“Mothers are still bearing the brunt of the gender pay gap. Will we see change in this lifetime?”

At 63, bus pass in-hand, my mum launched on Instagram with the tagline ‘Not over the hill but on top of it’. And it’s wildly true. As women get older, we gain knowledge, perspective and a menopause-fuelled ‘couldn’t give a monkey’s’ attitude – thanks, in part, to declining oestrogen levels. It puts us firmly on top.

And, yet, men are described as silver-haired foxes, while women are mutton dressed as lamb. Men age like fine wine and end up hollering in boardrooms, while women are written off and written out, quietly disposed of the minute that first grey hair emerges.

The reality is men’s careers ascend, and despite our clear view, women’s descend with age.

And while the gender pay gap for full-time employees fell to 6.8% in April 2026, down from 7.2% in 2025. But according to the ONS, the gap stands at 8.2% for employees aged 40–49. For those aged 50–59, it rises to a painful 11%.

It’s anger at this point. It used to be defeated acceptance when I was too tired to even think in the newborn trenches. But I feel like the motherhood penalty – and its impact on the rest of our working lives – has been plastered everywhere for all to see. The invisible load has been made abundantly visible. It’s been graffitied on walls and shouted from the rooftops. And yet we are still being ghosted in employment as that first wrinkle lands.

It’s on par with the way brands can’t accept women come in different sizes. Some retailers still only go up to size 12. Lord forbid we break the patriarchal mould of how a woman should exist: small and youthful. And yes, we grow up and learn, we manage entire households, we upskill, lose hair, lose sleep, lose time and still carry the baby and the domestic load 24/7.

And our reward is redundancy. Or a quiet reduction of promotion and remuneration. Our trophy at the end of it all is being ushered out of the building. The writing is on the governmental wall as to why having a baby costs women their careers. But why the hell are we still here?

I’ve cobbled together an entire career based on the motherhood penalty. I needed flexibility and financial stability. The only way I could get that was building it myself – while my breasts were leaking and my baby was crying – from the ground up.

It was desperation, not marked progression.

And I didn’t need that flexibility for a Zumba class. I have to pick up my daughter from nursery at 6pm. She isn’t adept enough to hop in a cab home and pop some fish fingers, chips and peas on. Then there are two daughters who finish school at 3.15pm, and it’s deemed irresponsible to leave them home alone to fend for themselves. So I have to be there. Not as a hobby or a little side hustle but as part of baseline humanity. 

So as women we flex. We pivot. We pick-up the slack and bend over backwards to gather all the pieces. And our parting gift as we enter menopause after postpartum? Being written out.

Because when mothers return to work, it’s a pay penalty of 45% lower earnings in the six years after birth. This is woven throughout our careers: women with children earn £302 less every week than men with children: one-third less per week and almost 20% less per hour, according to analysis based on ONS data.

As a result, this glaring inequality plays out into mothers pensions, which Pregnant Then Screwed found in their campaign ‘Thanks for your service’, which shows that after everything that mums give to keep the family engines running and raise the next generation, they retire with, on average, a 33% smaller pension pot than dads. Wild, indeed. Wildly anger-inducing.

So, yeah, no surprise that motherhood is widening the gender pay gap as we get older. It couldn’t be clearer what the issue is. And declining birth rates are the next generation’s two fingers up to a world that relies on the free labour of women to prop up the economy. And worse, discards those women like an empty crisp packet at the end of the working day.

It’s not rocket science: increase maternity leave, extend paternity leave and offer flexible working. The golden triangle of equality – it’s the only antidote to the motherhood penalty.

So if you want us to keep having babies, stop penalising us for doing so.

I’ll be shouting that from the rooftops – and the hilltops – until I, too, get my bus pass.