Motherhood Penalty Research Articles

Parenthood and Paychecks—The Gender Pay Gap in Medicine

This Viewpoint examines recent evidence on the gender pay gap in US medical professions and its relationship with motherhood (the motherhood penalty) and suggests opportunities for mitigating inequity that reflect the current health care environment, advance gender equity, and enhance medical practice.

Motherhood enrichment in leadership: exploring top female executives in Spain

PurposeExisting research suggests motherhood hinders women’s advancement to top management roles, but its specific influence on women who have achieved senior leadership is unexplored.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses a qualitative approach based on 34 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Spanish female executives who hold board positions or have the potential to become board members in male-dominated industries.FindingsThis study identifies motherhood as a key driver in career growth, countering the view of it as a barrier. Narratives from female leaders revealed that motherhood did not impede their careers, challenging the “motherhood penalty” notion. We introduce the concept of “motherhood enrichment,” highlighting its positive impact on leadership skills and career progression in top executive roles.Practical implicationsThese findings can challenge prejudices about the negative impact of motherhood on women’s careers and support policies promoting work–life balance and family-friendly cultures in organizations.Originality/valueThis study suggests the “motherhood-work enrichment” (MWE) concept in leadership, recognizing motherhood as a catalyst for leadership qualities and offering a preliminary theoretical model to explain MWE in the context of concurrent mother-top manager roles.

Motherhood penalty for female physicians in Japan: evidence from a medical school’s alumni data

BackgroundFemale physicians with children often work fewer hours and take fewer shifts due to additional family responsibilities. This can contribute to a gender pay gap in the medical profession. However, limited research in Japan has quantitatively examined the factors contributing to this gap. This study aims to address this gap in the literature.MethodsWe analyzed the alumni data from a medical school in Hokkaido, Japan, for 260 physicians (198 males and 62 females). We used multivariable regression models to identify factors influencing earnings from medical practice, with a focus on gender, work schedules, parenthood, and any career interruptions related to childcare.ResultsOur analysis revealed a 25.0% earnings gap between male and female physicians. Nearly all female physicians with children experienced career interruptions due to childcare, while this was uncommon for male physicians. When these childcare-related interruptions were factored in, the gender pay gap narrowed by 9.7%. After adjusting for work schedules and specialty choices, female physicians with children still earned 37.2% less than male physicians, while those without children earned only 4.4% less. This suggests that motherhood is a significant driver of the gender pay gap among physicians.ConclusionsThese findings highlight the negative impact of motherhood on female physicians’ earnings. This emphasizes the need for policy measures to mitigate the disadvantages faced by mothers in the medical profession.

Motherhood penalty: The Brazilian peculiarity

In this study, we investigate the motherhood penalty in Brazil by tracking mothers in administrative databases from the years before to after the birth of the child. In particular, we analyze the wage trajectories using econometric models to estimate the counterfactuals if these women had not been mothers. In doing so, we have to take into account a Brazilian peculiarity: there is a government policy that allows mothers to opt for self-employment in order to spend more time with their children. After adapting our modeling to this specificity, the estimated wage losses of mothers are around 25% and 10% when the children are of infant and school age, respectively. The message in terms of social impact is that it is necessary to help mothers to return to the labor market after childbirth under the same conditions and with the same opportunities for professional development as before pregnancy. We believe that this support can be provided, for example, through better childcare policies in society.

Size and factors of the motherhood penalty in the labour market: A meta-analysis

Size and factors of the motherhood penalty in the labour market: A meta-analysis

The parental pay gap over the life cycle: Children, jobs, and labor supply

Women earn less than men, and that is especially true of mothers relative to fathers. Much of the widening occurs after family formation when mothers reduce their hours of work. But what happens when the kids grow up? To answer that question, we estimate three earning gaps: the “motherhood penalty,” the “price of being female,” and the “fatherhood premium.” When added together these three produce the “parental gender gap,” defined as the difference in earnings between mothers and fathers. We estimate (log) earnings gaps for college graduates born around 1960 using longitudinal data from the NLSY79 and from the LEHD-Census that track respondents from their twenties to their fifties. As the children grow up and as women work more hours, the motherhood penalty is greatly reduced. But women, especially mothers, seem willing throughout their working lives to trade lower pay for various amenities, such as working in firms with management practices that are less penalizing of career interruptions or of shorter work schedules. Fathers, however, manage to expand their relative earnings gains as their children age, particularly among those working in time-intensive jobs, irrespective of work hours or firm fixed effects. The parental gender gap in earnings remains substantial over the family lifecycle.

