Janice Chaka had spent her lunch hour organising a surprise cooking class for a close friend who was visiting from out of town. After getting stuck in traffic on the way back from the venue she ended up back in her office five minutes’ late from her break.

“I got asked a lot of questions and I had to stay and do extra work,” she says. “But I know if I’d been late back from taking my kid to the doctor, that wouldn’t have even been an issue, in fact I probably could have taken the whole afternoon off.”

A study of 25,000 workers found that two thirds of childless women aged 28 to 40 felt that they were expected to work longer hours

That happened a decade ago, when Chaka was working in human resources in Guadalajara, Mexico. But the experience conformed to a pattern that she says was common as she forged a career working for Fortune 100 companies in the US and Mexico throughout her twenties, both as a singleton and while in childless relationships. Colleagues with children were also prioritised when it came to taking their preferred vacation dates, she claims, while fellow single or childless workers struggled to get time off to care for elderly relatives or were asked to go on more frequent business trips.

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