As my time presenting Woman’s Hour draws to a close, and I enter my final week of programmes, I have been reflecting on women’s lives. Our joy, health, safety, prospects and the chasm between how things ought to be and actually are.
When people lug out the tired arguments that we don’t need programmes like Woman’s Hour, or magazines or books with a female lens on the world because you know, um, equality, my mind goes to the laws against violence, the women no longer here to talk about equality, and the incredible women I have encountered through this job.
This week, for instance, I met a group of women who are living in a refuge, having fled domestic violence. They are trying to rebuild their lives from the ground up with the help of the incredible women who work there. These refuges are nestled among ordinary houses – strikingly without signage because of security needs – and the women who live there are not there out of choice. You don’t leave everything you know and built and uproot your child lightly.
Another of the most apparent examples of so-called equality has also been on my mind in the past few days: maternity discrimination. Despite women’s rights in this area being enshrined in law, somehow it keeps on happening. Read a paper most weeks and there will be a story. Or talk to women – they will know someone who this happened to. Usually more than one. Such discrimination comes in all flavours, from the first perfectly innocent, but rude comment or judgement, right through to the full-fat prejudicial actions and remarks.
The Government hopes to further bolster legal protections for working women who have children. From today the Equality Act, which is meant to protect pregnant women from direct discrimination, will contain a new protection from redundancy during pregnancy and when returning from maternity, adoption and shared parental leave.
The aim is laudable but what of the execution? And will all managers and those with power in businesses get the memo? Employment tribunal records tell a different story, as do the women who find their voice to talk about what happened to them. Their stories, if we know them at all, are all around us. But why is this still happening?
I spoke with Nicola Hinds this week – a woman who represented herself in an employment tribunal against her former employer, the facilities management business Mitie, and won, with her claims of pregnancy discrimination and constructive dismissal being upheld.
Laws were in place, but did not protect Nicola when she needed them. Understandably her case has been described as a David and Goliath case. Nicola felt she had to fight after her manager at the company started treating her differently once she shared she was pregnant, and things unravelled from that point, as more and more new work was put on her. The judge said that her male boss had stereotyped her as “an emotional, hormonal pregnant woman” when she raised concerns about her workload.
When I spoke to Nicola on Woman’s Hour this week, she was very clear that the work was the problem at that stage – not her being pregnant. She even managed to return to work post maternity leave, but it was clear from the off that she wasn’t welcome. Nicola, as she puts it, constructively resigned.
Being badged or criticised as emotional has long been used as a gendered stick with which to beat women, or someone more vulnerable. And while Nicola, armed with no legal training (but with some powerful mentoring from the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed) seemed like she was up for the fight, she was at pains during our conversation to convey how hard emotionally, mentally and financially the fight has been.
Yes, she is entitled to compensation and now has the vindication that it wasn’t all in her head. But her feeling about winning is striking: she says it was a “bittersweet” moment. Nicola really didn’t want to have to be in that situation in the first place. This, I have found, is a common reaction across many of the women I have interviewed, left with little option but to try to fight their boss, the system, simply for being, and daring to procreate.
It is also worth pointing out that Nicola, while being discriminated against, and pregnant, felt like she had “lost her voice”. It took having her much-longed for second child and returning to work to realise she did have a voice and needed to fight. And lest we forget the women fighting to keep their job and rights during and post-pregnancy are doing this alongside trying to care for a tiny new person. Not only can it rob them of that time with their child, it’s a huge strain at a particularly full-on time for a woman.
Telling your boss you are pregnant is often one of the most nerve-wracking parts of bringing new life into the world. It shouldn’t be – but it is. Those nerves are not just about how your boss reacts, they can also be about how you feel about yourself at work and getting to grips with your changing status in relation to your job.
Women need the people they work with and for – female and male – to do more than observe the law and go through the motions of following it. They ought to want to protect women bringing the next generation into the world from discrimination. It should be something a company is proud to do. Not merely pay lip service to it, sighing as they wearily look for someone’s maternity cover, assuming that most companies do that, although we know many don’t despite state provision. When they don’t, this causes more resentment, as extra work is loaded onto others.
Female employees need to play their part too by being open and honest with their boss about what they can, when they can on plans for taking their leave and how they see their return. Bosses are not meant to ask about such things or pressurise, but there is nothing stopping a woman from sharing her plans when she knows them.
A good working relationship ideally is a two-way street, although one cannot ignore how precarious many people’s working situations are and with the gig economy, such relationships may not exist at all. But where there are such human bonds and legal rights for women at work, the basics need to be in place.
So I return to the issue of how things ought to be in life for women, and how things are. As I prepare to hang up my Woman’s Hour headphones next week more than 10 years after I first presented the programme and nearly four year after being appointed its chief presenter, I can safely say a woman’s lens on the world is utterly crucial as well utterly thrilling.
Emma Barnett presents BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour