The World Bank recently released a report on the widening global gender gap in workplaces, noting that factors like safety from violence and access to childcare services restrict women’s progress in the global workforce. NCHETACHI CHUKWUAJAH reports that if employers do not provide childcare services, this gap will keep widening, thus hindering the productivity level of working mothers.
The first day Busayo (not real name) took her three-month-old baby to a childcare centre upon resumption of work after her maternity leave, she could not help the tears. She had grown so attached to her baby and the thought of leaving her in the care of ‘strangers’ occupied her mind and left her less productive at work.
She would intermittently call the facility managers to find out how her baby is faring while praying for her safety. Busayo said she may not recall how she got through that day, but sure knows it was not pleasant. Over time, she has learnt to cope.
“The first time I left my baby in a childcare centre, as the baby was crying I was crying too. As I was going to work, I was so emotional but as time went by, I got used to it. I have to work and I can’t bring my baby with me to work,” Busayo said.
As much as Busayo wishes her baby would be closer to her, this is not the reality as her workplace, like many others in Nigeria, does not allow children in the workplace or make provision for a childcare facility within the organisation.
Busayo told Nigerian Tribune that she would not have had a hard time settling in at work if her organisation provided this. But the absence of these services takes a toll on her health and her productivity at work.
“Since my workplace does not have a childcare facility to cater to such a situation, I have to go and look for somewhere that is okay to an extent to keep my child. That can result in so many things on the part of the mother. There will be increased burn out; it is always stressful because you have to work and at the same time your mind is where you are keeping your child, whether far or near.
“At that time, it was so frustrating because I was saying if there is something like this in the office, I won’t be going through this. It is something organisations should look into and even if they say we have to pay for it, I will go for it because it will relieve me. Am I not also paying the people who are not even doing the work of caring for my child?” she queried.
Busayo also said the non-availability of a childcare facility in her workplace was a major consideration for her when she planned to have another child. Though the situation hasn’t improved in her workplace, she has gotten used to the challenge such poses, especially armed with knowledge from her experience with her first child.
“It is part of the things I considered when I was planning on having my second child because it is not easy. It comes with a lot of work and responsibility; you will have to carry your baby, carry your bag and the child’s bag and other things. If one is coming to work directly where there is a childcare facility, it will be better. But now, you have to stop by where you will keep your baby, head to work, you still have to go back there after a few hours to check on your baby. With the stress, energy and cost that come with it, at the end of the day, I return home so exhausted and tired,” she said.
Like Busayo, many mothers across Nigeria and around the world battle with the tough decision of leaving their children with caregivers in childcare facilities, career balance and workplace productivity.
This is coupled with unpaid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and other family-friendly policies that would promote parental bonding and adequate childcare.
There are also cases of some organisations with ‘no pregnancy’ or ‘no marriage’ clauses for certain periods while in employment as part of employment conditions. For women in the armed forces of Nigeria, they must have served for three years before being qualified to get married.
What the law says
Nigeria’s Labour Act provides six weeks leave before expected delivery date and six weeks after delivery for a pregnant female worker. For non-workers, the provisions of the Act are used as a guide to determine the maternity entitlement of workers subject to the contract of such employment.
The Act also provides that a female worker who has been in employment for a period of six months or more before her maternity leave shall be entitled to 50 percent of her salary for the duration of her maternity leave
Upon resumption from maternity leave, a female worker, according to the Act, is to be permitted half an hour, twice daily and during working hours to nurse her child.
Though the Act does not provide for paternity leave, the Federal Government in 2022, approved a 14-day paternity leave for male workers in the federal civil service. This has been replicated by governments of Enugu and Lagos states, providing three and two weeks respectively for male workers in the states’ employment. However, the leave only applies to the first two children of such male workers.
For Jadesola Ajibola, the chairperson, National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Oyo State chapter, the challenge for Nigeria is not in making laws but implementing them. She also noted that ignorance of the provision of the law on maternal rights is another challenge.
“The law actually states expressly that women who are nursing mothers should have time to go on break to attend to their babies, come back to work and close early. That is what the law says but the question is who is implementing this law? What obtains in many organisations is not so; it is on paper in companies’ policies but nobody is implementing.
“Again, how many women of reproductive age know this law? Many women don’t know that this law exists. That is why we get stuck along the way and we are unable to achieve so much. Imagine knowing what the law says and being able to carry out my responsibility at work, knowing what my company’s policy says about my status as a nursing mum, will I not at least be super in delivery and ensuring that I have productivity on both sides?” she said.
A recent report by the World Bank on Women Business and the Law supports Ajibola’s position. The report noted that the gender gap is even wider in practice, adding that in 190 economies, there was low implementation of legal protection for women when compared to men.
The report said, “Although laws on the books imply that women enjoy roughly two-thirds the rights of men, countries on average have established less than 40 percent of the systems needed for full implementation.”
A troubling global situation
Over the years, calls and actions have been made globally for gender equality, accessibility and the reduction in the gap between women and men in workplaces and other areas. This call necessitated the institution of the celebration of International Women’s Day, held on March 8 every year. Now in its 49th year, the day aims to draw attention to and reiterate commitment to promoting gender equality in all spheres of human endeavour.
For this year, the focus is on ‘Invest in Women, Accelerate Progress’ under the general theme, #InspireInclusion. The theme, according to the United Nations, will “examine the pathways to greater economic inclusion for women and girls everywhere.” It is, however, saddening that despite efforts made to invest in women and girls, traditional gender roles, culture, religion and other societal norms act as clogs in the realisation and attainment of the dreams of many women.
Ajibola described this as limiting factors that betray efforts made to ensure gender equality and hinder women’s rights in many respects.
“When we talk about equality, it is not competition with men. We are saying that girls should be given equal rights as the boys so that when I am done going to school as a girl, let me also have the opportunity to work. What we are talking about is investing in the girl child and ensuring that there is equality. Let them get to the highest level in their career; let us give women a chance in various sectors,” she said.
To lend credence to this, the World Bank report also noted that the global gender gap for women in the workplace is far wider than previously thought as women face obstacles that hinder their entering the global workforce and contributing to greater prosperity.
The report identified the critical factors that restrict women’s options as safety from violence and access to childcare services, adding that women enjoy only two-third of the legal rights that men do at 64 percent, which is lower than the previous 77 percent estimate.
It also said that though governments were assertive in advancing three categories of legal equal-opportunity reforms of pay, parental rights and workplace protection in 2023, nearly all countries, for the first time, performed poorly in the two categories of access to childcare and women’s safety being tracked.
“Most countries also score poorly for childcare laws. Women spend an average of 2.4 more hours a day on unpaid care work than men – much of it on the care of children. Expanding access to childcare tends to increase women’s participation in the labour force by about one percentage point initially – and the effect more than doubles within five years.
“Today, only 78 economies – fewer than half – provide some financial or tax support for parents with young children. Only 62 economies – fewer than a third – have quality standards governing childcare services, without which women might think twice about going to work while they have children in their care.”
Lack of workplace childcare facilities may force more women out of work
Perhaps the most sombre impact of non-provision of childcare facilities in workplaces is the future risk of losing more women in many workplaces in Nigeria to care giving.
Ajibola said the tough decision of childcare and seeking career progression creates a conflict of interests for many women.
She said, “This does not allow many women to make a decision on having children when they should; they want to keep their career, they want to keep their homes. So, there is a clash of interest and so many women are confused and this is creating a lot of problems in many homes because they must do the bidding of their families or their husbands and they must try to juxtapose the two to ensure they have a peaceful career. Many women, over the years, have left their careers because they need to make babies and take care of their homes.”
The challenge of navigating the motherhood phase for most women could be daunting, especially for those with perfectionist traits, who would voluntarily resign from their jobs or get laid off for inefficiency, said Dr Ifunanya Igweze, founder of Preggify, a one-stop platform that provides 24-hour doctor-led care to pregnant women.
She said, “What you see in return is that they tend to blame themselves for not meeting their KPIs and targets and they may voluntarily resign from their work. Instead of being at work and not being productive, they just voluntarily resign against their will or they may be laid off because the company feels like this woman, since you became a mother, your productivity has reduced and you are not hitting your targets and milestones and they can involuntarily be laid off from work.”
This effect of the motherhood phase is not lost on many women. For instance, in 2021, Jobberman, a Nigerian-based job platform and career platform, released a survey report which found that 70 percent of women in Nigeria are willing to leave their current jobs, 24 percent have not made up their minds while only six percent are happy to remain in their jobs due to responsibilities related to pregnancy and childcare.
Another study by Professor Susan Harkness and others of Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study based at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, found that women and men have divergent experience in their career paths following the birth of a baby, with only 27.8 percent of women being in full-time work or self-employed three years after childbirth compared to 90 percent of new fathers.
They found that mothers were more likely to move to part-time employment once they had a child and those who did return to work experienced career stagnation with a lower chance of getting a promotion.
Other key findings of the study show that fewer than one-in-five of all new mothers and 29 percent of first-time mothers return to full-time work in the first three years after maternity leave. This reduces to 15 percent after five years; 17 percent of women leave employment completely in the five years following childbirth compared to four percent of men; and mothers who leave employment completely are three times more likely to return to a lower paid or lower-responsibility role than those who do not take a break.
Professor Harkness said the study found that the gendered employment patterns are following childbirth, with men typically remaining in full-time work and women leaving full-time work.
“This loss in work experience and, in particular, full-time work experience, is an important part of the explanation for the gender pay gap and suggests women still suffer economically as a result of taking childcare responsibilities.
“Worryingly, it appears that women who return to employment typically see their chance of moving up the occupational ladder decrease. Women who return to the same employer risk becoming stuck in their job roles with limited career progression,” Professor Harkness said.
And it leads to more consequences
Like every challenge, the widening global gender gap for women in the workplace has consequences. First, it hurts many economies as the economic contribution of women in workplaces is lost to such factors as childcare due in part to the failure of organisations to prioritise and provide childcare facilities within the organisation.
Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, succinctly captures the economic consequences of this global issue as: “Women have the power to turbo-charge the sputtering global economy. Yet, all over the world, discriminatory laws and practices prevent women from working or starting businesses on an equal footing with men.
“Closing this gap could raise global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by more than 20 percent – essentially doubling the global growth rate over the next decade – but reforms have slowed to a crawl.”
Added to the economic hurt is the concern for adequate care and security of the child left in childcare facilities outside organisations. News of the many ills such as maltreatment, abduction, and so on, committed in many childcare centres abound.
This was Busayo’s fear as well, but resignedly, she takes solace in God. “One just has to be strong and wherever you keep your child, you trust God that the child will be safe. I cannot begin to mention the atrocities done in some childcare centres as some don’t have time for the children but some are different.
“There is that fear of the security of where you are going to put your baby and how well they can care for the child. If it is within the organisation, I know the company will get capable hands and as a mother, your mind will be at rest and you will be more productive.”
What about child’s welfare and nutrition?
The absence of family-friendly policies like provision of childcare facilities within many organisations doesn’t also bode well for the child. Since the approved duration of maternity leave for workers in Nigeria is 12 weeks, the child is forced to stay away from the mother for long hours, which breaches the mother-child bonding required in the first critical 1,000 days of a child’s life.
This also affects the feeding of the baby, especially as mothers are encouraged to adopt exclusive breastfeeding methods for the first six month of a child’s life. Although expressing and storing breast milk for later feeding has become a go-to option, it is found to not be the same as direct breastfeeding, which helps in increasing prolactin blood levels and the release of oxytocin necessary for relaxation, lowering blood pressure, muscle contractions and building social relationships.
Dr Igweze added that apart from the effects of this on the mental disposition of mothers, the mother-child bonding, the child’s nutrition is put in jeopardy as most private childcare facilities do not pay attention to the individual needs of the children in their care.
She said, “When you don’t have childcare facilities in the working environment, it is definitely going to rob these women of having adequate time to bond with their babies, especially during breastfeeding; and this situation doesn’t encourage breastfeeding. Most of these babies that are kept in childcare facilities are being fed with formulas, meanwhile their mothers are producing enough breast milk.
“The more babies are being breastfed directly by their mums, the more the mothers produce breast milk. So, in the case where the woman has to go to work two weeks after delivery or less than four weeks after delivery when they have not yet established proper bonding and the milk is not yet being produced in large quantities, it is going to definitely affect the bond and emotional attachment mothers have with their babies.
“It is also going to affect the nutrition of these babies. When a woman keeps her child in private childcare facilities, these facilities may not pay attention to the child’s individual needs. Some of these babies, their eating pattern may be what is obtainable in the general population.
“Let’s say that the woman is expressing breast milk and given to the facility, who actually monitors how the breast milk is being stored because when breast milk is expressed, there is a criteria for storage whether it is on shelf, in the fridge or freezer. So, who actually monitors how this breast milk is being stored? Are they stored properly? The ones in the fridge or freezer, are they defrost properly the way it is supposed to be without destroying the components of the breast milk? It is a whole lot of concern for both the mother and the child. It is not a good thing to separate a newborn from the mum.”
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