Every week, I see another ‘return-to-work survival guide’ or ‘how to juggle career and motherhood’ article. And while advice can be useful, it often misses the point: mothers don’t need more survival strategies.

What we really need is a shift in where the guidance is directed.

• People managers need guides on how to support women through maternity leave and their return without bias or assumptions.
• HR teams need guides on creating policies that genuinely protect parents, not just tick compliance boxes.
• Organisations need guides on tackling the motherhood penalty and embedding flexibility as standard, not as a perk.
• Partners need guides on what shared responsibility truly looks like at home.

Working mothers are already resilient. What’s missing is accountability from the systems and structures around us.

It’s time to stop publishing guides on how mothers should ‘cope’ and start writing guides for those with the power to change the experience.

Succes isn’t one-size-fits-all, especially for women and working mothers. Our ambitions shift, our priorities evolve, and what once felt like success might look different today. And that’s not failure. That’s growth.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines success as the achievement of a desired result or outcome; the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And that looks different to every single one of us.

If your definition of success is travelling the world and you’re doing it – you’re successful.

If your definition of success is putting on a suit and living the corporate life – you’re successful.

If your definition of success is building a happy home – you’re successful.

The only wrong definition of success is the one that isn’t truly yours.

Keep checking in with yourself.
Revise.
Pivot.
Progress.
Pause and take it all in.

Because success isn’t fixed. It shifts, it stretches, and it grows with you.

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Chatting to a colleague just before my maternity leave, I had shared my appreciation for the enhanced maternity leave the company was providing.

Despite the unknown linked to the birth and the precious few months of life on the one side, and the stress of pausing your career for a year, the pay would give me some headspace for a few months, and set me up to plan my next steps.

She scoffed. ‘I don’t agree with parental leave’, she said. ‘Having children is a choice, I should be entitled to a similar period off – maternity leave is basically a sabbatical’.

This gave me pause, and I still come back to it several months later. At the time, the only parallel I could draw was with the smoker v non-smoker debate and the amount of time away from their work smokers take.

Here are my more articulated thoughts:

1. Issue of fairness

She’s absolutely right that parenthood is a choice and that fairness matters.

I understand how it would feel unfair to cover work for someone on parental leave. And this is coming from a non-smoker.

A more equitable employer would offer all employees structured opportunities for time off (such as sabbaticals, caregiving leave, extended holidays) while still preserving maternity leave as essential.

2. Issue of necessity
Where maternity leave differs from a sabbatical is necessity.

A sabbatical is restorative, chosen for personal growth, travel, or rest.

Maternity leave is, quite literally, about survival and recovery: a woman is physically healing from birth while also caring for a newborn who is entirely dependent on her. There is nothing elective or leisurely about it.

Removing maternity leave would be dangerous.

3. Issue of societal responsibility
None of us asked to be born, but society relies on a next generation to sustain itself.

Children grow into taxpayers, innovators, caregivers, leaders.

Supporting parents isn’t about indulging personal choice, rather it’s about safeguarding the future workforce and the wellbeing of society as a whole.

When companies enable women to recover, bond with their babies, and return to work without career derailment, everyone wins: families, employers, and economies. 77% of women say access to maternity leave influences whether they stay with their employer (SHRM, 2023).

Closing thought
Fairness matters, absolutely. But true fairness recognises that different situations require different types of support.

Maternity leave isn’t a perk or a sabbatical. It’s an essential part of how we sustain healthy people, families, and workplaces.

What if maternity leave wasn’t just about time off, but about setting mothers up for long-term success and promotion? That’s the real fairness test.

– D

Before Artemis had a name, it was just an idea in my head. Such a simple, human solution to a problem I was now familiar with. A problem I was now aware had been all around me, in every ambitious working mother.

I was now noticing talented women, new mothers in particular, disappearing from the leadership pipeline. Not because they lacked skill or ambition, but because the system wasn’t built for them. They came back from maternity leave feeling isolated, doubting themselves, and unsure how to navigate a career that now had invisible hurdles.

So I pitched an internal mentorship scheme.
A network that would pair senior working mothers with pregnant women, so they could share real strategies, honest stories, and the unspoken knowledge you can’t find in any policy document.

This wasn’t just about retention, it was about rebuilding confidence, unlocking talent, and making sure the business didn’t lose some of its best people.

But when I shared the idea with my manager, they shut it down. “I’m supportive of it, it’s a great idea. HR would never go for it.”

I left that meeting disappointed but not defeated. Because if my workplace didn’t see it as a priority, I knew the women who needed it would. And if no one else was going to create it, I would.

That’s when Artemis stopped being an idea for their organisation and started becoming a movement of our own.

– D

When I chose the name Artemis for this network, it was a declaration.

In Greek mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, the moon, but above all, she is the protector of women and children. She moves through the world with fierce independence, deep intuition, and an unshakable sense of justice.

Those traits are the very traits that define modern working mothers.

To Motherhood

Motherhood is often painted as soft and nurturing. It sure is. But it is also a battlefield of invisible and thankless labour, relentless decision-making, and the constant hunt for resources, opportunities, and safety for our children. Like Artemis with her bow, mothers are always scanning the horizon: for threats, for solutions, for better paths forward.

In the Artemis Network, we honour the hunter’s vigilance and the nurturer’s heart, because we recognise that mothers are both.

To Empowerment

Artemis never asked for permission to exist, lead, or protect. She simply did. That’s the kind of empowerment we champion here.

Empowerment is not just about titles or pay grades, though we fight for those too. It’s about reclaiming the narrative of what it means to be a mother in senior leadership. It’s about equipping women with the tools, the confidence, and the connections to thrive without apology.

To Protection

The world of work can be ruthless to mothers. We know this. We’ve lived it.

Artemis is the shield as well as the bow. Fierce in defending her own. That’s why this network exists: to be a protective circle where mothers in senior roles can speak openly, share strategies, and guard each other against the isolating and sometimes hostile environments we’ve faced. For senior professionals who are hyper visible, and invisible at the same time.

The Mission

Our mission is not just to connect working mothers in leadership. It us to change the terrain we navigate. To make sure that future generations of working mothers step into workplaces where flexibility isn’t a fight, where motherhood is not a penalty, and where leadership welcomes rather than sidelines us.

In the myth, Artemis roamed under the moonlight, guiding others through the dark.

In reality, we are doing the same.

Together, we are the huntresses, the guardians, the trailblazers.

I hope you’ll join us in bringing this vision to life.

– D