How Returnships Help Women in Tech Return to the Workforce

Mashable
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How Returnships Help Women in Tech Return to the Workforce-giving compass

Giving Compass’ Take:

• Asha Vade reports that returnships are helping parents enter back into the workforce by offering training programs and skill-building to reacquaint them with what they’ve missed. 

• How can philanthropists partner with businesses to make workforce re-entry programs more prolific? Can businesses start to provide training directly?

• This video series follows top women in technology jobs and highlights their growing presence in tech. 

I had made the decision to leave my technical project manager position in order to better support my family.  I knew I didn’t want to lose the best years with my child, who now needed me to be present in the moment, to be engaged, to have energy. But when I made the difficult decision to take a break, I never imagined that my career wouldn’t be waiting for me when I was ready to return.

As I hit the pause button on my professional life, I planned to return to work when the time was right. But once I started my job hunt, I realized I had a harder road ahead of me.

Many working parents face re-entry issues, but the challenge can be more pronounced in the tech industry. According to research by AnitaB.org and the Michelle R. Clayman Institute, “the mid-level is perhaps the most critical juncture for women on the technical career ladder because it is here that a complex set of gender barriers converge.”

The pipeline for women in technology to senior-level roles has a leak. Many companies are taking an innovative approach to supporting women in the workplace, especially women in the technology industry, through a new kind of initiative: “returnships.”

Returnships are a type of internship program that provides a way for organizations to recruit and on-board mid-career men and women who have taken a break in their careers and want to re-enter the workforce.  The nice part of returnships? You’re not starting at the bottom of your career all over again; instead, your skills and past experience are recognized as a part of the program for you to build from.

Read the full article about returnships by Asha Vade at Mashable. 

Learning and benchmarking are key steps towards becoming an impact giver. If you are interested in giving with impact on Women and Girls take a look at these selections from Giving Compass.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Gender Lens Investing: Why the Opportunities Are Growing

    Giving Compass' Take: • Suzanne Biegel, a gender lens investing pioneer at Wharton's Social Impact Initiative, discusses the recent trends of gender lens investing and the opportunities for growth.  • What are successful examples of gender lens investing, and how is it changing the impact investing world?  • Read about how to build a gender lens investment strategy.  Gender lens investing — using capital to alleviate the economic plight of women and girls — is gaining steam. From being a blip on the screen a mere two decades ago, this field is being embraced by more than 100 private and public funds. And their investment products are getting more targeted: Investors can put money in funds that aim to improve women’s access to health care, for example. Gender lens investing can be defined in a few different ways. One is to think about how you integrate gender analysis into financial analysis to get to a better outcome in any investment. Another way is to think about how we use capital intentionally to achieve positive impacts on women and girls. You might think about women’s access to capital. You might think about products and services that positively affect women and girls or take advantage of the women’s market. You might think about where women show up across the value chain of a business, in governance, in leadership, in supply chains and distribution channels all the way through to end customers. And you might be thinking about how we use our capital intentionally to shift structural gender inequality. When I started doing this kind of investing 17 years ago, it was hard to find other people who were ready to be in this conversation. There were people coming from an international development perspective who were asking, ‘How do we get capital to women entrepreneurs?’

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