Within weeks of each other, two major 2026 research reports landed on the same question from opposite directions: one measuring what motherhood builds in women, the other tracking what South African organisations are doing with those same women. Marilize Jacobs, founder of VocalCord PR & Reputation Management and Pigs Can Fly Interiors, read both. Here is what she found. – By Marilize Jacobs
I have two businesses, a fairly robust immunity to unsolicited career advice, and a front-row seat to what managing sustained complexity actually builds in a person. I also, as it turns out, have the data to prove it.
Two significant research reports published within weeks of each other in 2026 have arrived at the same uncomfortable intersection. One asked what motherhood develops in women. The other asked what happens to those women in South African organisations.
Read together, they are the most articulate corporate indictment I have read this year. And I work in communications. The bar is not low.
What the data shows: Moms are not being sentimental. They are being measured
The 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, published by Mothered Media under founder Alexa Starks, surveyed 354 working mothers across multiple industries, career levels and countries. The survey ran February to April 2026. Participants were asked to self-assess twelve leadership-related capabilities before and after becoming mothers.
Every single capability measured increased. Not some. Not most.
Every one.
The finding that stops the conversation is this: the biggest gains were not in empathy. They were not in patience or emotional labour. The sharpest growth was operational:
Source: 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, Mothered Media
“The largest reported increases were not limited to traditionally ‘soft’ skills like empathy alone. Many of the strongest increases appeared in operational and leadership-oriented capabilities tied to managing complexity, prioritizing under pressure, navigating competing demands, communicating clearly, and making decisions quickly in high-responsibility environments.” – 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, Mothered Media
These are the capabilities on every leadership competency framework. They are what executive coaches charge consulting fees for. They are what business schools build entire curricula around.
And 354 women have just reported developing all of them through the lived experience of motherhood. For free. With no certificate. While being passed over for promotion.
Now read the other report. This is where it gets uncomfortable
The 2026 Working Women in South Africa Report, compiled by RecruitMyMom under CEO and founder Phillipa Geard, draws on 3,509 responses from skilled South African women aged 18 to 64. It is the third consecutive annual study. It covers the same women the Mothered Media data is measuring.
The picture it paints:
- 86% of skilled women in South Africa experience burnout to some degree
- 55.5% have struggled with their mental wellbeing in the past twelve months
- 60.7% cite lack of visible opportunity as their primary career barrier
- 45% are sole household income earners
- 80.4% support dependants
“This financial reality is not incidental to the findings that follow. It shapes everything, from why salary consistently ranks as the most important factor in women’s working lives to why flexibility is not a lifestyle preference but a practical necessity.” – 2026 Working Women in SA Report, RecruitMyMom
Let me make this plain. One dataset says motherhood is building world-class operational leadership capability. The other says the women doing this building are burning out, being overlooked, carrying sole financial responsibility for their households, and being evaluated primarily on when they show up to the office.
There is a word for recognising someone’s output while simultaneously undervaluing the person producing it. I will let you find it yourself.
The assumption that is costing organisations real money
The gap persists because of one stubborn cultural assumption: that motherhood is primarily an emotional experience, and that whatever it develops is therefore soft, difficult to quantify, and irrelevant to strategic leadership.
The Mothered Media report demolishes this. Empathy grew by +27%. Resilience by +19%. Both are real. Both are dwarfed by the operational gains. The report names what is happening:
“Workplace systems frequently continue measuring motherhood through visibility, availability, and assumption rather than adaptive capability and leadership development.”– 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, Mothered Media
The cost is concrete. In the RecruitMyMom data:
- 40.7% of women whose on-site attendance was increased in the past year are actively looking for new opportunities
- Only 9.2% accessed employer mental health support, despite 55.5% having struggled
- 18.3% were not even aware any support existed
You cannot retain what you have not bothered to recognise.
One data point that tells the whole story
In the RecruitMyMom burnout data, one group outperforms every other on wellbeing: business owners. Lowest regular burnout rate of any seniority level: 29.2%, versus 40% for executives.
Business owners built structures that fit their actual lives. They did not wait for permission to have flexibility. They engineered it in. And the capabilities the Mothered Media data says motherhood develops, strategic energy allocation, negotiation, prioritisation, managing complexity with constrained resources, are precisely the capabilities that make someone capable of running their own operation.
I am a case study of this. VocalCord PR, est. 2005. Pigs Can Fly Interiors, est. 2008. Both running simultaneously for nearly twenty years. The skills are not separate. They compound. Crisis communications sharpens the design consultation. The prioritisation discipline of the interior project carries back into the pitch process. The range is not scattered. It is the direct product of managing sustained complexity, and it builds capability that single-lane experience simply does not.
The Mothered Media report frames the structural problem precisely:
“If motherhood is associated with substantial growth across leadership-related capabilities, why are mothers still so often viewed professionally through a deficit lens?” – 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, Mothered Media
What organisations should do this week
Both reports make recommendations. The RecruitMyMom report is practical and specific:
- Design genuine flexibility into how roles are structured, not as a perk but as architecture
- Make career pathways visible and explicitly attainable, because 60.7% currently cannot see their next step
- Stop treating career breaks as red flags: 94% of women who take one, return to work
- Measure outcomes, not presence
The Mothered Media report asks the harder question: not what to do, but what to stop assuming.
Two significant research efforts, conducted independently, with different methodologies and different respondent bases, arrived at the same place within weeks of each other. One measured what motherhood builds. The other measured what happened to the women who built it.
The gap between those two findings is not a women’s issue.
It is a leadership talent issue. And organisations that continue to overlook it are not making a value error. They are making a business one.
Marilize Jacobs is a PR and Reputation Strategist and founder of VocalCord PR & Reputation Management and Pigs Can Fly Interiors in South Africa.
www.marilizejacobs.com
Sources
- 2026 Maternal Strengths Report, Mothered Media (Alexa Starks, Founder).
- Survey: Feb–Apr 2026, 354 respondents. www.motheredmedia.com
- 2026 Working Women in South Africa Report: The Workforce Squeeze, RecruitMyMom (Phillipa Geard, CEO and Founder).
- Survey: March 2026, 3,509 respondents. www.recruitmymom.co.za
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