A new section on LinkedIn could be on the way, allowing mothers to label their gap from the workplace while on maternity leave as a job.
‘The Pregnancy Pause’ is being pushed by US independent creative agency Mother New York, who are campaigning for the new job title on LinkedIn to be enforced to stop mums from feeling as though their time off from working will affect their chances of being hired.
“New mothers in the US often feel forced to quit their jobs due to a lack of adequate maternity leave policies, which leaves them penalised for the subsequent gaps in their résumé,” Corinna Falusi, CCO of Mother New York, explained to Campaign US.
“We wanted to give working mothers everywhere a simple tool for this problem, and make it easy for them to own maternity leave as the full-time job it truly is,” she added.
Hiring companies who click on ‘The Pregnancy Pause’ will be taken to a page that explains why taking care of a child shouldn’t be regarded as a ‘gap’ in a CV – hear, hear!
The page also lists shocking statistics on maternity leave in the US, such as that in 2015 half of new mothers took just five weeks of their permitted 12 weeks paid maternity leave, as a result of the financial and personal pressure to get back to work as soon as possible.
Here in Australia, things are a little brighter: employees are eligible for up to 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, and up to a year of unpaid leave.
