| From having a baby to caring for elderly parents, there is no shortage of the reasons why mid-career women quit their jobs. But a new report points out that the break could be just temporary as an increasing number of companies try to get the women back to work. Read on… Editor’s note: Starting today, Mind the Gap will be in your inboxes every Monday. We hope you enjoy starting your week off with your favourite newsletter on gender. The Big Story The great return  Representational image/iStock She had her life planned out: an MBA from New York, a job with an international bank, the seamless transfer to India following her marriage to a Delhi-based businessman. Everything was on track. And then S, who didn’t want to be named, got pregnant. Back then, the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with technology hadn’t made flexi work and work-from-home the buzzwords they are today. So, when her daughter was born, it became clear to S that like many other new mums, she too had to hand in her papers. Feminist economists have a neat phrase for what is an everyday life for far too many women around the world. They call it the “motherhood penalty”: the price paid by young mothers when they have children and, like S, drop out of paid work. The data tells its own story. At just 47.6%, mothers of children below the age of five had the lowest employment rate globally. This was well below the 54.4% for women with no children, and 87.9% for fathers (with or without kids), according to a study of 90 countries by the International Labour Organization. In 2017, after I had quit my full-time job, I began working on a series that looked at India’s declining female labour force participation. Over the course of a year, I spoke to women in urban and rural India across both formal and informal employment to discover one truth: women bore a disproportionate responsibility for any family. This would explain why India’s most educated women were among those dropping out fastest. I found that while the “motherhood penalty” extracted a price, it was not the only one. Women were far more likely to be the stay-at-home parent at some point in their career — say, a child’s board exams or a parent’s illness. They were also far less likely to accept transfers, postings, and even job changes that would help advance their career. But once the kids are older, many women are raring to get back to their jobs. They dream of hefty salaries, bonuses, performance appraisals, and, even the camaraderie of colleagues. As S told me, “What I miss most is the feeling of belonging to a tribe, the meetings, the offsites, even the water-cooler gossip.” Second chance A new study brings some good news: breaks in a woman’s career need not spell the end of it. The “motherhood penalty” could be just a blip in a long career. Getting women back to work is a win-win for both the women and their employers, finds The Returnship Road, released on March 7 by Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis, and Godrej DEI Lab. Women find gainful employment that makes use of their education, skill, and training. And the companies gain by re-employing women with work experience and motivation. “Creating enabling conditions for women to sustain and grow their careers is good for business,” says Supriya Nair, head of research and media, Godrej DEI Lab. There are challenges for both women and employers. Ashwini Deshpande, professor and head, Department of Economics, Ashoka University, says “[women] might have lost contact with their previous employers or co-workers. How do they find out about new job openings? How should they modify their resumes to make them more contemporary?” For the companies, the main challenge is to “create acceptance internally, of tackling biases.”  Sorry for the interruption The report notes that there is no definitive data on the number and type of companies that offer such programmes. The Tata group’s Second Careers, Inspiring Possibilities programme back in 2008, is one example. But the momentum has picked up since the Covid-19 pandemic provided the work-from-home push that suits many women: between 2016 and 2024, companies with a formal hiring programme to identify and recruit women on career breaks went from one-third to 83%. How do you make ‘returnships’ work? Secure leadership support and sensitize the entire organization. Do not confine returnships to consultant roles. The report also advises skill-based hiring rather than filtering candidates based on their resumes, paying fairly, and being consistent about returnship programmes. | 
