Maternity break can impact career aspirations

One of the concerns that women face is that maternity leave, especially if it’s a long one, can sabotage their career success.

There’s a tendency that if they spend a long time away from work, they will eventually slip off the radar and get passed up for promotion, or worse, they could lose their job.

Some women have dealt with stereotypes that generally regard returning mothers as no longer focused on their work or career ambitions because their family is taking much of their time.

National Childbirth Trust (NCT) in the UK helps parents through pregnancy, birth and early days of parenthood. In its “Returning to work” guide for parents, NCT advised that taking maternity leave that lasts six to 12 months “may or may not” impact an employee’s career, depending on one’s life and career goals.

“If you are undertaking professional qualifications that take two years to complete, taking a year out will delay it. If you choose to return on a reduced number of hours, then this can also delay specific goals if you need to demonstrate effort or duration based achievements, e.g. required number of hours face-to-face with clients,” NCT said.

Maternity Action, another organisation in the UK that promotes the well-being of all pregnant women, said that an estimated 30,000 women are out of jobs each year as a result of “pregnancy discrimination”.

“Pregnancy discrimination includes unfair redundancy processes, poor health and safety protection, unfair performance management processes and blatant cases of unfair dismissal,” the organization said.

Given the negative data, career-oriented individuals tend to be extra careful when deciding the length of maternity leave. At what point, therefore, does a career break hinder a person’s job?

David Robert, CEO of Great Place to Work Gulf, said there is no magic number to speak of, but a working mother might even be considered more valuable than her peers.

“The lessons a new mother learns while on maternity leave can add significant value to the organization and thus great workplace cultures offer myriad ways to support and re-engage mothers when they are ready to return to work,” Robert told Gulf News.