LinkedIn adds 'stay-at-home-mum' as an official job title

6 April 2021, 14:25

It's a big step in helping parents return to work after having children.

LinkedIn has announced that it will now include 'stay-at-home mum' and 'stay-at-home dad' as official job titles.

The platform is removing an old requirement that said job titles needed to be linked to an employer, to help parents account for job gaps after having children.

According to reports, LinkedIn was encouraged to make these changes after a post by Heather Bolen went viral.

The writer explained: "Strikingly, there are zero pre-populated options on LinkedIn to identify maternity leave, parental leave, adoption leave, sick leave, bereavement leave, elderly care leave, or for long term injury/illness, education/re-training, volunteering, long term travel, a gap year, a sabbatical - or for a pandemic.

“By simply modernising its profile editing options, LinkedIn holds the key to encouraging transparent dialogue about employment gaps.

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“These conversations could help set the stage for improvements in company leave policies and work arrangements that better support primary caregivers.”

In response, LinkedIn’s director of engineering Bef Ayenew said: "I wholeheartedly agree that we need to normalise employment gaps on the profile to help reframe hiring conversations."

Over the next few months, the platform is set to implement other changes, including allowing users to create a separate CV section for employment gaps.

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Here they can choose one of 10 different types of hiatus such as ‘parental leave,’ ‘family care leave,’ or ‘sabbatical’.

The company also unveiled on Tuesday there will be a dedicated, formal field for LinkedIn users to add their gender pronouns to their profiles.

Bef Ayenew added: “Pronouns are a core part of our identity, and how we want to present ourselves—and within the jobs marketplace, we believe that clarity about someone’s gender pronouns is very, very important.”

“The profile is very, very core and foundational to our entire ecosystem—so we have to be very careful and deliberate about the changes we make.

“We are finally getting to it—and we're excited to be rolling it out.”

This comes after a 2020 study by Welch's found that stay-at-home parents work for an average of 98 hours a week.

It was revealed that the mums in the study started their days at 6:23am on average, with family duties lasting until 8:31pm.

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