Where is the “motherhood penalty” greatest?

CAN WOMEN really have it all? Even in 2024 the data suggest that having both a career and children is out of reach for many women. Across the world 95% of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are employed, but just 52% of women are. In the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, the shares are 91% for men and only 75% for women.

What explains the gap? Unequal access to education and workplace discrimination play a role. But, in the rich world at least, childcare looms largest. One study found that up to 80% of the difference between male and female labour-force participation may be explained by women quitting work (temporarily or permanently) after the birth of their first child. In poorer countries motherhood explains only about 10% of the gap, because most women leave the workforce after marriage.

One measure of this effect is the “motherhood penalty”. This is the average decline in a woman’s probability of being employed during the ten years after the birth of her first child. One study of 134 countries found that 15% of mothers did not return to the workforce within a decade. But the effect varies widely both between countries and within them.

In China just 4% of mothers do not return to work within ten years. That may reflect multi-generational households in which grandparents care for children. The motherhood penalty tends to be higher in big cities than in rural areas (see a sample of countries in chart 1). In Beijing it is three times higher than in China as a whole. In London it is 26% higher than in the rest of Britain.

Part of this may be explained by differences between jobs. Capital cities and financial hubs have more “greedy jobs”, such as those in law, accountancy and finance, that demand long and unpredictable hours. But recent shifts in working patterns could change that. In a working paper published last year Emma Harrington of the University of Virginia and Matthew Kahn of the University of Southern California studied the employment outcomes for university graduates in more than 150 subjects in the decade before the pandemic. They found that the employment gap for mothers shrank in industries that began offering remote or hybrid work (see chart 2).

A 10% increase in remote or hybrid work was shown to boost employment among mothers by about 1%. Over the ten years to 2020, the share of people working remotely in finance grew by three percentage points, resulting in a five-percentage-point drop in the industry’s employment gap for mothers.

These data, however, show only part of the story. Mothers who work from home report spending more than a third of their working hours looking after their children: employment rates alone do not always indicate greater equality or equal productivity.

Moreover, not all women see staying at home as a penalty. And not all jobs allow for remote work. But the studies do show that, in many cases, flexible working arrangements have increased the share of mothers in the workforce. Further policies, such as affordable childcare options and paid parental leave, would complement it. Other studies have found that countries that reduce the employment gap between the sexes see significant economic benefits. It would be wise for governments and companies to take note.