{"id":728447,"date":"2026-01-29T11:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/728447\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:22:09","slug":"impact-of-covid-19-and-motherhood-on-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/728447\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of COVID-19 and motherhood on employment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gender employment gap across London is still relatively wide, despite advances in policy and flexible working since the COVID-19 pandemic, new data shows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While 18 of 33 London boroughs closed their gender employment gap between 2019 and 2024, women in the capital remain on average 10% less likely to be employed than men, according to Office for National Statistics data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While flexible working during Covid-19 is credited as helping to close the gap as offices were shut down by the pandemic, now that employers are pushing staff back to desks five days a week, those gains risk disappearing.<\/p>\n

Liz Sewell, director of Belina Grow, an organization supporting women returning to work, said: \u201cWhat Covid did was throw everything up in the air and create an emergency situation,<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was willing to do absolutely everything \u2013 flexible, hybrid, work the hours you need. Now it\u2019s the opposite. Employers are trying to reset and take back control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boroughs like Hackney saw women\u2019s employment rise from 72% in 2019 to 83% by 2021, or Greenwich that climbed from 76% to 85% by 2023. <\/p>\n

And the trend is particularly noticeable in Hounslow, where women peaked at 77.5% employment in 2020, only to fall to 62% by 2024, a 15-point reversal.<\/p>\n

Sewell added: \u201cIf you\u2019re a single bloke and you\u2019re 20 and you can work full-time then you\u2019re in a very different position than you are if you\u2019ve got two children and you\u2019ve got to sort out the childcare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere still is a difference, because when you take that time out, and when you haven\u2019t got all the time left to give when you go back to work, you are in a different situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust those factors alone, it\u2019s going to take a mother longer to get into work than someone who\u2019s a 20-year-old bloke.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much of the system is not designed around mothers being unemployed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all mothers benefited equally from pandemic-era changes, both geographically, with those in London less likely to return to work, as well as ethnicity disparities.<\/p>\n

Laura Dewar, Head of Research at Belina Grow, and a policy influencer who has worked with parliamentarians, identified a two-tiered system to return to work.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cIn London, generally, the employment rate for mothers is lower than it is nationally. They\u2019re less likely to return to work within five years of having a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome mothers post-pandemic have done really well, but it\u2019s a certain model of families, two parents generally doing quite middle-class jobs where they\u2019ve gone on maternity leave and they\u2019ve kept their job and they\u2019ve gone back to work after maternity leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a lawyer who really specializes in a particular area of law, you can go for a job that\u2019s advertised full time and say, \u2018You\u2019re really going to want me.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you\u2019re talking about a retail job where hundreds of people have applied, and you go, \u2018I can\u2019t do those shifts\u2019, there\u2019s going to be a queue of people who can work in a different way than you.\u201d<\/p>\n

This helps explain London\u2019s geographic disparities as inner London boroughs show vastly different outcomes. <\/p>\n

For example, Islington\u2019s gender gap closed entirely (84% men, 85% women in 2024), while neighbouring Kensington & Chelsea saw women\u2019s rates plummet to 58%. <\/p>\n

In outer London, Hillingdon\u2019s dramatic rise, women jumping from 67% to 86%, even surpassing men\u2019s 79%, contrasts sharply with Richmond upon Thames, where women dropped from 78% to 70%.<\/p>\n

Employment figures mask deeper structural problems and many women seeking work face barriers the statistics cannot capture.<\/p>\n

Dewar said: \u201cA lot of women we work with are on spousal visas. They\u2019re entitled to work here but not entitled to any free childcare. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe expanded childcare offer doesn\u2019t apply to them, nor does support under Universal Credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This particularly affects boroughs with large migrant populations. <\/p>\n

Tower Hamlets, despite narrowing its gender gap from 29 percentage points in 2019 to 10 in 2024, remains among London\u2019s worst performers.<\/p>\n

Jane Knight, founder of Successful Mums, which helps mothers gain employment skills, identifies what she called \u2018the three C\u2019s: confidence, career advice, and childcare\u2019, as a major factor inhibiting women of all ages and backgrounds from returning to work.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cBeing a mum is the hardest job. They\u2019ve got so many transferable skills \u2013 negotiation, conflict management, softer skills employers are looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet when I talk to parents in playgrounds, they say, \u2018I\u2019ve got nothing to offer. Who\u2019s going to want me?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the pandemic we supported people on the 10th floor of high-rise flats with no garden access, perhaps on their own with five kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat isolation and mental health impact was particularly magnified in Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving training online helped reach women who previously lacked confidence to attend groups in person \u2013 but Knight noticed another trend.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cAbout 18 months after Covid, we saw an influx of women over 50 who\u2019d been made redundant, used their savings, and needed to return to work. Many were also going through separations or divorce.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome employers think someone over 50 won\u2019t know anything. But that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese women have good digital skills, want to learn more, are more committed, and have heaps of life experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re probably not going to have another baby and will likely stay until retirement. Savvy employers target over-50s because they\u2019ll be loyal staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gender employment gap across London is still relatively wide, despite advances in policy and flexible working since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,1117,5426,3374,393,4884,257,3177,16,5664,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-728447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-covid-19","10":"tag-diversity","11":"tag-employment","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-motherhood","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-unemployment","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115978131511145269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}