Women in the UK face a “motherhood penalty” in the workplace when they have a child. New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that mothers in England lose, on average, more than £65,000 in earnings across the five years after a first child. This gap is driven by reduced hours, stalled progression and job moves to fit around caring for a child.
These dynamics are acute in higher education. Promotion in academia is tightly linked to the uninterrupted production of research papers and grant proposals, as well as the ability to move between institutions and even countries.
Our research has found that patchy implementation of family-friendly policies and unsympathetic managerial cultures push women to work as if nothing has changed. They are required to give birth to the “ideal academic baby”: a child who never disrupts grant deadlines, seminars or student emails.
