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Early pregnancy endings and the workplace

Content warning

Please proceed with caution if this research topic may be upsetting for you. There is a list of support organisations at the end of the page if you are affected by any of these experiences.

Aim

EPE Project logoThis project seeks to understand how women and other people who have been pregnant navigate the demands of work at the same time as experiencing termination or miscarriage (including ectopic and molar pregnancies) in pregnancy, up to 24 weeks.

These are both very common experiences and yet there is very little academic research in the area. Equally, while there are the beginnings of workplace support for these experiences, including leave for pregnancy endings offered by local government organisations like the City of Portland in the US and national-level miscarriage leave entitlements recently legalised in New Zealand, these are at an extremely early stage. Termination is sometimes included in these initiatives, for example by fashion retailer ASOS, online bank Monzo and Channel 4. 


Description

The project draws together a consortium of academics from the OU (Jo Brewis and Victoria Newton), UCL (Julie Davies), the University of Plymouth (Aimee Middlemiss), Aston University (Killian Mullan) and the University of Essex (Ilaria Boncori) and third-sector organisations working on miscarriage and termination (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Abortion Rights). We will generate evidence, share findings and seek additional funding, with the ultimate objective of driving change in policy and practice. Our overarching aim is to improve organisational support for women who experience termination and/ or miscarriage via the provision of evidence-based guidance for line managers and HR professionals as well as resources for women themselves.

We have also published a journal article which analyses the way in which legislation on employment leave in England and Wales creates different categories of personhood for parents and the embryo or foetus and what the implications are of each of these categories.   

Please also note that while we refer to ‘women’ as a shorthand to represent the majority group who experience early pregnancy endings, our project is intended to be fully gender-inclusive.

We aim to: 

  • Consolidate and expand our network beyond the partner organisations listed above to build a larger consortium of partners.
  • Disseminate initial findings from the survey via academic and non-academic publications and pieces, including a practitioner-oriented guidelines/ summary document. 
  • Host a one-day consortium-building knowledge exchange event during 2023 to take soundings on our draft guidelines.
  • Apply for a large external grant with UK Research and Innovation or the National Institute for Health Research.

Our research questions are: 

  • What are the lived experiences of early pregnancy endings in the workplace before 24 weeks gestation? 
  • To what extent and how do women disclose early pregnancy endings at work? 
  • What are the factors that discourage women from disclosing at work? 
  • How do employers respond to early pregnancy endings? 
  • What are women’s experiences of workplace support after early pregnancy endings?

Survey

We ran a pilot survey during the first six months of 2022, which recruited women and other people from anywhere in the UK who had experienced an early pregnancy ending whilst in paid employment. This attracted 300+ respondents and will form the basis of our guidelines as outlined above as well as academic publications. We presented some of our preliminary findings from the survey at the Gender, Work and Organization Conference in June 2022.

Knowledge exchange events

We are holding two free to attend knowledge exchange events in May 2024 to report our research findings and recommendations from the survey and interview data from a sister project entitled Understanding the Experience of Miscarriage and Stillbirth in the Workplace projects. Details below:

  1. Online event, 13th May, 11 am - 12.30 pm UK time. Book here: Early pregnancy endings and the workplace (open.ac.uk)
  2. In person event, 20th May, 5.30 pm – 7.30 pm UK time. Venue: University of Essex. For details and booking, please contact Ilaria Boncori direct at iboncori@essex.ac.uk

Please come and join us at one or the other event (or both!) – we are very interested in your views.

Contact us

Funding

This project was funded by an Open University Impact Acceleration award until July 2022, and has subsequently received funding from Open Societal Challenges at the OU for the academic year 2023 - 2024. The project is OSC 47. It was reviewed by, and received a favourable opinion, from The Open University Human Research Ethics Committee – HREC reference number: HREC/4201/Brewis.