Why do women earn less than men? The answers offered to this question have changed over time. The issues however have remained largely the same. If we are going to remove this apparent discrimination against 49.7% of the population, we need to understand and address the real causes.
A long running mystery
The idea that women should earn comparably to men is a relatively modern one. Victorians tended to think that men belonged in the public sphere and women in the private. Lower class women who worked would be paid less than men as they were assumed not to be the main breadwinner, seen as less productive and skilled, working in low skilled or domestic/care work.
The emergence of women’s rights activists and feminists in the late 19th and 20th centuries together with the growth of trade unions challenged this inequality. Female employment in both world wars further showed that gender segregation at work was both unnecessary and inefficient. By 1945, the United Nations Charter laid out gender equality as a fundamental principle.
However, good intentions aren’t enough and gender disparity persisted. In the 1960s and ‘70s, governments enacted legal remedies, such as equal pay legislation. In the 1980s and ‘90s, focus moved to the issues that some lower paid jobs (such as care roles) appealed more to female workers and the impact of females providing more childcare (the ‘motherhood penalty’). In the 21st century, attention turned to unconscious bias/gendered expectations, suggestions that females are less demanding in pay rises (arguably victim-blaming) and the need for help for working parents. Yet employment differentials persist.
Some evidence
A recent report1 from the Banco de Espana sheds some interesting light on why there is such a difference between the sexes at work. We need to be a bit cautious as the analysis needed several compromises2 to use comparable data sets across Europe and the USA. However, the most intriguing conclusions come not from comparing men and women, but females with children (mothers) versus females without children, and indeed men with children (fathers) against childless men.
Mothers are more likely to stop paid employment till children grow up
At prime child-rearing age of 30, mothers are significantly less likely to be employed than non-mothers. The TUC estimates3 that 10% of women in their 30s are out of the labour market due to caring responsibilities. However, this gap reduces, or even reverses, by the time women reach 50. Unsurprisingly, child-rearing tends to take mothers disproportionately out of the workforce, but only for a period of time. Fathers don’t seem to have the same career distraction, as mothers have lower employment than fathers at age 30. This gap halves by age 50, as mothers return to work, but does not disappear completely even at 50. So mothers suffer from providing childcare, but later catch up versus other women but only partially against men.
Mothers are more likely to work part-time
Mothers are more likely to work part-time than either fathers or non-mothers. This gap largely persists from 30 to 50. However, in those countries (UK, Germany and Netherlands) where the gap is biggest at 30, mothers do catch up a little in full time work by age 50. Women are more generally likely to work part-time, and having children means women (but not men) are more likely to work part-time. You would imagine that again child-rearing by women is the driver here too.
Mothers initially earn less than non-mothers, but this reverses by age 50
As well as having lower employment rates, mothers earn less than non-mothers at 30, but this equalises or reverses by 50. So within females, the child raising effect is temporary, but why does it reverse in many countries? Does having children give females additional skills useful at work or does it make mothers more determined to claw back their work disadvantage?
Mothers earn less than fathers and the gap narrows only slightly by 50
Some of the explanation would be lower employment and more part-time work, but there may well be other factors. The gap between mothers and fathers does reduce, but is a long way from disappearing by 50. There is a motherhood penalty, which the OECD4 found accounted for 75% of the gender pay gap in Northern and Western European countries.
But fatherhood is good for male earnings
On average, fathers earn more than males without children, and the gap grows as fathers get older. The Banco De Espana report has no evidence to explain why this is. Do men strive for higher pay to afford a family or is it that more successful men want children more? It does seem particularly unfair that women suffer in employment from having children, while men benefit from having children: the fatherhood bonus.
Education helps mothers’ employment
Higher levels of education tend to reduce the employment gap between mothers and non-mothers, but the effect is bigger comparing mothers and fathers. Education seems to provide a small buffer against the motherhood penalty.
The ‘motherhood penalty’ is different in same sex couples
There is some evidence that in female same sex couples both partners suffer a motherhood penalty, but this disappears by the time children go to school. Does this suggest that child-rearing duties are more evenly spread in same sex couples?
What conclusions can we draw?
Raising children makes mothers more likely to work part-time for a period and earn less than either non-mothers or fathers. While mothers may recover in terms of rates of employment, they still are earning less than fathers even towards to the end of their careers. Men not only benefit from higher employment and higher wages, but fathers appear to benefit financially from those same children that depress mothers’ earnings. It’s enough to make you a feminist.
The Banco De Espana report suggests why motherhood depresses earnings; less training, less promotion, fewer job opportunities and lower conversion of temporary jobs to permanent. These could be because of discrimination against mothers or because mothers simply miss out when not working or being part-time during formative years of career development. We know that this is not inevitable because more educated women suffer less from this.
We’ve come a long way since the Victorians thought that women workers were inferior, but still women earn less than men. A key, but not the only, reason appears to be females taking a bigger role in child-rearing. If we accept that every society needs children, it seems unfair that mothers face such a large economic price for providing the next generation.
We could of course encourage men to do more childcare. Perhaps more paternity leave would reduce inequality by enabling mothers to go back to work earlier. We should be providing more support for anyone raising children, whatever their gender, not least to address falling birth rates. Family-friendly employment terms, better return-to-work support and explicit recognition of the experience and skills gained from raising children would all help.
Gender employment disparity is a mix of differential gender roles on raising children and discrimination. The latter is being addressed by legislation and education, although the limited success of this suggests more education and awareness is needed. The former needs much more action to support those who leave employment to raise children. This wouldn’t address all of the gender disparity in employment, but is probably the only way to make a major next step forward towards that 1945 UN goal of gender equality.
- ‘Family and Career: An analysis across Europe and North America’; by Luis Guirola, Laura Hospido and Andrea Weber, published by Banco De Espana (2024)
- For example, it uses some fairly crude markers – testing at just age 30 and 50, taking no account of the number of children and assuming childcare is just by women.
- Jobs and recovery monitor – gender and pay, TUC 2023
- Quoted in Women in Work 2023 PWC
