Abstract
After childbirth, women often interrupt their careers. These interruptions are associated with negative consequences for later employment, which are greatly influenced by the duration of the interruption. We analyse the influence of occupational characteristics on this duration, as occupations are crucially important for career trajectories in Germany. Specifically focusing on occupational sex segregation, the occupational wage level and the share of part-time workers in occupations, we test two competing hypotheses: on the one hand, lower wages in female-dominated occupations should lead to longer employment interruptions due to lower opportunity costs. On the other hand, a higher ratio of part-time workers should lead to shorter interruptions due to better reconciliation between family and work. In addition, we analyse whether the proportion of women in a given occupation influences the duration of employment interruptions. We test these hypotheses using data from the National Educational Panel Study (starting cohort 6), combined with occupational information from the Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies and the German Microcensus. We focus on family-related employment interruptions after the birth of the first child between 1992 and 2010. The results of our discrete event history models indicate that higher wages lead to shorter breaks, while the part-time rate and the proportion of women in an occupation have no significant effects.
Highlights
In recent decades, women in the German labour market have become more employment oriented
Female employment careers are characterised by familyrelated employment interruptions, resulting in lower wages and destabilised career trajectories
Despite the lasting effect that the occupation has on individual’s employment trajectories in Germany, it has been neglected in previous studies on family-related employment interruptions
Summary
Women in the German labour market have become more employment oriented. After a child is born they interrupt their career more frequently and for longer periods of time than men These employment interruptions entail negative consequences for mothers’ careers: they have a destabilising impact on future career paths (Grunow et al 2011) and a negative effect on further wage development (Boll 2009; Ondrich et al 2002; Ziefle 2004, 2009). It is primarily the duration of the interruption that determines how severe these consequences are: the longer the interruption, the worse the career repercussions (Aisenbrey et al 2009; Boll 2009; Ejrnæs and Kunze 2013; Ondrich et al 2003; Ruhm 1998; Ziefle 2004)
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