Motherhood leaves a mark on the professional career. This statement has been reflected in dozens of studies carried out in recent years that demonstrate the penalization of mothers in the labor market. However, a recent analysis on the impact of having children on career advancement indicates that mothers, who are most burdened by motherhood, not only manage to overcome the wage gap that opens up at the age of 30 compared to professionals who do not have children but also end up earning higher salaries than them around the age of 50.
The latest study published by the Bank of Spain compares the evolution in 15 European and North American countries of the different gaps that arise in the labor world after having children. There is inequality in employment rates, working hours, and salaries between mothers and non-mothers, mothers and fathers, and fathers and non-fathers, although those affecting women with children are the deepest. Therefore, it is particularly relevant that the authors Luis Guirola, Laura Hospido, and Andrea Weber found that in most of the developed countries analyzed (except for Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Austria), working mothers end up earning higher salaries than women who never interrupted their professional development to have children.
The example of Spain serves to see this conversion of the wage gap in relation to motherhood, which can last for almost two decades compared to other studies that reduce its impact to ten years. While at the age of 30, women with children (the cohort born in 1970 analyzed) earn 30% less than childless workers, by the age of 50 the gap not only has disappeared but it is the working mothers who earn salaries over 30% higher.
The indelible gender wage gap
Educational level influences the persistence of wage gaps in employment as it perpetuates them more among women with lower levels of education. Returning to the comparison of mothers and non-mothers, the wage gap closes at the age of 50, especially among women with higher education, while women with children and basic education are penalized for a longer time – especially in terms of wages – compared to non-mothers, and especially fathers, even when the children have grown up.
Studies do not help close the wage gap between mothers and fathers with similar career paths: this inequality extends from the arrival of the first child and remains “substantial” in middle age in most of the countries analyzed. The gap in employment rates between mothers and fathers does find relief over time and relaxes in most countries compared to the high levels marked at the age of 30.
The authors find the explanation for the persistence of the gender wage gap in two issues: the first – and most relevant – is the part-time work that women maintain even when their children are older (even at a certain age without children, in several countries, non-mothers prefer part-time work as much as mothers). This reduction in hours or days worked in favor of childcare penalizes them in terms of promotion or the possibility of new job opportunities, while there is no special impact for this reason on men with children, who usually keep their careers practically intact.
The second reason for the wage gap with respect to fathers lies in paternity bonuses, which make fathers’ incomes even higher than those of workers who have not had children throughout their lives. The burden of fatherhood on men is less intrusive in the workplace. In fact, the report shows that in several countries, fathers’ salaries are already higher than those of childless male workers even at the age of 30, an advantage that extends as their life cycle progresses.
Does the social perspective improve over the years? The evidence from the study does not indicate that the gaps related to motherhood are closing faster in more recent cohort samples, underscoring the slow pace at which inequalities in the workplace are closing.
