Moms at Work - mid year review 2023
Moms at Work was informally created in 2018 to fill a gap for professional women. It was designed to bring together mid and senior level career women. Women who were leaders, women who were returning to work after a career break and entrepreneurs. We crossed industries, areas of expertise and shared one thing in common - we were all mothers looking to grow our careers while raising our families. Within a year, we reached 3,500 members in a Facebook group, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area. We networked, we met for lunch, we hired each other and we pushed for change.
In March 2020, everything changed. COVID-19 came to Canada and while the world ground to a halt - Moms at Work sprang into action. Our members left the workforce in record numbers as they were forced to choose their career or their children. Many were laid off as the pandemic hit female dominated careers hardest.
Moms at Work rallied our members and experts who helped navigate EI changes and legal issues and created a safe space for collective sharing, suffering and listening. As the world stayed apart, Moms at Work came together.
By mid 2021, we had been quoted in close to 100 media interviews, created a Directory to support our members' small businesses, produced a Holiday Gift Guide featuring local independently-run businesses, hosted both Pay Equity Commissioners along with various thought leaders in our virtual speaker series, created a Pay-What-You-Can webinar series for skills building and job hunting. We were invited by the Prime Minister to showcase what Moms at Work had done and to talk about the changes we felt were needed to support working families post-pandemic. Once we started pushing for change - we just couldn't stop there.
So what have we been up to in 2023?
- Moms at Work is one of the leaders in advocacy for Pay Transparency (requiring companies to tell you the salary range and be unable to ask what your current salary is). In 2020 there was no legislation in place in Canada. By the end of 2023 - British Columbia, PEI, Nfld & Labrador and Nova Scotia will have legislation that is active. Federal employers will be required to review all jobs and submit a report to the Pay Equity Commissioner under the new Federal Pay Equity Legislation. US States and the EU have also introduced legislation. Pay Transparency is happening!
- Moms at Work was part of the Employment Insurance Round Table held by the federal government. Major changes will be introduced that will create more equity in how it can be used, address gaps for adoptive parents and non-birthing parents and more.
- We created submissions for various government initiatives including pregnancy loss, maternal mental health and various workforce initiatives.
- In 2021 we did Canada's first survey to expose women's experiences during maternity leave. It took us 16 months but from that we have created My Parental Leave - Canada's first and only tool to help parents navigate parental leave + work. We are going one step further and will make it FREE for small employers and individuals and low cost for larger employers who wish to make it available to their staff. To keep the information updated and available we will be relying on YOU to help us share it. To donate to help make this a reality please do so HERE
- We partnered with Environmental Defense, CUPE as they fought the not withstanding clause and publicly hosted - Marit Stiles (NDP leader), Laura Walton (CUPE), hosted Minister Karina Gould to answer our community questions about childcare and another roundtable with Childcare workers and daycares with the Minster to keep $10 a day childcare front and centre.
- Moms at Work is supporting organizations in the United States with their advocacy efforts and training on grassroots movement building.
- We continue to add to the $ amount of women who have earned salary bumps to over 6 million dollars in 3 years!!! The things we teach we hope you share with your junior staff, friends and make sure that you are continuing to support #payingwomenmore
Our next project is our Part Time Work Initiative. We have just released a survey which will remain open. Based on the feedback we will create plans to educate, support and promote the creation of part time roles. Job sharing, part time and other methods are an amazing tool to engage all sorts of workers and keep them in the workforce. We will work on advocating for government support, teaching workplaces and creating toolkits and resources to help you implement more part time roles in your organization.
And finally - how do we do all this? To all the women, companies and spaces that support us thank you. In the last 7 months we have been able to:
- work with 300+ paid members of our Collective group coaching program and networking group (including over 30 bursary members supported by Moms at Work) We open again soon if you would like to join us!
- Taught almost 100 individuals in our webinar mini series
- Our team coached and met with over 225 individuals to support them with their career journey
- Spoke at 9 events, 22 podcast recordings and dozens of media interviews.
We have no intention of stopping and every time you work with us, recommend us to speak at your company event and share our surveys or our articles we get to do this work for one more day.
Thank you for letting us serve you. It has been the honour of our lives.
Sincerely,
Allison Venditti & the Moms at Work Team
(You can learn more about The Collective and get on the waitlist HERE). Membership includes access to amazing speakers, hiring panels, a supportive community and more.
We are also looking to support employers as we add more trainings for parental leave, retention of women and more. For more details, please email allison@thisismomsatwork.com.