As mothers we become very skilled at fighting. When our children are younger, we fight to keep them safe and to get the best for their future, and as they get older, we become practised in negotiating the teenage conflict zone. In a recent Mumsnet guest post, Kiran Chug described another battle many mothers need to fight – to get their careers back after a long break. Yet I find that when it comes to fighting for their own future, too often women surrender at the outset, or their self-belief flounders well before they achieve their objective.
Through my work I regularly meet talented and experienced women on career breaks who have written themselves off. Typical is Jackie, who stepped back from a high-flying 18-year career when jetting around the world for client pitches became impossible with three young children. She told me apologetically: "I've mainly been just a mum for years now, doing bits of consultancy for small businesses, nothing exciting." Approaching her fifties, with teenage children, she was sceptical of her chances of restarting her career: "I'd love to have a great job again but it's been too long. Who would want me now? Media is a young person's world and I'm too old to start again."
I can remember my own doubts and insecurities after four years out. It is so easy to give up when well-crafted job applications are ignored and recruiters dismiss your chances. Keen to relaunch in their previous fields, mothers often start their job search with a burst of enthusiasm, but then rapidly become disillusioned. In a recent Woman's Hour feature, 48-year-old Carmen, who had wanted to resume her career as a City macro-economist, explained how she was told by a headhunter that she had "no chance on earth of going back to the financial sector" after a seven year break. So she wrote off this option, decided she'd have to start again at the bottom and took a minimum wage internship with a charity.
At Women Returners, we are tackling this waste of female talent, both by supporting individual returners and by working with organisations to create more routes back into corporate roles. But if we're going to succeed in our objective, we also need mothers to remove the limits they are placing on themselves and to come back fighting. We need to value ourselves and what we can bring to the workforce.
To this end, there are a few things I want women hoping to return to work to do:
- Remember you are still the same talented professional woman you were and you will quickly get back up to speed. You also have a wealth of new skills developed during your break, combined with maturity and a fresh perspective.
- Don't minimise yourself. You're not "just a mum", you didn't run "just a small business from home" and your previous professional success wasn't down to luck.
- Know that UK businesses want you back. Companies from Credit Suisse to Thames Tideway Tunnel are launching returnships – paid internships for returning professionals to transition back into senior roles. They see returners as an untapped talent pool which can both fill capability gaps and build diversity.
- Be open-minded about new possibilities. If you don't want to go back to your old career, you are not too old to retrain into a new career or set up your own business and, most importantly, all those years of experience will still count.
- Don't give up. We're not claiming that getting back into a great job after many years out is easy, but it is possible with determination and persistence, as the many return-to-work success stories on the Women Returners site demonstrate.
Carmen didn't give up and is now back working as an Executive Director in the City through participating in Morgan Stanley's returnship programme. And Jackie is starting to explore other options as well as reconnecting with her ex-colleagues who remember her as an amazing boss, not "just a mum". If you're ready to restart your career, you may have to battle - but it will be well worth the fight.