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Home | Women and Work | Returning to Work

Returning to Work

Women who have taken time out of the workplace can find it hard to return to work.

The Government wants to help such women by removing the barriers which they face – both external such as lack of childcare and flexible working opportunities and personal, such as lack of workplace skills and confidence.

Tax Credits (see section on childcare for more details).

Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit are payments to support families with children. On 3 April 2006, 6.0 million families with 10.1 million children were benefiting from tax credits.

Generally, any family with children, with an income of up to £58,000 a year (up to £66,000 if there is at least one child less than a year old) will be eligible for some support.

The tax credits contain 3 features that, in particular, benefit women:

CTC and the childcare element of Working Tax Credit (WTC) is paid to the main carer, usually the mother.
Dual earner couples with children can combine their hours so no one person has to work full-time to get the 30 hour element of the WTC, allowing them to choose how to balance work and family life.
The former Working Families' Tax Credit was tapered from net income (after tax/NICs) whereas CTC and WTC taper from gross income (before tax/NICs). The latter improves second earner work incentives for those working part-time.

Flexible Working Rights

Parents’ right to request flexible working hours will help ensure that those returning to work can achieve work/life balance. The Work and Families Act 2006 extends this to give carers of adults the right to request flexible working, recognising the difficulties many women (and men) face in juggling work with caring responsibilities. Measures within the Act also include extending the period for payment of Statutory Maternity Pay, Maternity Allowance and Statutory Adoption Pay to a maximum of 52 weeks and giving fathers and new right to an additional period of paternity leave. See Work-Life Balance section.

Access to Childcare

The Government is committed to ensuring that good quality, affordable and accessible childcare is available to maximise parents’ chances to work, train or learn, confident that their children are being cared for in a safe and stimulating environment and helped to meet their full potential.

All 3 and 4 year olds in England now have access to a free, part-time, early education place if their parents want one. As from April 2006, all 3 and 4 year olds are receiving their free early education over the minimum of 38 weeks of the year. And from 2007, 3 and 4 year olds will gradually begin to receive an enhanced entitlement of 15 hours per week, with all of them receiving it by 2010.

Promoting Women’s Involvement in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET)

For every year since 1997 the total number of females studying SET subjects at under and post graduate levels has gone up. In 1997/98 the figure stood at 299,665; by 2003/04 it stood at 485,520, a rise of over 62%

In April 2003, the Government published A Strategy for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology to improve the position of women in SET employment, education and policy making in the UK.

The Strategy is in response to SET Fair by Baronness Greenfield published in 2002, who was appointed to advise on a stronger and more strategic approach to increasing the participation of women in SET. 'Set Fair', contains wide-ranging and comprehensive recommendations for improving recruitment and retention of female scientists and engineers across all SET. A copy of the report can be downloaded from the Promoting SET for Women Unit's website, www.set4women.gov.uk.

Government is working with key partners to increase the recruitment and retention of women in technology. Activities include:

Funding a study by Roehampton University to conduct an analysis of the recruitment of highly skilled women returners to the sector.

Supporting the implementation of Sector Skills Agreements for the ITEC sectors (driven by the Sector Skills Councils e-skills UK and SEMTA) to provide skilled resources and training programmes required by business, taking account of diversity as a cross-cutting issue.

Working closely with the DTI funded UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology.

Intellect’s Women in IT Forum – the trade body for the UK’s hi tech industries,

The Daphne Jackson Trust, which runs fellowship and industrial associate schemes for women returners in science, engineering and technology.

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