"Mum, You're Fired!": Pregnant Then Screwed Shreds Mothers' CVs

Pregnant Then Screwed and a collective of advertising creatives have launched ‘The Career Shredder’, a new campaign to highlight that the motherhood penalty is worse than ever with 74,000 mothers a year now being mistreated when pregnant, during maternity leave or when they return to work. 

Today, Pregnant Then Screwed will be live-streaming a giant physical shredder which will be shredding the CVs of mothers aired across a billboard in Westfield through Ocean Outdoor, known for its high footfall, and on a website, for the next four weeks. Anyone can support the campaign by engaging via their LinkedIn profile and ‘shredding’ their CV. Once they’ve done this, they’ll receive a social asset they can post on LinkedIn to help highlight the ever-growing number of mothers who experience discrimination in the UK. 

See the stream here. 

The campaign will also see OOH posters provided by Clear Channel plastered across the UK, landing on the same day as The Apprentice airs with the words 'Mum, you’re fired' - sadly, it doesn’t matter if you land the job; if you’re only going to be pushed out when you become a mum. 

The campaign will hit print publications and the airwaves too. Print ads will run across a variety of national publications for the next few weeks and 30s media spots featuring the voices and CVs of real women who have experienced pregnancy and maternity discrimination will play out across Acast’s network of top podcasts. 

Gemma Phillips, the creative director behind the stunt, comments, “Pregnancy and maternity discrimination not only destroys the confidence of hundreds of thousands of women, it costs the economy severely too - it just doesn't make business sense. With recent conversations about returning to the office and the role back of D&I initiatives, this campaign lands at a really interesting time in the world of work. Career Shredder not only sheds light on this huge waste of talent but importantly provides ways to stop it".”

The campaign is underpinned by new research from Pregnant Then Screwed, in partnership with Women In Data®, which has revealed a sharp increase in the number of women who are potentially pushed out of their job when pregnant, during or when returning from maternity leave. Up to 74,000 women every year now lose their job for getting pregnant or taking maternity leave - an increase of 37%  from 54,000 in 2016. With less than 2% of women able to pursue a claim in an employment tribunal, it’s a costly injustice that routinely goes unseen. Until now.

Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 35,800 parents, then Women In Data extracted a nationally representative sample of 5,870 parents to create its State of the Nation report. The report found that 12.3% of women are sacked, constructively dismissed or made redundant whilst pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of returning from maternity leave. If scaled up to the general population, this could mean as many as 74,000 women a year are forced to leave their job. 

Joeli Brearley, founder and CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed, says, “Joeli Brearley, founder of charity and campaign group, Pregnant Then Screwed, said: ‘’We have long suspected things are getting worse, not better. Our free advice line is ringing off the hook, it has reached a point where we simply cannot cope with demand. To find that 74,000 mothers a year are being pushed out of their job for daring to procreate is not surprising, but it is devastating. That’s a woman being pushed out of her job every seven minutes in the UK for doing something that is part of the human existence.’’ 

To improve your workplace culture for mothers, the campaign is asking companies to increase their paternity leave offer, advertise jobs as flexible unless they have a good business reason not to, and collect maternity retention data to offer further insight into company behaviour.