Study: Support for women's workforce return must begin before they leave jobs

A study released Friday by the Singapore Council of Women's Organisations found that the moment a woman decides to step away from work is actually when support for her return should begin—not when she starts applying for jobs again.

The research, titled Women's Workforce Re-entry: Challenges, Barriers & Opportunities, examined how women navigate leaving employment, searching for new positions, and staying in jobs after a career break. It drew on focus group discussions with 120 women across different life stages, an online survey of 502 women aged 24 and above, and a review of return-to-work programmes in Singapore and internationally. The study is the first phase of a three-year initiative by SCWO that will examine domestic violence next year and caregiver well-being in 2028.

The core insight came from SCWO chief executive Yan Ping Koh: support cannot be a single intervention at the moment of job-hunting. Instead, it must begin before departure and continue after return. This requires rethinking how workplaces and society view caregiving itself—moving beyond simply placing women back into roles to asking whether those roles actually exist, whether employers can accommodate caregiving responsibilities, and whether women can advance once they return.

Among the 299 women in the survey who had taken or were currently on career breaks, 80 percent said they wanted to work again. Yet nearly 70 percent of all respondents believed that taking time away made finding suitable employment significantly harder. Women described the preparation process: updating resumes, learning new skills, searching across multiple channels. The problem was that available positions often failed to match both their experience and their need for flexibility. Some women accepted lower pay or reduced seniority to secure arrangements that worked with their caregiving duties, but the study found that flexibility alone could not sustain a job if workloads were overwhelming or advancement was blocked.

Flexible work arrangements emerged as the single most desired form of support, cited by 61 percent of respondents. The research suggests this flexibility operates at multiple points in a woman's career arc: it can prevent her from leaving in the first place, make returning feasible, and help her stay and progress afterward. Women returning after shorter breaks needed less retraining, while longer absences often meant weakened professional networks and the need to catch up on technological and workplace changes. Professional and managerial workers prioritized industry-specific and role-specific support tailored to their seniority, while non-PMET workers focused on practical training, predictable schedules, accessible facilities, and adequate pay.

Singapore already operates 33 non-government return-to-work programmes, from Club Heal's Back-to-Work Programme to ABLE's Return-to-Work initiative. Koh emphasized that the issue is not a shortage of programmes but fragmentation—support exists in pieces rather than as a connected pathway. SCWO will now establish a Women's Workforce Inclusion & Re-Entry Working Group to examine workplace retention, access to flexible and suitable roles, employer recruitment practices, different forms of support for returners, and the conditions needed for women to remain employed after returning. Member organisations will also develop community-led responses to the gaps the research identified.