One in five women in the UK gives up or quits their job after having children.
Zoe Duce, who spent ten years building a fast-paced career in social media before becoming a mother, says the problem isn’t ambition. The complete absence of planning, planning and process around one of the biggest changes in a woman’s working life.
The magnitude of the problem should concern any employer. More than a quarter (27 percent) of mothers either do not return to work after maternity leave or leave within a year of returning, most citing poor employer practices, lack of flexibility and difficult return to work. Previous research suggests that the juggling act has driven a quarter of a million women out of their jobs altogether.
Finance costs are also tight. ONS analysis shows that mothers’ monthly earnings fall by an average of 42 per cent within five years of having their first child, with a motherhood penalty of more than £65,000 per woman.
The Duce planned his return with enthusiasm, only to be blindfolded.
“Maternity leave hit me harder than I expected mentally. I built my life around a fast-paced career in communications for 10 years, and then overnight, it just stopped. I felt like I was freezing; one minute I was surrounded by people and energy, the next I was quiet, isolated, and strange. I felt like I lost a big part of the people I used to be with.”
What followed was an endless cycle of childcare breakdowns, sick days and flexible work schedules. He says: “Every time I tried to rebuild my life, something got in the way.
When she opened up to other mothers, the answers were always the same: “it’s only been a few years” or “just like that”. Duce refused to accept that losing yourself was just part of the job description.
He says: “For me, that’s a big misconception. “That women choose to retreat because they want to, in fact most are forced into it because the system around them is not designed to work.
His answer was to treat the mess like a surgical problem. She creates structured child care contingencies, clear support plans with partners, weekly planning methods and non-negotiable time for work and well-being.
He says: “The difference was immediate. “It’s not that the curveballs stopped, it’s that I finally had a way to handle them.”
That experience was MoveThru, a UK company that helps professional mothers, and the organizations that employ them, navigate maternity leave and return to work. With around 590,000 women going on maternity leave in the UK each year, Duce argues that “no-one owns the process”, leaving mothers, managers and employers scrambling for the necessary change to strengthen any key business offering. It’s a challenge that comes with growing pressure for employers to rethink workplace support for reproductive health more broadly.
“Right now, mothers, managers, and employers are busy,” said Duce. “But since having children is one of the biggest moments in a woman’s career, it deserves more organization and attention than is currently being given. The solution is planning, not sacrifice.”
For SME owners, who rarely have an HR department to rely on, the message is clear: retention is cheaper than replacement, and structure beats attractiveness. To that end, Duce created a free, regulated maternity leave and reimbursement system that gives women, managers and employers a clear framework, including what employees are entitled to during maternity leave.
“My goal is to take the guesswork out of it,” he explains. “If mothers and their employers understand what to do and how to plan for the future, everything changes.”
His main message is still simple. “I want women to know that they are not failures,” she said. “I was told over and over that this is how a mother should feel. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
