RESOURCES
Flex Appeal on Mother Pukka has great resources on the topic of flexible working. If you are not sure whether flexible working would work for your company, the Flex Appeal has the research, the reports and the articles to help you see how beneficial it can be to your employees, to your company and your profits.
This report on the Gov.org.uk site recounts in detail and statistics the issues menopausal women encounter in their careers and what support looks like that would enable them to stay in full time employment and remain fully productive despite having to manage symptoms of various severity.
Here are the direct links to the websites above as well as links to other interesting surveys and articles, including the sites that we source our data from.
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https://www.motherpukka.co.uk/flex/
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Survey showing the number of women quitting their jobs due to menopause
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Article showing how maternity affects women's career
https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/2019/10/22/how-womens-employment-changes-after-having-a-child
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NY Times article about Menopause
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Blogs about all things Motherhood on Kristina Matej's Private Therapy website
https://www.kmmserenitytherapies.co.uk/blog/
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Organisation Pregnant then screwed focuses on research, surveys and solutions when it comes to supporting women returning from maternity
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Report on how businesses get affected by women having to leave or reduce their hours due to menopause
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Article exploring why one in three women are looking to downshift their careers or leave the workforce entirely and what employers can do about it
Statistics overview
Maternity
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Fewer than one-in-five of all new mothers, and 29 per cent of first-time mothers, return to full-time work in the first three years after maternity leave. This falls to 15 per cent after five years.
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17 per cent of women leave employment completely in the five years following childbirth, compared to four per cent of men.
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A woman’s likelihood of returning to work in the years after birth is independent of the number of children she has; what matters to her likelihood of working is her employment status the year before her child is born.
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In the year before birth, the man was the main earner in 54 per cent of couples. This increases to 69 per cent three years after birth.
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Mothers who leave employment completely are three times more likely to return to a lower-paid or lower-responsibility role than those who do not take a break.
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For new mothers – but not fathers – staying with the same employer is associated with a lower risk of downward occupational mobility but also with lower chances of progression.
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Menopause
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10 per cent of women 44-55 years of age had left their job because of symptoms of the menopause.
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14 per cent of women in the age group 45-55 years had reduced their hours and 8 per cent had not applied for a promotion because of symptoms.
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More than two in five (44 per cent) of women said their ability to work had been affected due to the menopause, including 18 per cent who reported that their symptoms were currently affecting them, and more than a quarter (26 per cent) who said they had been affected in the past.
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This lost workforce is having a devastating effect on UK employers who are already struggling to recruit, it is predicted that the number of women feeling forced to leave jobs could double to more than 2 million by 2027.
The UK industries that would be the most impacted by a depleted workforce from this demographic include health and social work (accounting for 21% of all jobs held by women as of September 2021), the wholesale and retail trade (13%) and education (12%). However, every business employing women might be affected to some degree.
Few businesses currently have specific policies in place to ensure that these staff are adequately supported – and not discriminated against in the workplace, which could leave those firms exposed to costly legal action in future. Fortunately, we are here to help.