The vast majority of women who take maternity leave return to their old jobs for only a short time of up to three months, an alarming study finds.

This could be partly due to job-related stress and discrimination in the early days after their return, but businesses suspect that many women simply take advantage of a paid maternity leave and then hang around for some weeks before becoming full-time mothers or taking a job elsewhere.

Between January and May this year, a whopping 96 percent of the 1,382 women quit their jobs within three months after their return from maternity leave, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

