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  4. Are forces past their ‘due date’? The impact of a mother’s experience during pregnancy and returning to the workplace after a period of maternity leave

Are forces past their ‘due date’? The impact of a mother’s experience during pregnancy and returning to the workplace after a period of maternity leave

Proposer(s): Kendal Wright and Dr Keely Duddin
Email: kendal.wright@open.ac.uk and keely.duddin@open.ac.uk 
Other researchers: Dr Sean Bell and Frances Wright

Historically police forces have lacked diversity however in the last decade forces have actively promoted recruitment drives with the aim to diversify the workplace, including increasing the number of female officers recruited.

There are three research questions that we want to continually look to answer as our research develops.

  1. What literature already exists in relation to mothers returning to work after maternity leave and how much of that literature is within the context of policing?
  2. Does a mother’s experience when returning form maternity leave impact how valued they feel by their force, and does that value correspond negatively towards their future commitment to the police force?
  3. How much does a woman taking a period of maternity leave affect her career opportunities when she returns to work?

The key aims of this research.

  1. Become a nationally recognised research paper that enhances the current literature around this topic.
  2. Provide a platform for mothers in policing who have not yet had their voice heard but wish to help shape the future experiences for their colleagues.
  3. Forces to have a clearer understanding of how valued their working mothers feel when returning to work.
  4. Our findings to inform positive change to policies on the communication before, during and after maternity leave. 
  5. To change the bias towards a mother’s commitment to her professional career should she wish to look for professional opportunities after returning from maternity leave.
  6. Where our research finds issues and we have the evidence to support it, we will look to make recommendations to support mothers and organisations to improve the experiences for all.  

In the last few months, the research team have met with organisations who have wide reaching connections nationally (Unison and The Police Federation), they have shown great interest in the research, the women’s steering group for the Federation have also made it one of their priorities for 2022.

Funding body

CPRL have funded the analysis stage of the project.