Leadership

Has the Recession Turned the Mommy Track into a Dead End?

By Joanne Cleaver

Updated on: July 16, 2010 / 10:09 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Just five short years ago, it made perfect sense for women to leave the workforce when they wanted to spend time with their kids, then cycle back in on their own terms. "On- and off-ramps," as the Center for Work Life Policy termed this strategy, seemed to be in sync with the needs of women and employers.

The Great Recession made off-ramps into highways to nowhere. The center has just released a depressing update to its original study: Nearly three-quarters of women trying to return to work are having trouble finding jobs. When they do get jobs, they're paid 16% less than when they left, and 22% can only get positions at lower level than their prior positions.

But wait! It gets worse!

The proportion of women exiting at an off-ramp has dropped from 37% to 31%. "They are blocked by financial necessities," says Karen Sumberg, vice president and director of projects and communications for the Center. "With job uncertainty, people are cautious about making such a big career move." Two more bummer findings from the study:

69% wouldn't have off-ramped if they had been able to take advantage of the flex-work options that their employers purportedly offer, such as telecommuting and reduced-hour schedules.
54% said they left without discussing their options with their supervisors.

That's the bad news. The good news is that emerging hiring trends and attitudes might soon get on-ramping back in gear. According to Sumberg, the big disconnect is between working women and their bosses. Top executives adopt progressive policies and assume that employees will be able to take advantage of them. But in practice, employees are only able to access off- and on-ramp programs to the degree that their immediate supervisors will let them.

The gap between policy and experience explains why so many women walk without hashing out their options with their managers. That's the critical breakdown -- and it's the biggest opportunity for both employers and women.

Employers need to equip managers with scripts and coaching so they can translate general policies into specific work situations for the women they supervise. Solutions needn't be set in stone to ease immediate conflicts. In fact, it's better to review such arrangements every three months anyway, to adapt them to changing business and personal needs.

Mixing and matching flex-work options can achieve two things. First, managers can craft solutions that relieve work-life conflicts for individual women. Secondly, flex-work options should also enable managers to better achieve business results. How's that possible? Here's an example. Commissioning a female account rep to start work extra-early from home might enable a team to expand its availability to a critical client. Meanwhile, the woman gets the benefits of telecommuting: minimized travel time and moment-by-moment flexibility to respond to first-thing family needs.

Meanwhile, the recession is already transforming the on-and-off ramp discussion. Employers' preferences for hiring contract and freelance workers provide the perfect cover for on-rampers seeking a toehold with their top-choice employers. And with so many people forced out of work, the stigma of taking voluntary time off has been eclipsed by the difficulties of the unemployed. The silver lining for on-rampers, says Sumberg, is that they don't have to be defensive about why they were out of the work force; in fact, their decisions to deliberately rotate out may strike employers as more empowering and positive than the tales of the laid off.

Image courtesy Flickr user bennylin2734, CC 2.0