The motherhood penalty is getting worse. Every single year 74,000 women lose their jobs for getting pregnant or for taking maternity leave in the UK. That marks a 37% increase from 54,000 in 2016.

The research, from Pregnant Then Screwed, in partnership with Women in Data, underlines a hostile working environment for mothers. According to the research, almost 50% of pregnant women, those on maternity leave and those returning from maternity leave had a negative experience at work.

To highlight this penalty today Pregnant Then Screwed will be live-streaming a giant physical shredder which will be shredding the CVs of mothers live across Ocean Outdoor’s digital billboard at Westfield. As well as on the careershredder.com website. The campaign will run for the next four weeks.

The campaign will also run on LinkedIn, where you can virtually shred your profile and receive an image to post on LinkedIn to help highlight the ever-increasing number of mothers who experience discrimination in the UK.

The campaign will also include outdoor advertising posters provided by Clear Channel, across the UK. Designed to coincide with The Apprentice, the creative will feature the strapline: “Mum, you’re fired”, sadly, it doesn’t matter if you land the job; if you’re only going to be pushed out when you become a mum.

The campaign will also run across print and podcasts. Print ads will run across a variety of national publications for the next few weeks and 30 second  media spots featuring the voices and

CVs of real women who have experienced pregnancy and maternity discrimination will play out across Acast’s network of top podcasts.

Gemma Phillips, The Creative Director behind the stunt, explains: “Pregnancy and maternity discrimination not only destroys the confidence of hundreds of thousands of women, it costs the economy severely too - it just doesn't make business sense.”

She continues: “With recent conversations about returning to the office and the role back of D&I initiatives, this campaign lands at a really interesting time in the world of work. Career Shredder not only sheds light on this huge waste of talent but importantly provides ways to stop it."

With less than 2% of women able to pursue a claim in an employment tribunal, maternity discrimination is a costly injustice that routinely goes unseen. The creatives behind the campaign hope this work will go some way in shining a light on this growing, yet invisible, problem.

Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 35,800 parents, and then Women In Data extracted a nationally representative sample of 5,870 parents to create its State of the Nation report.

The report found that 12.3% of women are sacked, constructively dismissed or made redundant whilst pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of returning from maternity leave. If scaled up to the general population, this could mean as many as 74,000 women a year are forced to leave their jobs.

Joeli Brearley, Founder and CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed: explained: ‘’We have long suspected things are getting worse, not better. Our free advice line is ringing off the hook, it has reached a point where we simply cannot cope with demand. To find that 74,000 mothers a year are being being pushed out of their job for daring to procreate is not surprising, but it is devastating. That’s a woman being pushed out of her job every 7 minutes in the UK for doing something that is part of the human existence.”

To improve your workplace culture for mothers, the campaign is asking companies to increase their paternity leave offer and advertise jobs as flexible unless they have a good business reason not to.

In addition, the campaign is calling on companies to collect maternity retention data to offer further insight into company behaviour. At a time of DEI rollbacks and heavy handed return to office mandates all too many women are facing the sharp edges of the career shredder.