In Dialogue: Stay In The Game CEO, Mona Andrews

One of the biggest hurdles that working women face is what we aptly call the “motherhood penalty.” It’s the assumption that women who have children—or even may have them in the future—will inevitably leave the workforce or simply won’t be committed to the job. That attitude has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as working moms who find themselves sidelined at the office are more likely to leave, creating resume and knowledge gaps that make returning to the workforce more difficult when they’re finally ready. It’s a structural inequality, driven neither by malice nor ignorance but by limited thinking and an unwillingness to meet the needs of working mothers who, the idea goes, would probably rather be at home anyway.