I had two sons, 17 months apart, while working as a Revenue Director at a fast-growing tech company. I stayed for almost four years, through two maternity leaves, a promotion, and a restructuring. My manager was excellent. Experienced, empathetic, genuinely in my corner. But she was working without tools or resources, caught between an unsupportive board and a team she was trying to protect.

During my first maternity leave, I was promoted. It was a genuine vote of confidence, and it quietly made everything harder. More responsibility, higher expectations, fewer working days. The maths didn’t add up. Nobody sat down and decided to make it difficult. There was simply no framework to think it through.

Before I became a mother, I was that manager. When one of my best team members returned part-time after maternity leave, I interpreted it as reduced commitment, without understanding what she was carrying. When she stayed home with a sick child, I assumed there had to be another solution. I didn’t have a framework either. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Pause 2 Power exists because both experiences taught me the same thing: the gap isn’t created by bad intentions. It’s created by the absence of structure. Managers don’t know what to say. Organisations don’t have a consistent process. Managers don’t know what to say. Organisations don’t have a consistent process. HR is left to improvise, and the team that stays absorbs the workload.