Joeli Brearley, founder of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, says the pandemic has caused a surge of discrimination against pregnant women and mothers at work. She explains what needs to be done to fight back
Joeli Brearley was sacked by voicemail the day after she told her boss she was pregnant. It was 2013 and she was working for a charity. “I immediately thought: ‘The law will protect me,’” she recalls. “But I was also terrified, because I had bills to pay, and I thought: ‘Nobody’s going to employ me now.’”
Seething at the injustice, she wanted to take the company to court. But hers was a high-risk pregnancy and she had to pull out after doctors told her that stress would probably trigger an early labour. Instead, she set up the organisation Pregnant Then Screwed to fight for others who had experienced similar discrimination. Take the woman who was told her promotion was a done deal and she just had to do an interview as a formality. Just before the interview, she told her boss she was pregnant; suddenly, the new job wasn’t open to her. Or the woman who was bullied so mercilessly at work after she announced her pregnancy that she went into premature labour; as she sat in the neonatal clinic with her baby, who almost died, her boss called and made her role redundant.
