Maternal ITV: The surgeon mother who has inspired new medical drama

A surgeon whose life as a working mother has helped inspire a new ITV drama has spoken of some of the sexist attitudes she has faced in the workplace.

Maternal tells the stories of three doctors as they each attempt to balance their increasingly demanding jobs in post-pandemic frontline medicine with their lives as new mothers.

Catherine MacDiarmid is played by actress Lara Pulver whose her character is loosely based on Zoe Barber, a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon based at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant.

The drama also brings together leading actresses Parminder Nagra and Lisa McGrillis.

In 2019, Zoe had twin girls and returned to work when they were six months old. 

Her husband, who is also a surgeon, took shared parental leave.  

She was approached by producers to share her story and help shape the programme and was invited on set to advise on medical accuracies. 

Zoe said, "There's so much of my voice in Catherine, and it's a real pleasure to see so many female surgeon voices in her character. "I think we can all relate to the fact that she is brilliant but she is so human and she is flawed, she tries her best but she doesn't always get it right - and as mothers and professionals, we all really identify with that."

Only 13% of consultant surgeons in the UK are women.  

Zoe recalled being asked about her plans to have children often at work."Most days I would be asked, do you have children, if not when are you going to have children, have you planned it within your career, they'd say, you don't want to take too much time out and assume you'll come back part time afterwards; and my husband who is also a surgeon has never been asked any of these questions, because it isn't considered a problem for a man. 

"I think it's important we change this narrative because many men also want to be involved in their children's lives.

"My husband took shared parental leave and that shouldn't be the exception, this should be normalised and part of a diverse workforce."

Zoe said some of her "worst critics" have been her female colleagues.

"Part of my role with Maternal was to show we all have really similar tensions between our professional and personal lives and we need to be able to talk about those and we need to be able to support each other in those roles because it is really hard sometimes and we need help."

Zoe hopes by sharing her story through Maternal, she can help improve things within her industry and open up more of a conversationabout how society can help support women.

"We have to be honest about how difficult these challenges are, for everybody, men and women, but the majority of the burden falls on women and we have to see what we can do to change that. We all have a duty to support each other"

Maternal is on ITV 1 at 9pm on Mondays and you can catch up with all episodes on ITV X.