More on the Center for Work-Life Policy's "Hidden Brain Drain" research (see below), this time from the Guardian.
The "opt-out revolution" has became a much-hyped media story in the US as high-profile women resign at the peak of their careers to spend more time with their kids. The first tranche of research commissioned by this taskforce is published in the Harvard Business Review today and should send alarm bells around corporate America and the UK. Of the 1981 class at Stanford University, 57% of women graduates have left the workforce; of three graduating classes from Harvard Business School, only 38% of women are still in full-time careers.
If these kinds of rates continue, there is going to be an extraordinary mismatch between the growing number of female graduates entering the labour market (now more than 50% in the UK) and the shrinking supply of talent they leave behind when they opt out. That is not in the interests of these big corporations. Hence the "diversity programmes" that have spread across corporate America.
