Research carried out by the Employment Research Institute (ERI) at Edinburgh’s Napier University has found that employers shy away from taking on women with young children.

The controversy over whether employers avoid employing young women who might have a child was stirred up by Alan Sugar, the entrepreneur and star of The Apprentice show.

Although small employers actually preferred to employ women, they appeared strongly against employing those with pre-school aged children. Mothers of children over five years old did not face this bias.

A total of one hundred and sixty-seven (167) Scottish small and medium sized employers were surveyed and asked about their preferences for different types of recruits for non-management jobs across a variety of industries.

The research shows that employers were primarily concerned with recruiting individuals who are honest, reliable and conscientious.

Generally parents of young children are as likely as any other group to have these qualities, although some employers feel they might be less flexible or reliable, such as when their child is sick, or that female parents may be more likely to take further maternity leave.

The results suggest that parents waiting to move into work as their youngest child reaches 5-6 years old may be partly due to employer preferences, as well as the choice of parents not wishing to leave their young child or the cost and availability of childcare.

Ronald McQuaid of the ERI, said it was not gender that was the issue for employers, but rather women having young children.

He added that there were many positive cases where employers had overcome some previous misperceptions and worries about the flexibility of parents with young children and found them to be reliable and very productive staff.

McQuaid pointed out that many larger employers, such as some banks, had long sought to retain skilled women with young children, although he said that there seemed to be a difference between employers adapting to keep an existing employee who has had a child and actually taking on someone new with a young child.

“It is important that both young parents and employers are helped to overcome both real and perceived barriers to the employing women with young children,” he concluded.

The research also found that employers generally preferred to employ people aged 29-39 years old and were most negative about those aged over 50.

Being a young woman between the ages of 25 and 39, with no childcare duties, has a positive effect on the likelihood of being recruited.

Conversely being male or aged 50 or over has a negative effect on the likelihood of being employed, as did having young children.

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