Career women now just as likely as men to work throughout their lives with only a few sacrificing their jobs for the sake of children

Office for National Statistics report finds same proportion of men and women with degrees are in paid jobs at every stage of their lives before retirement

Women who leave school with no qualifications more likely to live on benefits

Employment equality revealed in figures from the 2011 national census

Report suggests small minority of women sacrifice their careers for children



Study: Highly-educated women are now just as likely as men to follow a career throughout their lives, a new official analysis said yesterday

Highly-educated women are now just as likely as men to follow a career throughout their lives, a new official analysis said yesterday.

It found that virtually the same proportion of men and women with university degrees are in paid jobs at every stage of their lives before retirement.

By contrast, women who left school with no qualifications are much more likely than unqualified men to have no work and to live on state benefits.

The employment equality between men and women at the top of the educational tree was revealed in figures gathered by the 2011 national census. The levels of employment of high-powered women suggests that only a small minority are now sacrificing their careers for the sake of children, and becoming stay-at-home mothers.

The career cost of motherhood is often cited as a major part of the ‘glass ceiling’ said to hold women back from reaching the top in business.

According to a report on census results from the Office for National Statistics, ‘employment rates were similar for men and women with a degree or above when comparing each corresponding age category between the sexes.’

It said that across their working lives, between the ages of 25 and 64, 88.1 per cent of men with degrees are in jobs, and 82.5 per cent of women educated to the same level.

Among graduates at the culmination of their careers, between 50 and 64, 78.5 per cent of men have jobs and 71.5 per cent of women.

However the levels of employment among graduates of each sex remain close even during women’s main childbearing years.

There are 90.5 per cent of graduate men aged 25 to 34 in jobs, and 87 per cent of graduate women of the same age. Between the ages of 35 and 49, 93.6 per cent of men with university degrees are at work, compared to 86.2 per cent of women.

The figures cannot be compared to results from the previous national census, in 2001. However, when the government first began to count the number of women in employment, in 1971, numbers of men in work were double the numbers of women.

Sacrifice: The levels of employment of high-powered women suggests that only a small minority are now sacrificing their careers for the sake of children, and becoming stay-at-home mothers

Pursuit of careers by women, and pressure on them to maintain income, are widely thought to be behind the later age at which they are likely to become mothers, now almost 30, and the later average age of marriage for women, now almost 35. Last week abortion figures also showed rapidly rising rates of abortion among women in their late twenties, a point at which many are trying both to establish themselves at work and to get on the housing ladder.

The differences in employment levels between men and women without any qualifications was ‘striking’, the ONS said. Nearly six out of 10 men without GCSEs or similar and aged between 25 and 64 were in work, but fewer than four out of 10 women.