The only woman to chair a blue-chip British company has called for employers to allow female staff to take family-friendly career breaks of up to six years.

Dame Alison Carnwath, chairwoman of property group Land Securities, said that with better hiring and staff retention policies, companies would realise the economic benefit of holding on to their best female employees through child-rearing and beyond.

“Employers have to learn to accommodate you through the midlife piece,” Dame Alison said in an interview with the Financial Times. “If you want to spend, say, six years having children and getting them off to school before you come back and do full-time work, [companies] have to look upon it as not wanting to lose somebody.”