Dr Ee Kheng Ang

When New Zealand mothers return to the workforce, they typically take lower status jobs and a lower pay rate than before they had children, an in-depth study of ‘returners’ has shown.

A researcher in the University’s Department of Management, Dr Ee Kheng Ang, interviewed 26 women – 22 of them with tertiary qualifications – for her doctoral thesis Career break or broken career? Mothers’ experiences of returning to paid work.

She also interviewed employers, held focus groups, mailed out a national questionnaire and explored government assistance aimed at helping mothers integrate work and family.

Mothers who interrupt their careers by taking a break to raise children generally face downward occupational mobility and loss of lifetime incomes, says Dr Ang. They can then find it very difficult to transition upward, particularly from casual or part-time work.

She says there is a widely-held assumption that mothers coming back to work have outdated skills and qualifications and that their performance will be constrained by motherhood.

“The returners are often highly-skilled and qualified individuals but employers appear to treat them as relatively unskilled labour, suitable for casual employment.”

The sample group of mothers she interviewed had left well-paid professional roles to have children.

They included a veterinarian, town planners, school principals, consultants and health specialists. The women were all very proactive in their efforts to regain some of the power and control they had once had when they were working. Their comments, she says, reflected the complexity of returning to paid work.

Through the experiences of her sample group she sought to identify the various factors that contribute to what she calls the “queuing process” whereby returners are assigned the lowest occupational position at the back of the job queue.

Social factors, including the need to work close to home and the careers of their partners, had significant bearing.

For example, because husbands and partners had now pulled ahead of the women in terms of earnings and bargaining power, returning mothers were obliged to put their partners’ jobs ahead of their own in any considerations related to returning to work themselves.

“Further, when planning to go back to work, mothers need help from their partners, not just with childcare but also in making the transition back to paid work easier. In most cases, the partners appeared to expect that the mothers combine paid work and home responsibilities in such a way that the home environment remained as unchanged as possible.

“The participants in my study claimed their partners expected them to organise and pay for childcare.”

Dr Ang found the lack of support from extended families in modern life had an impact on when women chose to return to work and the sort of jobs they took. Labour market conditions also affect mothers going back to work because they are reliant on a booming economy to get back into employment. Outside the larger centres, some of the former professionals said it was difficult to find even casual cleaning jobs.

For women who break their careers to have children, the break often leads to the loss of work-related networks, says Dr Ang. The women who had work-related contacts were more likely to be offered jobs than those without those networks.

The group also found there was little recognition by employers of the unpaid but work-related skills they may have acquired through voluntary work in the community.

Many had experience in leadership positions such as treasurer or chairperson of school boards of trustees, convenors for conferences or supervisors of play-centres. One had been in sole charge of a large building project.

“On the whole I found employers are generally satisfied with the work of returners and appreciate their skills and attributes. However by not compensating them adequately the employers are contributing to the relegation of returners to the back of the career queue.”

She found that only three of the 26 women interviewed were in successful second careers and had been promoted. Those women were single mothers and had qualified for assistance in training and childcare. Dr Ang believes such assistance should be available to assist women wanting to return to work who are not on a benefit.

“Further assistance could be in a lump sum payment to assist with job search costs. The creation of more good part-time jobs where the potential for promotions is real and achievable and where there is a clear pathway for part-timers to achieve full-time positions and progress in their chosen line of work would ensure that returners are not stuck in dead-end jobs.