The higher the position, the greater the pressure on women to return quickly from maternity leave

By: Trademagazin Date: 2024. 09. 27. 11:01

Strict rules protect employees who have children, but many obstacles can await those who want to return to work after the end of maternity leave. Many affected employees reported negative experiences of this period, but the majority of employers (68%) consider the conditions offered to employees returning from maternity leave sufficiently flexible.

With the expansion of the family, the focus of the parents’ lives also broadens, and the importance of the balance between private life and work comes to the fore (97%), which naturally affects the career as well. The more drastic change, which means a temporary but longer absence from work, still mostly affects women in Hungary: among the men who took part in the national survey of Profession.hu, only one in twenty stayed at home with their young child in some form and only 3% did so alone.

Most of them return to work after maternity leave for financial reasons

At the end of the period spent at home, the majority of those concerned saw the return to work mostly as their own decision (53%), this proportion was the lowest for women with primary education (37%). However, in their case, there was no respondent who identified their workplace or their boss as a pressure exerciser. The latter happened most often with senior managers (12%).

Regardless of qualification and position, most women returned to work for financial reasons (79%), followed by internal motivation (38%) and career building (14%), but it happened that they did so due to family pressure (5%) or from their workplace the urge came (7%).