Motherhood Penalty and Labour Market Integration of Immigrant Women: A Review on Evidence from Four OECD Countries

Among several reasons preventing the effective labour market integration of immigrant women, the motherhood penalty and unpaid care responsibilities stand out prominently. In line with this, the present scoping review shows how motherhood affects the labour market integration of immigrant women in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. This review shows that parenthood exacerbates the gender pay gap and limits labour market access, favouring men with children over immigrant mothers. Moreover, the effect of the motherhood penalty might be moderated by the level of education, age of the children, and the country of origin/ethnicity of immigrants. In the four countries examined, labour market outcomes for immigrant women are particularly poor. Factors contributing to this include limited language proficiency, traditional gender norms that restrict the full-time employment of certain groups of immigrant women, and institutional barriers like work-permit processing delays. To address these challenges, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA have implemented various policies facilitating immigrant mothers’ workforce participation. These measures include language and legal-system education, subsidised childcare, and integration programmes for both mothers and children. Additionally, some programmes in Canada and the USA provide employment assistance and financial support for childcare, while Australia and the UK offer comprehensive integration and settlement services.

Motherhood penalty and the gender gap in STEM and medicine.

Motherhood penalty and the gender gap in STEM and medicine.

Does the digital economy improve female autonomy?

Based on China's long-term implementation of gender equality, the rapid development of the digital economy has provided new opportunities for improving female autonomy and releasing the “gender dividend”. This study explores the impact of the digital economy on female autonomy, using digital economy index we constructed and the 2014-2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data. We find that the development of the digital economy can significantly improve female autonomy, both economically and spiritually. Meanwhile, the digital economy can also alleviate the “marriage penalty” and “motherhood penalty”. Furthermore, we find that digital economy's career guarantee effect and capital consolidation effect are important mechanisms, which can promote women's participation in employment, as well as enable them to have higher human capital and social capital.

The other side of the mountain: women’s employment and earnings over the family cycle

Abstract Women earn less than men, and that is especially true of mothers relative to fathers. Much of the widening occurs with family formation. We estimate two earnings and hours gaps: (1) that due to the ‘motherhood penalty’, which is the difference between the earnings and hours of women who are currently mothers and those who are not; and (2) that due to the ‘parental gender gap’, which is the difference in outcomes between mothers and fathers. Women with young children work far fewer hours per week than do others. But what happens on the ‘other side of the mountain’ as the children grow up and eventually leave home? The answer is that women work more hours and transition to higher earning positions. The motherhood penalty is greatly reduced, and by their 50s women with children earn just 7 log points less than those without children, given hours and work experience. But fathers manage to maintain their relative gains and do monumentally better than mothers, women without children and men without children. Fathers earn almost 7 log points more per child regardless of their age, whereas mothers lose 7 log points per child, holding hours of work and work experience constant.

Motherhood Penalty Revisited: Impacts of Maternity Leave Mandates on Nature of Employment Contracts

In this paper we study the extension of paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks in India to estimate its effect on the contractual arrangements of working women. To identify causal effects, we exploit the variation generated by the institutional features of the policy mandate in India, which applies only to establishments employing 10 workers or more. We find that women are 4.3 percentage points less likely to be employed as regular salaried workers in the establishments as a result of this policy. We also show that there is an increase in the employment of women as unpaid and wage labourers in establishments, but no change takes place in women entrepreneurship. The effects appear to be driven by married and younger women confirming that the extension of maternity leave imposes a motherhood penalty in terms of women’s labor market opportunities.

The shifting motherhood penalty and fatherhood premium in China's gig economy: Impact of parental status on income changes

The fatherhood premium and motherhood penalty are key concepts in the study of gender income gaps. Using an ordinary least squares model, influencing mechanism analysis and Oaxaca‐Blinder decomposition, we examine changes in Chinese gig workers’ income by gender, before and after parenthood. The results indicate that, in the Chinese gig economy, the motherhood penalty is vanishing, while the fatherhood premium has evolved into a fatherhood penalty owing to work pressure and the gender segregation of occupations in the gig economy, requiring men to balance their time and energy between work and childcare in a way that is not as prevalent in other sectors.

