Career Break Research Articles

Women’s re-entry after a career break: Efficacy of support programs

PurposeThere is a recent organizational focus on increasing and managing gender diversity with stress on supportive policies for working mothers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of one such supportive policy (i.e. completion of company-initiated internship programs) designed to help women return to the workforce post a career break.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses an experimental design to compare the evaluation of a woman applicant who has a career break with the evaluation of a woman applicant who has completed a support program after a career break. Variance in the evaluation of the applicant on the parameters – educational qualification, professional qualification, fit with job description and invite for an interview is tested. The study also examines the effect of individuals’ neosexist attitude on their evaluation of the applicant. Data were collected from 109 participants having an average age of thirty-two years (SD = 5.97), and average work experience of 9 years (SD = 5.20).FindingsResults show that completion of a support program, as well as neosexism, have a main effect on the evaluation of job fit.Practical implicationsResults have implications for employee-training programs, as well as development programs for women re-entering the workforce post a career break.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to study the efficacy of internship programs for re-entry of women, started by various multi-national companies in India. It extends the application of neosexism to such initiatives, which are not affirmative action, highlighting the changing nature of sexism.

Does early childbearing matter? New approach using Danish register data

It is widely expected that career interruptions related to childbearing affect mothers’ wages directly through changes in the formation of human capital. Research proposes that this effect is exceptionally strong for early childbearing women who are about to start their working careers. This study investigates whether the poor long-term labor market outcomes experienced by women who first gave birth before turning 25 reflect previously existing disadvantages or are a consequence of the timing of childbearing. The purpose is also to observe whether a new combination of the best identification practices from earlier studies serves as an improved estimation method. This is done by applying a within-family estimator while treating miscarriages as an exogenous variation, thereby addressing family and individual heterogeneity, which might have biased earlier results based on either of the two identification strategies alone. The results show that early childbearing has no long-term effects on women's earnings.

Effects of Health Perception, Generativity and Wisdom on Job Competency of Korean Care Workers

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to produce fundamental materials for nursing intervention developmentfor care workers’ job competency enhancement by analyzing impact of care workers’ health perception,generativity and wisdom on job competency.Method: Data was collected by means of self-report questionnaire with ethical considerations from 116care workers at two nursing homes and one care worker center in D Borough in D City, two nursing homesin J Borough and one nursing home in S Borough. The collected data was then analyzed by frequencyscale, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlational coefficients and stepwise multipleregression.Results: The care workers’ health perception scored 3.86 points out of 5 points, generativity scored 2.75points out of 4 points and wisdom scored 3.49 points out of 5 points and job competency scored 3.79points out of 5 points. The job competency of care workers was a moderate positive correlation with healthperception (r=.49, p<.001), generativity (r=.34, p<.001), wisdom (r=.47, p<.001). The health perception(?=.346, p<.001) of care workers had a significant influence on job competency. Health perception, wisdomand work experience of care workers explained 39.6% of job competency.Conclusion: Care workers should be provided with environmental and institutional strategies for constantservice provision without career disruption. Job competency affected by care workers’ health, wisdomand work experience, therefore, regular check-up and spur for maintenance of good health are required, inaddition to constant refresher and capability enhancement education for extended wisdom on caring and lifein daily lives. On top of that, a capability management program should be developed in consideration of thesaid factors. Job competency increased in proportion to work years in elder caring, therefore, institutionalmanagement of manpower is needed in policy-level.

Le scelte di fertilità e la durata della maternità in Italia: vincoli economici e norme sociali

Italy is characterised by both a low level of female participation in the labour market and a low fertility rate. At the same time, many women stay out of the la-bour market after the childbirth for a much longer period of time than the com-pulsory maternity leave prescribes. This way, they put at risk the possibility of re-entering the labour market after the career break, as well as damage their future career opportunities. In this paper we use a two-stage estimation process to ana-lyse the factors that influence the choice of having children first and then the choice of the period of time to devote to raising them out of the labour market. In particular, we focus on the role of factors hitherto neglected by the literature, such as prevailing local social norms and women’s reproductive health. The re-sults show that economic constraints do not have a strong impact on fertility choices (which seem to be more influenced by individual preferences and social norms), but significantly influence the length of the maternity period. The worsen-ing of women’s reproductive health, also due to the increase in the average age at childbirth, seems to significantly lengthen the period of time spent out of the la-bour market after the childbirth.

The motherhood wage penalty: A meta-analysis

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This ‘motherhood wage gap’ has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.6–3.8%. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers' human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers' choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.

Time to make healthcare professions more accessible to women with children

In response to a recent report published by the Royal College of Nursing, Bryan McIntosh, Uduak Archibong and Louise Donaghy discuss the impact of motherhood, part-time hours and career breaks on the cultural perceptions and experiences of female healthcare professionals.

