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Unlike the rise in women's participation in other professional sectors, women still form a minority of professional scientists and engineers, especially in multinational companies. Moreover, embedded gendered cultures in the science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors continue to affect the career progression of professional women, with few women reaching senior management positions and many leaving and failing to return. This article examines the experiences of women SET professionals in three European companies based in France, The Netherlands and Italy and illustrates how the careers of SET professionals in industry are shaped not only by corporate cultures and practices but also by the specific national contexts in which they live and work. In particular, we look at how motherhood rather than gender alone is constructed as problematic and propose a model of strategies that women adopt in doing motherhood and SET, including assimilation, cul‐de‐sac, breaking the mould and lying low.

This paper expands on previous work about women's non-linear and frayed careers by examining the experiences of women who have attempted to return to science, engineering and technology (SET) professions in the UK and Republic of Ireland after taking a career break. These women potentially offer an important perspective on gender and career, because of the deep rooted gendered associations of science and technology with masculinity. Drawing on qualitative interviews with women SET professionals, the paper identifies three narratives -Rebooting, Rerouting and Retreating -which women use to talk about their careers. Some of these women present themselves as career changers having often made compromises and trade-offs, while others who have returned to their substantive professions, focus on continuity in their career narratives. The precarious nature of their careers is also apparent and in some cases leads to opting out or Retreating. The paper concludes by exploring how women's scientist and technical identities persist, even among those who had not returned to work, and are drawn on in narratives of return and career change.

This paper adds to current discourses around employability by arguing for an explicit recognition of gender, in particular in relation to women's employment in male dominated sectors such as science, engineering and technology (SET). This is not limited to young first time graduates but continues and evolves throughout the lifecourse. Mature women students, who are returning after career breaks, face a number of barriers in re-entering such employment sectors. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of women graduates in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM), who participated in a UK government funded online programme aimed at supporting them to return to work, the paper examines three gendered factors identified as being of particular influence on outcomes -gender role normativity, locality and mobility and structural and institutional barriers. The paper concludes by identifying strategies deployed by those that successfully returned to employment, including re-training, networking and doing unpaid or low paid work.

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