More than a year of maternity leave ‘can damage your career’
WOMEN’S careers can nosedive if they take more than a year off after having a baby, experts warned yesterday.
New mothers may struggle to get back into the workforce, earn less and be passed over for promotion in what has been described as a ‘motherhood penalty’.
A panel of women representing the teaching, legal, medical and recruitment professions told MPs that mums who spent more than 12 months on maternity leave were ‘penalised’.
Dr Sally Davies, of the Women’s Medical Federation, said: ‘Anything more than 12 months is a detriment – you will not be looked at quite in the same way, sadly, when you return.’
Amanda Fone, chief executive of F1 Recruitment, said she would discourage women and men from taking more than a year off to care for children because it was ‘so difficult’ to return to a role equivalent to the one they left.
She claimed legislation had ‘got in the way’ of women being able to have honest discussions with their employers about their plans to have a family.
She told the Women and Equalities Committee: ‘ You need to be able to sit down with your HR director or line manager and say, “I really love being in this business. I want to stay. I want to carve my career here, but I also want a family as well. If I had a break for three years will I be penalised? Can I know that when I come back in, I can get back to my career?”.’
She said women realised they would lose out if they did not remain engaged with their profession during any time away. ‘It’s a bit like an athlete. You can’t expect to come back and run the 100 metres as fast as you did three years before,’ she added. ‘You’ve got to keep your brain engaged – keep training during the time you’re out.’
Senior Marks & Spencer executive Laura Wade- Gery, 50, announced in December that she had decided to extend her maternity leave from four months to a year after having her first child last summer. But Audrey Williams, a lawyer with the legal firm Fox Williams, said even taking a break for more than nine months could have a negative impact on women’s careers.
She told MPs there was an ‘even pattern’ across the legal and accountancy professions for women to start their careers well but struggle to compete with men after having families.
‘From around the age of 38, the gap seems to start appearing, in terms of not just pay but progression,’ she said. Amanda Brown, of the National Union of Teachers, said women teachers were ‘not granted pay progression in the way they ought to be’ if they took time out or worked part time to look after newborns.
The committee also heard that women in low-paid work such as care or cleaning did not struggle so much to return after a break because of the high turnover and greater availability of part-time work available in the industries.
‘Will I be penalised?’