The Wage Penalty for Married Women of Career Interruptions: Evidence from the 1970s and the 1990s

The goal of this paper is to assess how the wage penalty for career interruptions by married women changed between the 1970s and the 1990s. We estimate the wage penalty for career interruptions using the work‐history model and PSID data. We use several approaches to control for various forms of endogeneity and selection bias. Our empirical results suggest that (i) the wage penalty for married women's career interruptions increased from 40.4% to 73.7% over the period, (ii) the ratio of the wage penalty for married women to that of married men also increased, from 1.33 to 2.43, (iii) Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions show that changes in education‐ or occupation‐specific wage penalties account for most of the wage penalty increase.

Junior doctors undertaking an out-of-programme career break in medical education enhance their subsequent clinical practice skills and opportunities as well as continuing professional development

Junior doctors undertaking an out-of-programme career break in medical education enhance their subsequent clinical practice skills and opportunities as well as continuing professional development

Are Female CFOs Different? Evidence from Gender Pay Gaps

Studies document an unexplained wage gap between male and female workers even as female workers have increased their human capital through skill and education. At the executive level, where skill and education are similar, the results on gender-based pay gap persist and are primarily attributed to career interruptions and differences in risk preferences. Tracing the compensation contracts of Execucomp firms (1992-2018), this study observes a nonexistent gap in compensation between genders among CFOs. In fact, female CFOs earn more than male CFOs in the later sample years. This paper offers several explanations for this phenomenon e.g. new evidence on risk preferences of females with financial expertise and changes in the social and regulatory climate.

An Examination to Measure the Satisfaction Level of Faculty towards Work Life Balance Practices of Private and Public Universities of Delhi/NCR Region

Study aims to measure the satisfaction level of the Female Faculty towards the work life balance practices prevailing in their universities. Researcher has used both the primary and secondary data. Secondary data related to the work life balance studies, higher education system of India, universities and its types, and knowledge about the research methodology, has been used in the study. Primary data is collected in the form of perception of female faculty members towards the work life balance in public and private universities of Delhi/NCR. Total sample size was 602 female faculty members. It was found that in public universities, majority of the female faculty were found to be satisfied towards all the work life balance practices except; Facility of yoga and other clubs to cope up stress and career break for the specific purpose such as for higher education. In private universities, majority of the female faculty were found to be dissatisfied towards all the work life balance practices. Hence, female faculty working in public universities were found to be more satisfied than female faculty working in private universities.

A Study on the Effect of Employment Relationship Characteristics on Job Satisfaction of Experienced Workers in Career Interruption - Focusing on the Case of Korea

A Study on the Effect of Employment Relationship Characteristics on Job Satisfaction of Experienced Workers in Career Interruption - Focusing on the Case of Korea

A Study on the University's Learning Experiences of Career break Women

A Study on the University's Learning Experiences of Career break Women

Women in radiology: why is the pipeline still leaking and how can we plug it?

Today, >50% of medical students are women. This proportion, however, dramatically decreases throughout the higher levels of academia, a phenomenon described as the "leaky pipeline." This gender disparity is particularly pronounced in academic radiology, mirrored by a significant lack of women in editorial board positions, key authorship positions, and conference keynote lectures. The scientific invisibility is not only a key hurdle facing women in radiology, the lack of female role models and mentors in this context might also negatively affect career choices of young female radiologists thereby further widen the existing gender gap. In this article, the origins of the "leaky pipeline," the reasons for women's choice or rejection of careers in academic medicine, as well as solutions as to how the continued loss of a large part of the talent pool can be prevented, are discussed. Active monitoring and intervention are needed to identify problems, plan targeted actions, and evaluate their efficacy. Among those are measures that address a lack of support in the workplace, specific mentoring needs of women, flexible working hours and opportunities to align work and family, financial constraints, and support for returners after career breaks. Cooperative steps of politics and universities need to be taken that ensure a sustainable way forward to enable many talented women in radiology to achieve their full potential.

