This "Bright Spot" shares a point of progress, as part of Leading Edge's Gender Equity in Leadership Project.

“More than 2.5 million women left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, many voluntarily, due to a sudden lack of childcare or to manage virtual learning for their children. Additionally, a disproportionate amount of women’s jobs were affected by the pandemic, and our global labor market data finds that women’s hiring is more vulnerable, and prone to economic shocks, and business disruption than men’s.

We’ve heard from our members, particularly women and mothers who have temporarily stopped working, that they need more ways to reflect career gaps on their Profile due to parenting and other life responsibilities. To make it easier for moms, and all parents, we’re making some important changes to the Profile. We introduced new job titles, including ‘stay-at-home mom,’ ‘stay-at-home dad’ and ‘stay-at-home parent’ to allow full-time parents and caretakers to more accurately display their roles. Additionally, in the coming weeks, if you use one of these new stay-at-home job descriptions and set the employment type field to ‘self-employed,’ you will no longer need to specify a company or employer.”

— Bef Ayenew for LinkedIn, “A Better Way to Address Career Gaps”