From Entry to Exclusion: Why NEET Young Women Face a Different Employment Crisis

Young women are entering the world of work with ambition - but too many are being pushed out before they can build a career.

The Pipeline’s latest report explores the employment crisis facing young women in the UK and asks a crucial question: what happens between entering work and being able to build a sustainable career?

Young women have high ambitions for their working lives, but their routes into and through employment are shaped by a combination of today's youth employment challenges and inequalities that have affected women for generations. Weak routes into work, low pay and insecure employment interact with caring responsibilities, health needs and gendered treatment in the workplace.

The report shows that NEET status only captures the most visible point of exclusion. Women can also experience exclusion while remaining in work — through reduced hours, insecure employment, missed progression opportunities or stepping back from their ambitions. The challenge, therefore, is not simply getting young women into work, but ensuring they can get in, stay in and progress.

Key findings:

• Young women are ambitious: 56% of women aged 16–24 aspire to take on a leadership role during their career. Among young people who have spent substantial time outside work and education, 61% still aspire to leadership — almost identical to the 63% who have never been out.
• Getting into work is not always straightforward: 38% of young women identify a lack of relevant experience, skills or qualifications as a major barrier to staying in or returning to work, compared with 33% of young men.
• The cost of education and training is a major barrier: 52% of young women say course costs are a major barrier to accessing education or gaining qualifications.
• Poor-quality work can prolong disadvantage: Around 43% of young women identify pay being too low to make working worthwhile as a major barrier, while around one in four say insecure or poorly paid work has caused them to leave work, reduce their hours or alter their progression.
• Care is a significant driver of women's exclusion: 42% of women say looking after children has caused them to leave work, reduce their hours or alter their progression — twice the rate for men. Around four in ten requests from carers for workplace support are refused.
• The right support could prevent women leaving work: Among women whose caring responsibilities affected their employment, 66% say the right support could have allowed them to stay in work or maintain their hours.
• Health can disrupt participation: Mental health has affected the work of 39% of 16–24-year-olds, while young women can also face additional challenges around female health needs, recognition and workplace support.
• Gendered treatment starts early: 18% of young women say they have been treated differently at work because of their gender, while 11% report sexual harassment, compared with 4% of young men.
• Exclusion can affect progression long after someone leaves NEET status: Across women overall, one in three say a lack of progression has caused them to leave a job, consider leaving or feel unable to move forward, rising to 53% among women in middle and senior management.

The report calls for a different measure of success.

Getting a young woman into a job should not be the end goal. The report recommends a stronger focus on retention, job quality and progression, alongside better routes back into employment when a first opportunity breaks down.

Its recommendations include creating funded second-chance routes into work, reducing gender segregation in higher-return technical and vocational pathways, strengthening support around care and health before employment is lost, improving job quality, and measuring sustained employment, earnings and progression — not simply whether someone has entered a job.

The message is clear: young women are not lacking ambition. The challenge is ensuring that the barriers they encounter at the beginning of their working lives do not become inequalities that follow them throughout their careers.