Mini Retirements
Why women in midlife are stepping out of the working year
Reading: Mini Retirement — Why Women Are Taking Career Breaks · Second Act Success
The career break used to be a thing you explained on a résumé. A gap, a recovery, a reason. The new version arrives without apology — three months, six months, a year, taken on purpose, used for something specific. Recalibration is the word that keeps coming up.
What women in their forties and fifties seem to be reaching for is not rest exactly. It is a longer window than the weekend can offer to ask whether the work still fits, whether the shape of the day still serves the life, whether the answers from a decade ago are still the right ones. The mini retirement is the structure that makes the question askable.
Whether it pays for itself in the long run is the wrong measurement. It is paying for something the pay stub does not show.