Resurrecting your career after a long break isn’t easy. Stories of those who went through the transition can teach us how to better navigate a way back to work.

No one wants to have to choose between staying on her career path and tending to urgent personal needs, but that’s the situation faced by countless professionals. It has become increasingly difficult to return to work after even a couple of years away. In addition to degrading employees’ quality of life, this blind spot in the business world costs companies dearly due to the premature termination of far too many individuals with promising careers.

It’s also a major setback to gender equality. Nearly half of all women who leave work to raise children don’t go back, which is especially troubling as women constitute 95 percent of those who take a career break for child-raising or family caring. This statistic was related to INSEAD by Julianne Miles, co-founder of a revolutionary firm called Women Returners, that exists to facilitate the return of women to the workplace.

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