The gendered impact of parenthood on job-related training participation in Germany and the United Kingdom

Abstract Recent studies highlight the role of parenthood in perpetuating persistent gender inequality in the labour market. We examine whether the transition to parenthood influences job-related training participation. This study uses fixed-effects models and longitudinal data from the German National Educational Panel Study (starting cohort 6, 2010–2021) and Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study (2010–2019). Our findings show that women’s job-related training participation decreases following parenthood in both countries, but that this decline is steeper in Germany and persists beyond the early stage of parenthood. Furthermore, our mediation analysis shows that parental leave is one of the main drivers of the motherhood penalty in job-related training in both countries. In contrast, when men have a first child, it has a small negative effect on training participation levels in Germany and no effect in the United Kingdom. This study sheds light on the gendered impact of the transition to parenthood on job-related training participation and how the country context influences these relationships.

Parenthood, earnings, and the relevance of family formation sequences

Prior research sheds little light on how shifts in family formation trajectories have implications for recent cohorts' earnings gains and losses with childbearing. Using longitudinal data from a contemporary cohort, we examine how the pay premium or penalty for parents varies by their relationship status at childbirth and subsequent changes in the status. Fixed effects models show that children born to unpartnered women are associated with substantial pay penalties for the mothers. Conversely, women giving birth within cohabiting or marital unions experience small or no motherhood penalties. For residential fathers, only children born after marriage are linked to pay increases. Men having children while cohabiting or unpartnered receive no fatherhood premiums even if they later transition into marriage. Married mothers' earnings outcomes also depend on their sequence of marriage and childbearing. Whereas women bearing children before marriage encounter a substantial motherhood penalty, those doing so after marriage face none. The variation in parenthood penalties or premiums by childbearing context cannot be entirely elucidated by the differences in the age of entering parenthood, ethnoracial composition, education, or pre-parenthood earnings growth rate among people having children in various contexts. We suggest that the family formation sequence is related to individuals’ expectations and the support they receive for their parental roles, which shape parenthood earnings outcomes.

Research Note: New Evidence on the Motherhood Wage Penalty

U.S. women's age at first birth has increased substantially. Yet, little research has considered how this changing behavior may have affected the motherhood pay penalty, or the wage decrease with a child's arrival, experienced by the current generation. Using Rounds 1–19 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), in this research note we examine shifts in hourly pay with childbirth for a cohort of women who became mothers mostly in the 2000s and 2010s. Results from fixed-effects models indicate that the motherhood pay penalty for NLSY97 women who had their first child before their late 20s is generally similar to that of previous cohorts. Those who became mothers near or after age 30, however, encounter a parenthood premium, as men do. The growing proportion of women delaying motherhood, coupled with the rising heterogeneity in motherhood wage outcomes by childbearing timing, contributes to a comparatively small motherhood penalty for this recent cohort. The pay advantage of “late mothers” cannot be explained by factors such as their labor market locations, number of children, stage of childrearing, marital status, or ethnoracial composition. Instead, the hourly gain stems from such mothers’ tendency to reduce working hours more than other mothers without experiencing a commensurate decrease in total pay. Unlike the fatherhood premium, the premium for late mothers does not lead to a real boost in income.

Balancing Work, Life, and Care Responsibilities in Academia: The Male Perspective

Several studies have shown the impact of parenthood on academic careers and the existence of a motherhood penalty. However, fathers' experiences of reconciling caring responsibilities with academic work are less studied. The article explores the representations of fatherhood and men's reconciliation practices in Italian academia. The analysis is based on 64 semi-structured interviews with male associate professors and postdoc researchers in various Italian universities, working in STEM and SSH departments. The results indicate that, in the early stages of the academic career, men similarly to women tend to postpone parenthood or to "choose" not to have children. Those men who have children, instead, enact different models of fatherhood that we have called the ‘absent father', the ‘negotiator' and the ‘present father', without significant differences among disciplines or academic positions. However, only a minority of fathers are closely involved in childcare, and they experience penalties and work-related stress. The article gives insights into possible policies to support the work-life balance of the (still rare) involved academic fathers and to encourage the others to share care duties more equally with their partners.

