Gender pay gap: mothers returning to work earn a third less than men

Mother
Mothers typically work fewer hours and so are less likely to get a pay rise or a promotion Credit: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

Mothers who return to work end up earning a third less than men as the birth of a child cuts their chances of getting promotions and pay rises, a study has found.

This is mainly as a result of mothers tending to work fewer hours than colleagues who are not parents, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

“Men’s wages tend to continue growing rapidly at this point in the life cycle (particularly for the highly-educated), while women’s wages plateau,” said the IFS.

Before having a child the average female worker earns 10 per cent to 15 per cent less per hour than a male employee. After childbirth that steadily increases to 33 per cent after around 12 years. The wage gap is particularly serious for women with low levels of education and few qualifications, as they receive lower pay at the same time as looking after children.

“Two-thirds of children in poverty now live in a household with someone in paid work,” said the IFS.

“In an age when the main challenge with respect to poverty alleviation is to boost incomes for those in work, and when so many more women are in work than in the past, understanding the gender wage gap is all the more important.”

Overall, the hourly gender pay gap stands at 18 per cent, a rate which is down from 23 per cent in 2003 and 28 per cent in 1993.

As women typically work for fewer hours a week than men, their take-home pay is even lower, at 36 per cent less per week.

Women work even fewer hours after the birth of a second child, according to a separate study from economists Claudia Hupkau and Marion Leturcq, presented at the annual congress of the European Economic Association.

They found that mothers with low skills take 18 hours off their weekly workload once they have a second child, in part because of high childcare costs. By contrast, highly skilled women only cut back their work by an average of five hours per week – still denting earnings capacity, but by a far lower amount and from a higher starting point.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics last year found that women aged between 22 and 29 on average earn more per hour than men of the same age. Better education is one factor – for almost the past decade more women than men have earned university degrees, boosting female earning power and contributing to the higher pay of women in their 20s.

This gap disappears into the 30s and is long gone once women reach their 40s, however, as more women have children and as the proportion of male graduates is higher.

The new studies offer more evidence that motherhood affects earnings and makes it harder for women to keep growing their pay packets.

Over recent decades the proportion of men in work has declined as the proportion of women in employment has increased – a sign of some greater equality in domestic life, as well as an indicator of industrial changes in the manufacturing sector.

Around 79 per cent of men aged between 16 and 64 are now employed, down from more than 90 per cent in the early 1970s, while the employment rate for women is up from 52 per cent to almost 70 per cent between the same ages.

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