Stepping out of the workforce to have children or care for other matters can bring new satisfaction, but many women have their confidence shaken when they try to get back on a career track.

Women with professional degrees often leave their jobs to raise families feeling good about their decision, but about half said they became discouraged when they tried to reenter and seek full-time work, according to a new study from the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change and the Forte Foundation.

The study was small in scope -- 120 women with professional degrees who had left the workforce for at least two years -- but its findings strike at the hearts of many who find it difficult to juggle work and family or who otherwise feel the need to take time off.

Some women leave for a combination of reasons, including feeling like they haven't advanced as far as they thought they would and that they'd have more of an impact at home than at work, said Monica McGrath, lead author of the study and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Nearly nine out of 10 women surveyed had a master's degree in business administration, and some may have overestimated the MBA's value in protecting those who choose to be stay-at-home moms for a while, she said.

"Women should be much more aggressive in the planning of this stage of their career," McGrath said. "It should be formalized. Putting a plan together for what I would do every year I'm out of the workforce that will enhance my marketability should I decide to come back couldn't be a bad thing."

Universities that recruit women to bolster their gender ratios in MBA programs also need to focus on helping alumni find their way back into full-time work that's comparable to what they left, she said. Employers need to do their part as well.

"Organizations need to be seeking these women, looking for them, telling recruiters to hire them," McGrath said. "There's pretty good evidence that once they're in, they'll be very excellent contributors."

Most women had management duties or profit and loss responsibility before they left. Overall, 59% of "step-outs" found work at smaller companies, 61% changed industries and 83% accepted a position at a comparable or lower level, the survey said. Another 45% of those who reentered the workforce are self-employed.

Selling your skills

Some of the bad feelings women reported having when seeking work again may be a function of how prospective employers treat them -- or how they frame what they accomplished while off the corporate clock.

"The women we spoke to were often interviewed by employers as if they had no experience at all, or that their experience had been lost in the time they spent at home, especially if childcare was their main activity," the authors wrote. "Volunteer and community work attract women step-outs, but even here, women, once interviewing again, found a cool reception."

What's more, some MBA women were tempted to eliminate their education from their resumes to try to avoid scaring off potential employers or being deemed overqualified for work they thought was a good fit for them, the study said.

To be sure, the environment for returning women is better than it was 10 or 15 years ago, but obstacles remain, said Laura Sejen, national director of strategic rewards for Watson Wyatt.

Even companies committed to developing their human capital and maintaining a diverse workforce may mistakenly pass up the chance to rehire a good worker, she said.

"They're losing out on an opportunity to re-recruit or have someone back in the firm whose skill set and capabilities they're already familiar with," Sejen said. "If it's a strong performer, it's less of a gamble to reengage a known commodity than to do an external search [where] the outcome is unknown."

Women need to make an effort to keep networking and perhaps look for project or contract work to stay current, she said.

"I can't emphasize enough the importance of staying in touch, both informally and formally," she said. "You'll see opportunities when you're ready to come back and the employer will think of you when they have opportunities, even if it's plus or minus six months of when you want to come back."

The time many professional women spend being stay-at-home moms is small relative to their entire career spans, but employers can help support their reentry by having strategies in place, said Elissa Ellis, executive director of the Forte Foundation, a consortium of top business schools, corporations and nonprofits dedicated to advancing women.

"Having events that target that group of step-out women, educating human resource management about how to identify these women...giving them training to get them up to speed quickly, providing flexibility, those things are all important," Ellis said.

Companies and universities that adopt such measures "will boost the confidence of these women as they're trying to be creative about finding these opportunities," she said.

Of course, local labor economics and other business needs play a role in determining how far companies will go to reach out to these women, but the national picture may be brightening, Sejen said.

"Now that unemployment's back down to around 5%, if we start seeing new job creation maybe as an external effect, it may better the market for women who've been out for a while and want to come back in."

Working it out individually

For Ellen Glazerman, executive director of the Ernst & Young Foundation, the charitable arm of Ernst & Young, her employer's benefits made it easier to keep doing the traveling that her job entails while caring for her now seven-month-old. The firm allows 100 hours of reduced-rate services for all workers -- men and women, she said.

Two months ago, "I needed someone to take care of my infant so I could do my meetings and come back to nurse," she said. A service that would have cost her $15 an hour in New York City ended up costing $2 an hour after the company picked up most of the tab for a bonded child-care worker to support her.

With two children under two, Glazerman has had six months of maternity leave and six months of working a flexible schedule, a benefit Ernst & Young takes seriously, she said.

"A huge number of women have left because their companies and jobs just couldn't accommodate them. They can't believe I work at a place where I say, 'Here's what I think I can do, here's how I can do it," she said.

"It inspires quite a bit of loyalty because I can both be a good mother and a good professional."

The strategy appears to have paid off: 24% of hires are people who have boomeranged back to the firm, and half of them are women, she said.

Overall, women need to plan and decide what they want, preferably before a big life transition comes along, said Cali Yost, president of Work + Life Inc, a work/life strategy consulting firm in Madison, N.J.

"I think people don't have a clue they can stay," Yost said. "They think the choice is all or nothing, and that's really not accurate."

Women need to redefine success and establish boundaries with a new boss so they don't end up with a job that creeps back into the all-consuming work they wanted to get away from, she said.

"I always tell women it is a whole lot easier to get back in the fast lane from the slower lane than it is from a stop at side of the road," Yost said. "Your greatest point of leverage to get the flexibility you want is when you're still there, when you know the work you're doing."