Flex-time means career crash for working mums

By Georgina Cooper

LONDON (Reuters) - The country is suffering from a "hidden brain drain" of highly qualified women forced to slide down the career ladder after they have children, according to new research.

Almost half of professionally qualified women are downgrading to part-time jobs where the average employee is no more qualified than a 16-year old fresh from school, laying waste to years of higher education and experience.

"I am afraid what we found was pretty depressing," co-author of the report, Professor Mary Gregory an economist at Oxford University, told Reuters.

One in three female corporate managers saw severe downgrading after having a child, with two-thirds of that number taking clerical jobs rather than returning to top posts, the report published in the Economic Journal found.

But the worst-affected group of mothers were managers of shops, salons and restaurants. Half of those women could only find work as sales assistants or similar low-level roles when they tried to return to work on a part-time basis after motherhood.

"You hear all sorts of horror stories," Kate Lewis, Marketing and Communications Manager of Capability Jane, a company dedicated to finding highly skilled mothers appropriate flexible work, told Reuters.

"It's heartbreaking to hear of a real high-flier almost being forced to choose between her career and her home life and having to settle for something that isn't at the level they were used to operating at," Lewis said.

The report said it is socially inefficient to discard the talents and skills of women.