No going back? How jobs market is Rigged against women returners
Experts reveal howemployers routinely reject recruits
The UK economy is losing talent worth £1.7 billion every year because the jobs market is rigged against women returning to work after a career break, experts warn.
Specialist HR experts say firms are too reluctant to take on women with a gap in their CV and routinely overestimate how long it will take them to get back up to speed in the world of work.
There are rising fears many women who have stepped out of the jobs market, most often to care for young children or care for family members, are disproportionally affected by a phenomenon called the “career- break penalty”; when employers pass over an individual’s application due a significant gap on their CV.
Hazel Little, programme director of Women Returners, a networking organisation that supports women looking for new opportunities after a career break, believes much more can be done to prevent the loss of so much talent.
Women Returners also works closely with re c r u i t e r s and employers, educating them on the benefits of hiring returners, and facilitating initiatives that makes it easier for them.
For many women told they could have it all and sold a dream of juggling families and careers, attempting to re-enter the jobs market has been a brutal wake-up call.
Talented and determined, they send a blizzard of sell- crafted CVS and applications but are lucky to get a response, let alone an invitation to interview.
Little said: “Women face so many barriers when trying to return to work. They are faced with biases at the point of recruitment, with people looking at their CV and saying, ‘your skills are out of date, you’re too risky, you’re too old, you won’t be able to hit the ground running’. They are being pushed out of the job market.”
Women Returners launched in 2014 and since then has worked with hundreds of organisations and has supported thousands of women back to work. It says women get back up to speed much quicker than hiring managers expect them to.
She said: “Once you are back in the working environment, everything comes back to you much quicker. It is a bit like riding a bike – just because you have not ridden a bike in four years does not mean you are going to forget how to do it.
“I’m not going to say they will get back into as quickly as someone who was doing the job yesterday, of course not. But it is much quicker than hiring managers and organisations tend to believe.”
A recent government study found that 25% of women aged 16- 64 were economically inactive in 2020, with 1.37 million of those women being inactive because they were looking after family or home.
The pandemic made things more difficult for women on career breaks, with many having
to return to work earlier than originally planned due to the economic stress the pandemic has put on their family finances. Yet, because of the high demand for jobs, securing a position is more difficult than ever, with one post often receiving hundreds of applications.
This is leaving many women perpetually unemployed despite their best efforts, often having to opt for lesser- paying jobs in order to secure some form of income. Yet sometimes even those jobs elude them, as they are often rejected because they are deemed to be overqualified. Little said that this seemingly endless stream of non- starter opportunities can take a psychological toll on returners.
“The more that they receive rejection after rejection after rejection, the more it chips away at their confidence. They feel very demotivated and that it is never going to happen for them.
“They can feel despair and very frustrated. What we are seeing is a huge talent pool of women who are not able to secure roles that they are more than capable of doing. The UK economy would be £ 1.7 billion better off if we did not have this career break penalty in front of us.”
The subject is very close to Little’s heart as, after a successful career in HR, she too struggled to find work after a three- year break to look after her young daughters. Little found the experience disheartening, because motherhood had not diminished her desire to have a successful career.
“I was still really ambitious and still wanted to get my teeth into something that was really worthwhile and meaningful. There is a bias around mums: ‘are they going to be reliable, are they going to want to be ambitious?’ and absolutely 100% they do!”
Little was unable to secure a position at an organisation, so retrained and became a career coach, setting up her own coaching practice. In 2016, she was approached by Women Returners to help them expand their project into Scotland, and Little jumped at what she saw as her dream job. “I absolutely love every minute of it. It doesn’t feel like work. The purpose behind what we’re doing just means so much to me.”
Women Returners is launching the brand-new government-funded Women Returners Career Boost Accelerator programme in January 2022. The programme will support and coach 80 Scottish women who have a career break of more than 18 months, and will address the practical and psychological barriers experienced by women wanting to get back to professional work after a long break.
Little said: “We’re confident that this programme will give muchneeded support to returners at whatever stage they’re at. Many of the women who have already taken part in similar programmes have said, ‘ just someone listening to my story and the struggles I have had has felt like such a lifeline’.”
The Scottish G ove r n m e n t Employment Minister, Richard Lochhead, said: “It is more important than ever to recognise and address workplace inequalities for women, including the motherhood penalty and discrimination on the basis of age, ethnicity or disability. We know these long- standing structural and societal barriers can prevent women successfully returning to the workforce following a career break, and have been made more challenging and difficult by the impacts of the pandemic.
“The Wo m e n Returners Programme is mitigating some of these barriers and helping women develop the confidence, skills, work experience and networks they may need to ease the transition back to work. Supporting women who have taken a break from paid work back into the labour markets that match their skills and experience will help to tackle the gender pay gap, raise family incomes and grow our economy.”