The Impact of Motherhood on Women's Career Progression: A Scoping Review of Evidence-Based Interventions.

(1) Background: Despite the progress made by women in the workplace, mothers still face systemic barriers that prevent them from advancing professionally. This "motherhood penalty" involves a variety of discriminatory practices and experiences that mothers can face at work, including being held to stricter standards regarding salary and recruitment. Despite ongoing research on the association between motherhood and career outcomes, few studies specifically explore how motherhood impacts career advancement and, consequently, access to leadership. This scoping review seeks to gain an understanding of how motherhood impacts women's career progression, and how interventions can address the underrepresentation of mothers in leadership. (2) Methods: Following the PRISMA-ScR framework, we analyzed 52 articles from 2010 to 2022, drawn from 10 databases. (3) Results: The results showed both negative and positive impacts of motherhood on career progression, affecting mothers' attitudes, feelings, and behaviors and yielding changes in interpersonal relationships and work conditions. Intersectionality is highlighted, urging a nuanced examination of challenges faced by mothers from a diversity of backgrounds. Recommendations for interventions include individual and institutional efforts, comprising societal support structures, organizational policy changes, and cultural shifts. (4) Conclusions: This scoping review offers an updated perspective on a classic challenge, providing practical insights for a more inclusive and structural understanding of the career trajectories of working mothers.

Parenthood wage gaps in multinational enterprises

While multinational enterprises (MNEs) are widely recognized for providing employment to a significant number of women around the globe, empirical evidence suggests that existing gender inequalities may be aggravated rather than alleviated in their subsidiaries. We build on gender theory to better understand how gender is construed and enacted differently in MNE subsidiaries compared to domestic firms, particularly with regard to the differential effects of parenthood on wage gaps for male versus female employees. Because of the relatively more demanding working conditions in MNE subsidiaries and their gendered policies and practices, we hypothesize that the motherhood penalty and fatherhood bonus are larger in MNE subsidiaries than in domestic firms. Using an extensive database of micro-level data of over 36,500 employees in 57 countries, we find a larger fatherhood bonus in MNE subsidiaries compared to domestic firms, but no significant difference in the motherhood penalty. Our results suggest that shifting entrenched gendered social beliefs and divisions of household labor is not the only pathway to gender equality, and call for a critical examination of gender-related values, perceptions, policies, and practices in MNEs, beyond a focus on supporting women (with children). We discuss managerial, theoretical, and societal implications accordingly.

Inequalities in Academic Work during COVID-19: The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Individuals’ Life-Course Stage

Research studies on academic work and the COVID-19 crisis have clearly shown that the pandemic crisis contributed to exacerbating pre-existing gender gaps. Although the research has been extensive in this regard, it has focused more on the widening of the “motherhood penalty”, while other groups of academics are blurred. Even more underinvestigated and not yet fully explained are the intersections between further axes of diversity, often because the research conducted during the pandemic was based on a small volume of in-depth data. By drawing on interview data from a wider national research project, this article aims to contribute to this debate by adopting an intersectional approach. In investigating daily working life and work–life balance during the pandemic of a highly heterogeneous sample of 127 Italian academics, this article sheds light on how gender combines with other axes of asymmetry, particularly class (precarious versus stable and prestigious career positions) and age (individuals’ life-course stage), to produce specific conditions of interrelated (dis)advantage for some academics. The analysis reveals three household and family life course types that embody the interlocking of gender, class, and age within a specific social location with unequal, and possibly long-term, consequences for the quality of working life, well-being, and careers of academics, living alone or with parents, couples without children or with grown-up children, and couples with young children and other family members in need of care.

Labor Market Reentry Among White-Collar Female Ex-Prisoners in China: A Feminist Desistance Perspective

This study, part of a collaborative project with the women’s prison in City A, China, aims to understand the experience of regaining employment among 21 white-collar ex-prisoners. Findings include shame and internalized stigmatization, labor market marginalization, and the political background check as a central part of the Chinese motherhood penalty. This paper demonstrates how the consequences of the women’s conviction and incarceration interact with individual, familial, and structural factors, leading some to return to domestic gender roles and pushing most into a state of precariousness. The study aims to contribute to the emerging field of feminist desistance research.