They Gave My Job to a Man While I Was on Mat Leave

...and then told me I should be grateful for the scraps.

I’ve always said maternity leave is like pressing pause on your career, only to return and find out someone’s sat on your remote, chewed up the batteries, and put on a different film altogether. One that stars a man in you job.

This week’s story from the Worn Out Working Mum community hits hard. Because it’s not just about a job, but because it’s about having your ambition quietly reassigned while you’re still leaking breastmilk and trying to remember your own address. It’s about being unmade at the very moment you’re becoming something more.

The price of having a baby? Apparently, it's your job. Your power. Your place at the table.

Here’s her story:

“I created my dream job. Went on mat leave. Came back, and a man was in my role… permanently.”

When I was pregnant, I had the rare opportunity to create my dream job from scratch. I developed the job profile, hired a talented team, built out project plans, and crafted a full strategic vision. It was an exciting time! People were applying specifically because they wanted to work with me. I poured my heart into it.

The day before I left for maternity leave, I presented everything, and it was approved. It felt like I had built something that really mattered.

But two months before I was scheduled to return, I was called into the office. That’s when I learned they had hired a man to take over my role, the job I created, and decided he would be staying in it permanently. I was being moved to a different project. Just like that, the work I had built from the ground up was no longer mine. I was devastated.

Adjusting to life as a working mum was already a huge transition. You’re running on little sleep, trying to navigate a new identity, and balancing guilt from all directions: guilt for leaving your baby, for not being fully present at work, for trying to juggle it all.

The new project they assigned me to was lower-key, which, to be fair, gave me some much-needed flexibility. But it also felt like a consolation prize.

That project eventually wrapped up, and now I’m in another role that doesn't excite me. It doesn’t challenge me, and it definitely doesn’t make the most of my skills. For a while, I tried to convince myself to be grateful, after all, I still had a job.

But as time goes on, I can’t shake the frustration. I built something meaningful. I earned that role. And it was taken from me at a time when I was most vulnerable.

Being a working mum means making constant compromises with your time, your energy, your ambitions.

But losing a job I created, simply because I went on maternity leave, still stings.

My take?

This is exactly what we mean when we talk about systemic discrimination. It’s not always loud or litigious, sometimes it’s quiet. Polite. “Strategic.” It hides behind phrases like:

• “We needed someone who could hit the ground running.”
  

• “You were on leave, so we had to make a decision.”
  

• “It made sense at the time.”
  

But what it really means is: you stepped away to do the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and we punished you for it.

And I know this happens everywhere.

If this has happened to you, if someone is promoted over your postpartum body, or handed your hard work to someone else - tell me. Tell us. Because naming it helps the next woman, the next mother see it faster.