Forget the glass ceiling, Stylist columnist Lucy Mangan reveals what’s really holding women back in the workplace

"It’s nice to be able to say that something is going right for once!” says Peter Grigg, director of research and policy at the Family and Parenting Institute, sounding both relieved and ever-so-slightly gobsmacked.

He is talking about the new proposals announced by the government last week to extend flexible working rights to all employees, not just parents, and to change the rules regarding maternity and paternity leave. From 2015, mothers and fathers will be able to divide the 52 weeks up between themselves and take turns at home and at work as they see fit (after the first two weeks, which is still ring-fenced for the mother to allow her to ‘recover’ – meaning sit down without yelping in agony and start holding her wee in long enough to get to the loo in time. The government may hold with euphemism in these matters, but I do not). No longer does each parent’s leave have to be taken in one solid block.

You can see why any increase in rights and flexibility when it comes to the vexed question of making childbearing compatible with a working life for women is welcome; because at the moment – baby (and mother), it is cold outside.

The stark truth of working life is that the biggest factor holding women back from receiving salary parity and boardroom positions is children. The nappy ceiling has replaced the glass ceiling. The fact that it is (so far – come ON, science) only women who give birth puts us at a disadvantage. Antenatal hospital appointments, maternity leave and childcare all fall at our feet. Having a baby almost always requires that careers be put on hold. And it has a catastrophic effect on women's wages. According to the Office of National Statistics, the pay gap between men and women who have no children is 8%. If those men and women produce four children, that pay gap rockets to 35.5%.That is the nappy ceiling. Anecdotally, things are bad.

Anecdotally, things are bad. “One woman rang our helpline,” says Elizabeth Gardiner, head of policy for work-life balance campaigning charity Working Families, “because she had handed in her MAT B1 form [the document you have to give your employer to confirm your pregnancy and relevant dates – in order to qualify for maternity pay] to her boss and the very next time she saw him, he handed over her P45.” She estimates that around 12% of calls to their employment rights helpline involve maternity discrimination. You do not even need to have announced your pregnancy before discrimination begins. “If you’re recently married or the right age and off or late several mornings [with morning sickness] in a row, or look a bit cr*p – or ‘blooming’ – people in the office put two and two together. Mine stopped bringing me new work long before I said anything,” says a friend who recently gave birth.

Reality Check

Other friends who have had babies in recently have told me – often tearfully – of being frozen out by colleagues, sidelined in, or simply not invited to meetings, consultations, and drinks after work. One had her contract and income cut by a third while she was away (“I was too ill and emotional after the birth to fight it,” she says) and everyone – everyone – who has gone part-time is effectively still doing a full-time job (by finishing tasks in the evenings and at weekends) for less money. Most of them are wondering whether to downshift and find less skilled, worse paid jobs that would at least have fixed hours. And these are people fortunate enough to be (by and large) in professional jobs.

If you are lower down the socioeconomic scale and working shifts or on a zero-hours contract, you may find yourself not qualifying for any kind of maternity/ paternity leave or pay at all. If you don’t want to remain childless (or child-free as some call it, and as the mother of an 18 month old I can see why), how can you begin to break through it?

One action that would help us all enormously would be to stop looking at the spectacular high-fliers like Nicola Horlick, who combined six children with an extraordinary career as a successful investment fund manager and Marissa Mayer, recently hired as CEO of Yahoo! while she was pregnant (who will doubtless be happily similarly unimpeded professionally by her maternal status) as any kind of proof that women can have it all if they just try hard enough. Those with jobs that allow them to hire nannies, cooks, cleaners and fulfil every other role most women have to manage themselves are among the fortunate few, not helpful role models, whatever certain sections of the media would like us to believe.

Who's afraid of the nappy ceiling?