A study on Yeonheon Lee, Eui-mu’s Life and Literature

蓮軒 李宜茂는 성종과 연산군 대에 활동했던 문신으로 시문에 뛰어난 재주가 있었다. 당대에 시문으로 상당한 명성이 있었고, 국가차원의 편찬사업 에도 빠짐없이 참여할 만큼 실력을 인정받았으나, 그의 삶과 문학에 대한 연구는 지금까지 거의 이루어지지 않았다. 그의 문집 蓮軒雜稿 에는 총 372제 478수의 시가 수록되어 있다. 본고에서는 이러한 저작들을 바탕으로 이의무의 관료로서의 삶과 시인의 면모를 분석하였다. 李荇이 지은 <行狀>을 읽어보면 이의무의 삶은 戊午士禍를 제외하고는큰 굴곡 없이 높지도 낮지도 않은 관직을 역임하는 동안 순탄했던 것처럼 보인다. 그러나 그가 남긴 <關西紀行錄> <關西紀行後錄> <湖南紀行錄> 에 실린 시들을 보면, 그는 일생 동안 남들이 알지 못하는 수심과 번뇌로 괴로운 날들을 보냈음을 알 수 있다. 남들보다 뛰어난 文才를 지녔으면서도 宦路에서 뜻하는 만큼의 성과를 내지 못하고 있는 현실에 마음이 불평하였고, 그런 상태로 세월에 떠밀려 늙어가는 자신의 모습을 한스러워했다. 잠을 이루지 못하는 밤이면 술을 마시고 시를 쓰며 근심을 풀고자 했다. 그는 즐거울 때도 시를 읊었고, 괴로울 때도 시를 읊었다. 시는 그와 늘 함께했으 며, 그는 타고난 시인이었다. 1498년 일어난 무오사화는 그의 인생에서 하나의 큰 변곡점이었다. 그는 昭陵復位疏의 논란에 대해 의견을 번복했다는 이유로 追罪되어, 平安道 寧 邊 魚川驛에 杖配되었다. 그 전까지는 비교적 순탄한 관직생활을 하였지만, 어천역 유배기 이후에는 2년간의 공백기가 있었다. 그는 3년간 중앙에서 여러 관직을 역임한 후 외직을 자청해 洪州牧使로 나갔다. 유배기에 그가 남긴 시집 <魚川雜詠>에는 解配를 바라는 간절한 마음, 유배지에서의 고독과 쓸쓸함, 집과 가족에 대한 그리움과 더불어 시골마을에서 직접 목도한 백성 들의 간난신고가 고스란히 그려져 있다. 그는 도탄에 빠진 백성들을 직접 도울 일이 있지 않을까 고민하였고, 실제 홍주목사 시절 세금징수를 늦추고 백성들의 편의를 봐주는 방식으로 그 같은 고민을 실천에 옮겼다. 50세 이후의 행적을 보면 어천역에서의 유배기간이 그로 하여금 앞으로 가야 할 새로운 방향을 모색하게 한 것이 아닐까 생각된다.Yeonheon Lee, Eui-mu was a civil minister of Seongjong dynasty and Yeonsankun dynasty. He was a famous poet and writer. He took part in national compilation works without omission. So far, there have been no study on his life and literature. In this paper, I studied on his life and literature reading The Collected Works of Yeonheon. His son, Lee Haeng wrote a history of Yeonheon’ life. If we read it, we may think he lived well-off life except the purge of Confucian scholars in Muo year. After I read his collection of poems like as Travel of Gwanseo, The second Travel of Gwanseo, and Travel of Honam, I found that Yeonheon had a hard time for anguish and sorrow. He had excellent talent of writing, but was not a high-ranking official. He suffered from the realities of life and sighed deeply for aging body. He spent so many sleepless nights, so he drunk and wrote poems to appease his anger. He constantly wrote poems. He was a born poet. The purge of Confucian scholars in Muo year(1498) was the turning point of his career. He was exiled to a remote province(Eocheon) on suspicion of speaking a wrong comment. After a year, he was released, and then took career breaks for two years. He wrote Eocheon-japyeong during the exile to Eocheon. He hoped to be released at an early date. He had very lonely life, and so missed his family. Seeing suffering people there, he wanted to save them from distress. At last he became a headman of Hongju, and took a risk to help Hongju people after five years. I think that he was seeking a new lifeway during the exile to Eocheon.

Personal Endorsement of Ambivalent Sexism and Career Success: an Investigation of Differential Mechanisms

Prior research on ambivalent sexism indicates that hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes together uphold the gender hierarchy or status quo. However, research has generally focused on the ambivalent sexism of others. The current study takes an alternative and complementary approach by examining whether, why, and for whom personal endorsement of hostile and sexist attitudes is related to career success. Integrating ambivalent sexism theory, resource management theories of career success, and social role theory, we theorize differential mechanisms via which hostile and benevolent sexism are divergently related to objective and subjective career success. Results revealed that gender had direct relationships with hostile sexism, whereas gender tended to also moderate relationships between benevolent sexism and choices and experiences at the work-family interface that could be prescribed by traditional gender roles (i.e., length of career interruptions and work-to-family conflict). Additionally, actions and choices that were more visible to others generally mediated relationships between sexist attitudes and objective career success (i.e., hostile sexism → seeking career advice from men → pay), whereas internal experiences and cognitions tended to mediate relationships between sexist attitudes and subjective career success (i.e., benevolent sexism → work-family conflict → satisfaction, but only for women). Overall, these results highlight the importance of studying whether, the process through which, personal endorsement of sexism influences work experiences, choices, and outcomes.

