Professor Shani Orgad - Why Mothers Leave the Workforce & What We Can Learn From It & Making Structural Changes at Work

Recent figures have shown that significant numbers of highly educated women are leaving paid employment when they have children and our guest this week has written a brand new book examining the reasons why.

Shani Orgad is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and on this week's podcast she shares her research and the real-life stories she has heard of women for whom work simply doesn't work anymore. 

Having interviewed a range of professional women who quit their jobs after having children, Professor Orgad found that the decision to leave the workforce and become stay-at-home mothers was a decision they made as much as wives as mothers. 

If you're struggling with the demands of your career and your family then you aren't alone and Professor Orgad reassures us that the problem isn't you but is in fact the system, which she argues needs structural change from within.

We discuss how to make changes within our organisations to enable more working mothers to stay in the jobs they love, plus practical things we can do when we feel overwhelmed by work and parenting.

To find out more about Professor Shani Orgad's book Heading Home; Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality click here.

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This episode was recorded during the COVID-19 Lockdown.

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