Mims Davies MP joined Maltesers, Comic Relief, the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, and other organisations working to support and empower women for an exclusive preview of a new campaign focused on lightening the load for working mums and helping women thrive.
Mims was pleased to see the launch of a new toolkit for mums, partners, employers, colleagues, friends and family – designed to help us all understand what more we can do to support the working mums in our lives. You can read more about the toolkit here.
At a time when more and more of us are comfortable bringing our whole selves to work, new research shows that working mums in the UK feel it’s too risky to be authentic. This leaves many mothers in the workplace feeling misunderstood, less fulfilled and less aware of their rights at work.
Research shows there is much more to do to support working mums:
· One-quarter of working mums in the UK say they feel less valued as an employee in the workplace since returning from maternity leave.
· 7 out of 10 working mums say they’d like more help from friends and family to be the working mum they want to be.
· Two-thirds of mums are picking up work outside of their scheduled hours, as they try to balance work and childcare commitments.
The Government has rightly recognised that barriers to work like high childcare costs and inflexible working hours have put pressure on the labour market with many single parents who want to work being denied that opportunity.
Progress has been made to change that as government is now supporting single parents on Universal Credit by paying childcare upfront and increasing the amount someone can be paid to over £950 for one child and over £1,600 for two children – an increase of around 50 per cent, as well as 30 hours of funded childcare for every single child over the age of nine months old.
On Single Parents Day, Mims opened up about the challenges of being a single mother in politics – declaring that lone parenting should not be a barrier to progressing your career.
Commenting on the event, Mims said:
I was a pleasure to support this new campaign to support working mums. As a single mum minister, I know only too well how challenging being a single parent in employment can be.
As a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, where I have responsibility for government policy on social mobility, youth and progression, I am determined to ensure the barriers to work for working mums - which they have been facing for too long - are fully broken down.
