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If humanitarian crises were listed by some sort of moral -- or editorial -- standards on the stock exchange, to help indicate which ones urgently require international news coverage and political action, shares of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would have commanded international news headlines and extensive press coverage over the past 12 years.

The U.N. has labeled the DRC, Africa's second largest country, as the "rape capital of the world" because of the pace and scope of the use of rape as a weapon of war by proxy militia gangs fighting for control of Congo's easily appropriable and highly valuable natural resources, destined for sale in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States.

The wars in that country have claimed nearly the same number of lives as having a 9/11 every single day for 360 days, the genocide that struck Rwanda in 1994, the ethnic cleansing that overwhelmed Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the genocide that took place in Darfur, the number of people killed in the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004, and the number of people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- all combined and then doubled.

Yet we rarely hear anything about it. Indeed, one only need contrast media coverage of the latest Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza strip and Hamas rocket attacks into southern Israel, which have made front pages around the world, to the stunningly limited media coverage afforded to graphic accounts of atrocities committed that same week by M23, the newest militia gang terrorizing the local population.

The question here is not whether the human suffering in Congo deserves more media coverage because it is greater than that in Syria or Gaza, but rather, why has the crisis in Syria or Gaza qualified for extensive media coverage, but not the killing and raping industries in Congo?

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For six years, Eve King worked as a commercial lawyer for a leading London City law firm, complete with its long hours and fat pay check. But after she had her first child eight years ago she felt she had no choice but to swap the lifestyle for that of a stay-at-home mom.

"I gave it up because I knew I couldn't be a city lawyer and spend time with my kids," she said. "After that I discounted myself because I knew that if I had been out of law for a few years, who was going to be interested in me?"

Today, King is helping to run a company that allows highly qualified former City lawyers to work flexibly from home to fit in with family commitments.

Run by an all-woman core team, Obelisk Legal Support, has around 100 lawyers and 250 legal translators on its books. The company was founded in 2010 by Dana Denis-Smith and Charlotte Devlin in an attempt to harness the talents that are lost to the legal profession when women leave after having children.

In numbers: Women solicitors in the UK

The exodus from the profession is stark. According to the Law Society, there were 25,786 women solicitors in the UK aged 26-35 last year, but only 17,524 aged 36-45, and 9,622 aged 46-55.

Denis-Smith said: "At the starting point in their careers, 70% of lawyers are women, but at partner level just 12% are women. "I had seen all these talented people dropping out of the profession around me and had the idea to go back and find out what all these women were doing. "These women feel they have been forgotten and their skills don't matter anymore."

She added: "We have built a business around a skillset that has not been tapped into. We have fantastic lawyers of City caliber who can deliver results. "We are using people that have disappeared from the market. I'm keen to challenge the idea that professional women with children should be given work out of sympathy rather than be seen as a fantastic business proposition."

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