Gender Inequalities in Early Career Trajectories and Parental Leaves: Evidence from a Nordic Welfare State

Parental leaves are, besides unemployment, the main reason for career breaks in early career. Despite the progress in recent decades towards more equal sharing of childcare between mothers and fathers, the labour market risk due to parenting remains mainly with women. In this article, we analyse how parental leaves relate to early career trajectories of young Finnish men and women. Using longitudinal register data for 2005–2016 from the Finnish Centre for Pensions, we perform a multi-trajectory analysis of the labour market attachment of a cohort born in 1980. Based on working days and earnings, we find five distinct career trajectories for both men and women, with the majority being well attached to the labour market by their mid-30s. While men and women on average have similar employment lengths, the gender gap in earnings is already 30 per cent in this early career phase. One of the causes may be found in the highly unequal division of family-related career breaks; the duration of mothers’ family-related leaves in this cohort was 13 times longer than fathers’ leave spells. Long home care leaves were particularly common among mothers with low education levels and weak attachment to the labour market. Efforts towards a more equal division of parental leaves are needed in order to combat gender inequalities that already emerge in early career and potentially cause life-long disadvantages for women’s careers, earnings and pensions.

How to Make the Invisible Women of STEM Visible

Although women make up more than 50% of the population, they have long been an under-represented minority in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In chemistry, for example, only five of a total of 181 Nobel prizes (2.8%) awarded over more than 100 years have been bestowed upon women. Closer to home, Professor Frances Separovic – the subject of this special issue of Aust. J. Chem. – was the first woman chemist elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science. That happened very recently, in 2012. At that point in time, the Academy had been electing Fellows for nearly 60 years. The lack of visible female role models and the absence of women in prominent scientific positions may be one reason why girls and young women do not see STEM as a viable career option. After all, if you can’t see it, how can you be it? Here, we present personal accounts of our two quite different research career paths – one starting in 2010 that included a significant career disruption, the other starting 20 years earlier in 1990. We describe the challenges we have faced as women in a testosterone-rich environment, and the circumstances that allowed us to continue. We provide suggestions for addressing systemic, organisational, and social barriers to the progression of women in STEM.

Examining the Glass Ceiling for Female Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Analysis

Extensive research on the glass ceiling has shown that the large gap between the female representation at lower and upper levels of management is largely driven by differences in family responsibilities, career interruptions and the requirement of working long hours. Additionally, recent data suggests that female entrepreneurial activity lags behind that of males in terms of business creation and revenue generation. Though one might expect female entrepreneurs to bypass the glass ceiling constraints when becoming a business owner, research still documents gender gaps in this market. This paper examines whether the traditional glass ceiling inhibitors apply to female entrepreneurs as well. We find that male and female entrepreneurs reach early levels of success at similar rates and have similar aspirations for financial growth. However, we find that female entrepreneurs are more likely to cite flexibility as an important reason for entering entrepreneurship and spend more time on housekeeping and childcare.

Career interruptions and current remuneration

PurposeCareer interruptions of employees imply important issues for both firms and individuals, including a possibly lower compensation after returning to a job. Different compensation components are explored, as bonus payments frequently complement fixed salaries for many employees, making various channels of lower compensation possible. This paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a yearly salary survey among a rather homogeneous group of professionals and middle managers from the German chemical sector, which contains detailed information on compensation components next to individual and job characteristics. The incidence and duration of past career interruptions act as the most important independent variables. Mincer-type wage regressions are complemented by estimations on wage increases.FindingsThe results show that career interruptions are more related to lower subsequent bonus payments than they are to fixed salaries. Furthermore, interruptions caused by unemployment are associated with higher interruption pay gaps than those resulting from other reasons such as parental leave. The results even hint for catch-up effects following parental leave with regard to higher wage increases compared to individuals without interruptions. Career interruptions are more prevalent for female managers offering an explanation for a considerable part of gender pay gaps. Wage losses after career interruptions are more pronounced for male employees than they are for females, though.Originality/valueThis study extents the literature by disentangling the relation of career interruptions and different compensation components, bonus payments next to fixed salaries in particular. The role of interruption type and gender are also taken into account so that the paper deepens the understanding of the role of past career interruptions for employees’ remuneration.

Does initial postgraduate career intention and social demographics predict perceived career behaviour? A national cross-sectional survey of UK postgraduate doctors

ObjectiveStudies indicate that initial career intentions and personal characteristics (eg, gender) can influence medical career decision-making. However, little is known about how personal characteristics and intention interact with career decision-making....