{"id":23,"date":"2016-09-08T04:12:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T04:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/?p=23"},"modified":"2016-09-08T04:12:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T04:12:56","slug":"battle-discrimination-against-mothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"Battle discrimination against mothers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ef3-gtb-block wp-block-\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Big business has a rotten reputation in this country and it\u2019s against that backdrop that the latest initiative aimed at cutting the quite disgraceful discrimination faced by women who get pregnant needs to be seen.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">For the uninitiated, a group of leading businesses including Barclays, Ford, Royal Mail, BT Group, and the Nationwide Building Society are fronting a campaign under the auspices of the Equality &amp; Human Rights Commission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWorking Forward\u201d aims to make workplaces \u201cthe best they can be for pregnant women and new mothers\u201d.\u00a0Why is such an initiative necessary, you may ask?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Well, that\u2019s where it gets interesting. The EHRC touts figures which show 84 per cent of British businesses claiming that they support pregnant women and those on maternity leave. Despite this, some 77 per cent of mothers report having had a negative or discriminatory experience at work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">To address this businesses are importuned to take a pledge, demonstrate \u201cleadership from the top down\u201d and ensure \u201cconfident employees\u201d. They are also urged to provide \u201ctraining and support\u201d to line managers, and here\u2019s the clincher, to offer \u201cflexible working practices\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They\u2019ll be able to draw on \u201cthe experiences of the best\u201d while they&#8217;re at it. One does rather wonder if the EHRC has checked out the tribunal records of those purporting to be in that category before holding them up as examples of good practice. Just a thought.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Look, the campaign&#8217;s aims are laudable. They are also pragmatic. Businesses keep banging on about the so called skills gap that they face. Discriminating against women who have children &#8211; as large numbers do &#8211;\u00a0 only serves to deprive them of the skills they say that they need. It is ultimately self defeating and yet the majority of businesses do it all the same. The figures bear that out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big business has a rotten reputation in this country and it\u2019s against that backdrop that the latest initiative aimed at cutting the quite disgraceful discrimination faced by women who get pregnant needs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19],"tags":[24,25],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-trend","category-spirit","tag-life-trending","tag-news","clearfix","overlay-wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}