The Fate of Being a ‘Distressed Asset’: Insights into Women Returners’ Experiences in the UK

Abstract

Building on studies looking into how professionals encounter stigma and negotiate their work lives, this article fills a gap in extant sociological literature on gender and professional work by providing original qualitative data on professional women’s supported re-entry-to-work experiences. Examining the development of returner programmes in the UK, we investigate the supportive factors in the mitigation of stigma threats associated with the returner status, including organisational support and individual stigma-management strategies. We examine how these social processes contribute to alleviating stigmatisation only partially, while maintaining persistent wage and career discrimination for women returners. To explain this mixed result, we explore the way in which women returners inhabit neoliberal feminist subjectivities.