International Women's Day: Work life after a maternity gap - Study

When women come back to work after their maternity leave, they sometimes feel out of the loop in their work environment. As the shelf-life of technical skills gets shorter, learning agility, adaptability and creative thinking are becoming key differentiators in the marketplace. Increasingly, how fast professionals acquire and apply new skills is becoming more important than what they know.

According to a World Bank study, nearly 20 million Indian women quit jobs between 2004-12. Around 65%-70% of women who quit never return to work at all. In the last 3 years, we have witnessed that the challenges to restart are many among women restarters and outdated skills is one of the biggest deterrents (24%).

According to a survey conducted by JobsForHer, titled 'What can companies do to enable your career restart?' 34% women mentioned reskilling as a necessity for their career restart, progression and job role changes. Hence, there is a growing need for on-demand reskilling among this



group of job seekers.

In a JobsForHer survey on 'What do you think is the best way to reskill yourself?' 30% women responded that they preferred taking online courses, 29% mentioned volunteering, 28% favoured returnee internships and 13% preferred attending offline workshops.

In the survey, 'What kind of reskilling are you looking at?' 36% women responded that they were looking at technical skills like data analytics, 31% were looking at soft skills, 27% were looking at confidence-building courses and 11% were looking at expert services like resume writing.

For employers, solely relying on new workers entering the labour market with the right ready-made skills will no longer be sufficient. It is right to say then that the reskilling market is burgeoning among women restarters. This growing job-seeking population is driving the demand for industry-relevant training as there is a skills gap that needs to be bridged before getting back into the workforce.