Back to work: what the years away actually add up to
Three real stories of women returning to work, and why the years away are not a blank.
A mother in Canada spent seven years at home with three children, and then spent eight months sending out resumes without a single reply. By then she had stopped seeing her own history clearly. When she described those years, she called them “Mom stuff,” as though nothing in them could count on paper. A resume writer asked her what she had done during that time, and the answer changed the page. She had relaunched a drop-in centre, chaired its board, built a community playground and run school programs. Once those years were written as accomplishments, with a short, honest line explaining the break, she received a job offer in about six weeks.
Her story is not unusual. A 2024 study of Muslim women in Manitoba found that many who returned to work after raising children heard the same two things. Employers wanted Canadian experience, and without local references the calls simply never came. Several women said it took years to settle in with young children, and that a single generic resume sent everywhere left them told they were overqualified or the wrong fit. Others had degrees from abroad and no clear way to use them. The cost was not only time. It was confidence.
Newcomers describe the same trap from another side. Employers ask for Canadian experience, yet the only way to earn it is to be hired. Two women who attended a hiring workshop in British Columbia, one a college teacher of ten years and one with a master’s degree in game design, were still looking, still volunteering, still waiting.
What these women share is not a lack of ability. It is that the work they have done, at home, in volunteering, in another country, does not arrive on a resume in a form that an employer’s screening software or a busy recruiter can recognise.
Sources: CERIC, “Case study: mastering the stay-at-home parent resume” (2018); Healthy Muslim Families, Muslim women’s employment study, Manitoba (2024); CBC News, newcomers and jobs (2018).
Resource: Free resume checker for anyone going back to work or starting over: ResumeMatch Pro