Paternity leave as a remedy for maternity penalties? One condition must be met

In 2023, researchers from Princeton University and LSE published “The Child Penalty Atlas”, a map of motherhood penalties based on data from 134 countries. The results were clear in direction, although different in scale.

As “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” writes, in the vast majority of countries, women and men follow parallel professional paths until the first child is born. Then the paths diverge: women lose professional opportunities and earn less, while men do not (sometimes they receive a fatherhood bonus). This pattern appears everywhere, from Denmark to Bangladesh, from Argentina to Japan.

Penalty for motherhood. These regions are the worst

However, the scale of the differences is staggering. In Bangladesh and Jordan the penalty is over 60%. – women with children work more than twice as often as childless women of the same age. In the Scandinavian countries the penalty is several percent, while in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia it is almost zero.

It turns out that neither cultural norms nor pro-family policy fully explain these disproportions. Researchers pay attention to the structure of the labor market. The higher the share of service and industrial workers, and the more urbanized the country, the higher the child penalty. While, for example, a self-employed farmer is able to adapt his or her day to the rhythm of caring for an infant, it is much more difficult for a full-time employee.

– The conclusion from this sounds paradoxical: economic development and increased employment of women do not necessarily eliminate inequalities resulting from motherhood. They may even deepen them because they are associated with a greater scale of rigid forms of employment – writes the newspaper.

It’s not just mothers who get hit

Professional emancipation and the abolition of the motherhood penalty are two different goals that may pull in opposite directions for some time.

The authors of the “Journal of Family and Economic Issues” study from February this year. analyzed panel data from 27 European Union countries for the years 2006–2022 to answer the question whether the motherhood penalty only affects mothers. Turns out not. Childless women of childbearing age are often perceived by employers as potential mothers. By anticipating pregnancy, they limit their chances of employment, promotion and a raise. The penalty is already in the minds of recruiters and managers who calculate the risk of absence.

Does paternity leave help? Such couples have the greatest chance

Among the tools proposed as a remedy for the penalty for motherhood is paternity leave. However, researchers have divergent opinions on this matter. It would seem that if fathers go on vacation, mothers can return to work sooner, and then the careers of both parents will develop more symmetrically. The practice turns out to be much more complicated.

Last year, researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona published a study in Social Policy & Administration for which they analyzed the reform of paternity leave in Spain from five years ago (it was extended from four to 16 weeks, with six weeks mandatory), and then conducted surveys among 1.8 thousand people. mothers whose children were born before and after the reform. The results turned out to be inconclusive. Overall, extending paternity leave did not significantly shorten mothers’ employment breaks. Nearly two out of three women declared that they made greater professional sacrifices than their partners, regardless of the length of their leave. The exception turned out to be mothers who earned similar amounts to their partners. The probability of returning to work within six months increased in this group by 19 percentage points, and to return to full-time employment by 15 percentage points. The percentage of women indicating father involvement as a factor enabling them to return to work increased from 5 to 36 percent. For mothers earning more than their partners, the reform slightly accelerated the return to work, but did not change its mode. For 53 percent earning mothers, nothing has changed.

Paternity leave therefore works where the couple was already relatively equal economically. It does not change the balance of power in pairs with the traditional division of roles.

– Science offers no single cure for the punishment of motherhood. But after 30 years of research, we know what does not work in isolation: neither paternity leave alone, nor women’s education alone, nor wage transparency alone. What works is a combination of universal nursery care, shared leave, a labor market that does not reward availability above all else, and cultural norms that change with generations – sums up the diary.