Marketing Communications Specialist Ministry for Women Bio Maria has worked at the Ministry for Women since 2011 and has been involved in a number of projects during that time mainly working towards improving the numbers of women in leadership. This includes contributing to the Ministry’s research into the barriers to women career progression included in Realising the Opportunity (2013) and Inspiring Action (2014). Maria presented a paper to the Labour and Work Conference (LEW 2014) on this topic in Issues for Women’s leadership pathways (2014). Currently Maria is working on understanding the experiences of women returning to work and the effect of career breaks on women’s pay and progression through the leadership pipeline.