By Ghadeer Ghloum

KUWAIT: While maternity leaves are essential for mothers to recover from giving birth and take care of their newborn, an extended absence from the workforce can present challenges for women in terms of career development and professional growth, which may negatively affect women’s role in society as a whole. This may be bothersome to many women, as the need to find a balance between their natural responsibility of giving birth while also meeting societal expectations and demands of the job market can be seriously overwhelming and perplexing.

To address this issue, Kuwait Times spoke to working mother Mariam Dashti and management consultant and trainer Ahmad Ndoom to provide valuable tips for women returning from maternity leave, aiming to help them successfully maintain their position in their careers.

Dashti said after giving birth, women often experience fatigue due to the physical strain of labor and delivery, hormonal changes, excessive blood loss, nutrient depletion, muscle exertion and the demanding responsibilities of caring for a newborn, which makes it crucial for a woman to prioritize her self-care and rest during this time, while having support from her husband and family, as ignoring fatigue can lead to worsened physical and mental well-being.

Ahmad Ndoom

However, Dashti complained that prioritizing self-care and rest can sometimes come at the expense of career advancement. Returning to work after maternity leave may reveal a sense of being out of touch with the changes that occurred during a woman’s absence. For many women, their career is an integral part of their identity and self-presentation, which intensifies their worry and desire to catch up and progress. Not to mention that this is one of the reasons many biased organizations and companies prefer to recruit men rather than women, fully disregarding the noble human thing that a woman does by giving birth.

Ndoom shared a set of tips with women to help them overcome their struggle with their career advancement, which may also encourage companies that do not prefer to hire women to overcome their concerns, as maternity leaves do not necessarily decline a woman’s performance.

“While on maternity leave, if you can find the time, stay up to date on your industry and read news related to your industry once a week, so you are aware where the industry is heading and what are the biggest changes that occurred while you were away. Once you are back, your first task is to catch up with what happened in the company, what happened to old projects, and what new projects were embarked on. After that, communicate with your team. You want to make sure everybody knows you are back, and that they can send your tasks to you, rather than continuing to send it to your substitute. And with that, you will know what you missed and be up to date. You will also be up to date with your colleagues and have them learn of your return,” Ndoom advised.