAs to mask bad behaviour by having an independent body to monitor and investigate NDAs.
I wrote a Mumsnet article which was picked up by Victoria Derbyshire at the BBC and it grew from there; women were asking me for support and I thought, I can’t just ask people for their stories, I have to actually help them. I met a lawyer who specialised in pregnancy and maternity discrimination and she offered to help me set up a free legal advice line. We established that over three years ago and it’s still going strong. Even though we were providing free legal advice, women still wanted to take action but they couldn’t afford the cost, so we set up a mentor programme for women going through tribunals, matching them with a woman who’s been through the process, and that’s still going too.
I was setting up the charity while working four days a week and had two small children; I realised it wasn’t sustainable, so I gave up my job and found a way to make it work. I raised over £16k crowdfunding and Rosa also awarded us a grant. Since then, we now run a flexible working helpline, for women who have a nightmare when trying to return to work flexibly after maternity leave – over the last two years, we have supported 1,607 women with free legal advice when they have faced pregnancy or maternity discrimination. We also organise festivals for mums trying to get their confidence back.
We received another grant through Rosa to help fund our flexible working campaign. With #FlexForAll we’re working to change the law so that all jobs are flexible by default. The petition was signed by 31,000 people and flexible working was included in the Conservative Party manifesto and the Queen’s speech because of our work. It also gained huge attention in the national media, including in the Guardian, BBC and Victoria Derbyshire.
The pandemic has disrupted our campaigning, but it’s also given us the opportunity to promote the benefits of flexible working and encourage all employers to offer it as standard. We’ve seen a significant rise in the number of women calling our free advice line, too, and 84% said it helped them have a better understanding of their legal rights and increased confidence.
Lobbying and dealing with politicians is frustrating; the government makes statements that gives them good PR but that are ultimately meaningless. We get invited to events at Number 10 and give oral evidence at select committees which is fantastic, but it’s frustrating because it just creates good PR without actually implementing anything.
The charity is such a big part of me; I’m the only paid member of staff then there are 35 volunteers working across different programmes. The biggest challenge is managing it all. We’ve got a board who will soon become trustees, which will help me take a step back, then we will be a charity which is good for enabling us to raise funds in the future.
We want to solve the motherhood penalty; it’s quite a challenge but it’s our mission to solve pregnancy and maternity discrimination. If we manage it, it will have enormous implications for women – it will reduce the gender pay gap, pension poverty and child poverty and it will mean more women in leadership positions. It is the foundation of many of the problems – women see their careers turn to mush when they have children and they’re not progressing, so end up in a financial mess, which is part of the reason why we’re not seeing women in senior levels in organisations.
Find out more at pregnantthenscrewed.com.