Paola is a British-Italian entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and political commentator. She is the Executive Chair of the Women’s Policy Centre
The Princess of Wales, always scrupulously a-political, has unwittingly stumbled upon the secret to electoral victory on 4th July: improving the work-life balance of 25 to 49-year-old women. Her Royal Foundation Business Taskforce for Early Childhood has called on businesses to invest in supporting parents during their children’s first five years by providing more choice and flexibility in their work to boost productivity and contribute to a more dynamic and successful society. Crucially, the Taskforce consists of eight of the UK’s biggest companies, including Aviva, NatWest, and Unilever.
“Prioritising early childhood for a happier, healthier society” also calls for significant investments in early childhood education, emotional skills for children and parents, and financial skills for childcare providers. It is the flexible work recommendation, however, that will prove most popular with women. Whichever political party aligns itself with this initiative will win their votes.
At the Women’s Policy Centre think tank, we know this because our recent landmark YouGov poll found that three in five women (62 per cent) feel politically homeless and their votes are up for grabs. This cohort, of child-bearing age, is struggling with the challenges inherent in holding down a job while raising a family: a significant majority (86 per cent) of our respondents reported that the pressure for women to balance work and having children is a problem.
It would be irreverent to claim that a Royal is following in the footsteps of a commoner’s thinktank. But I should like to draw your attention to The Baby Deal we published last month and presented to 10 Downing Street’s Policy Unit.
The Baby Deal proposes a new statutory right for mothers in the first 1001 days of their child’s life to request child-friendly work. This includes part-time, flexible, and hybrid, or fully remote when possible, in companies with more than 10 employees. Our strategy will allow women to choose both family and paid employment. Their employers will benefit, as retention, recruitment, and productivity will improve. The wider economy will benefit too, as our declining birthrate is reversed.
Like the Taskforce signatories, our think tank dares to challenge Treasury priorities. Top of these has been to press more mothers into work. Over the next three years spending on formal childcare will double (from £4 billion to more than £8 billion) to fund free hours for two, three, and four-year-olds whose parents are both in paid employment and neither earns more than £100,000; and to give children as young as nine months old 15 hours free childcare as of September.
Current childcare policy is not working for women. Costly and inflexible, it gives working mothers little choice in how to raise their children.
As a result one in 10 working mothers have quit their jobs, with one in five considering leaving work due to the challenges that come with balancing work and childcare. This accounts for one in four working-age women being economically inactive (compared to 18 per cent of men); ONS figures show that “looking after family or home” was one of the key drivers of record levels of economic inactivity, with more than one in four working-age women reporting that their caring responsibilities were keeping them from looking for paid employment.
Despite subsidies, which will see the Government doubling its spending on formal childcare to more than £8 billion over the next three years, Britain’s childcare system remains the most expensive among OECD countries: a part-time nursery place for a child under two now costs an average of £158 per week, up 7 per cent on 2023. For many mothers, these astronomical fees act as a disincentive to hold down, or return to, paid employment: only 30 per cent of recent mothers went back to fulltime work following maternity leave.
Present benefits do not apply to informal care, so a woman who wants to reward her sister for looking after her child must do so out of her pocket. Employers can turn down requests for flexible working from a new mother – even though the Government has agreed that flexible working is a statutory right and, as of next month, employees may ask for flexible working from day one of their employment. This process, however, is lengthy and complicated and therefore likely to deter or delay mothers’ requests.
Currently, the employee must apply to the employer with a written statement explaining that theirs is a statutory request; details of how the employee wants to work flexibly and when they want to start; plus a statement reporting if and when they’ve made a previous application. As the Working Families Benchmark Report 2023 finds, this unwieldy system presents an unnecessary obstacle course to working mothers.
The impact is measurable not only in the number of mothers who have dropped out of paid employment but in the number of women who don’t have children: half of women born in 1990 remained childless by their 30th birthday, even though, as our poll shows, raising a family remains a priority for most women (58 per cent), who regard having children as a key factor to a successful life.
Plunging rates of childbirth reflect a generation of disappointed women as well as a dangerous trend for the wider society: a shrinking workforce, a smaller tax base, and slower growth.
“The Baby Deal” instead would automatically entitle new mothers, over their child’s first 1001 days, to child-friendly work: part time, working from home, in a hybrid fashion, or flexibly.
Our polling shows that this policy is hugely popular among women, with 78 per cent of our respondents agreeing that working from home during the first years of their child’s life would be very helpful (50 per cent) or fairly helpful (28 per cent).
Working women want to balance the competing demands on their time: asked about what success in life means to them as a woman, an overwhelming majority (91 per cent) of our respondents voiced the need for a good work-life balance. Views were consistent across different groups, including age and political leanings.
The Royal Foundation Business Task Force asks employers to offer flexible work to parents for the first five years of their child’s life. The return on this investment, their report argues, would be significant, contributing to £45.5 billion in value added to the economy through the package of child-friendly recommendations they also make.
This is a bold claim but there is evidence that family-friendly workplaces enjoy better retention and higher productivity. Flexible workers are also more likely to be engaged, potentially generating 43 per cent more revenue and improving performance by 20 per cent, compared to disengaged employees. Moreover, flexibility can improve retention and reduce costly staff turnover.
“Prioritising early childhood for a happier, healthier society” puts the onus on businesses to make flexible work available to working mothers. The report calls on employers to adopt this policy in an act of enlightened self-interest.
The Women’s Policy Centre goes further, calling on the Government to make this a statutory right. We too believe this should is about enlightened self-interest: with more women in paid employment, the Government will gain from increased income tax and National Insurance revenue as well as savings on childcare offers. Above all, though, at this crucial time, a policy that promotes a good work-life balance while encouraging more women to have children will win over those crucial political orphans – 25-49 year old women.
The Royals can, and should, soar above such electoral calculations, but no political party can afford to.
