Childcare
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Stella Creasy calls on working mums to report struggles on Twitter
Stella Creasy is leading a Twitter campaign to highlight poor treatment of mothers at work.
MP Stella Creasy has launched a Twitter campaign for mums to share the struggles they continue to face at work.
The campaign on her @stellacreasy Twitter handle supports the This Mum Votes initiative which aims to get more women into Parliament. Creasy has been vociferous in her attempts to address issues such as maternity leave for MPs, and brought her baby into Parliament last year to show the problems lack of cover causes.
This Mum Votes is a coalition of campaigners led by Pregnant Then Screwed which aims to encourage and support more mums to be selected and elected to office to ensure they have a seat at the decision-making table and help develop and lobby for policies that break down the barriers to participation for those with caring commitments.
The initiative is in part a response to the pandemic, including the lack of an early action plan to ensure pregnant women could access the vaccine, the lack of consideration when implementing financial schemes on how this would interact with maternity pay and the disproportionate impact of homeschooling and childcare on women as well as the lack of attention to childcare in recovery plans.
It is calling for good quality affordable childcare, including a cap on the costs of childcare for all families at 10% of total income and free childcare for those families with combined incomes of under £30,000 in the short term. In the longer term, it wants to see universal childcare provision from the age of six months for all children and pay rises for childcare workers so they are paid the same as primary school workers.
Another demand is for ring fenced paid paternity leave and all jobs advertised as flexible by default unless an employer has a valid business reason not to advertise a job as flexible. Finally, they want a reform of Universal Credit to address concerns such as the how it interacts with childcare and the two-child limit on child benefit.
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