Motherhood penalty

The motherhood penalty is a term coined by sociologists who argue that in the workplace, working mothers encounter systematic disadvantages in pay, perceived competence, and benefits relative to childless women. Specifically, women may suffer a per-child wage penalty, resulting in a pay gap between non-mothers and mothers that is larger than the gap between men and women. Mothers may also suffer worse job-site evaluations indicating that they are less committed to their jobs, less dependable, and less authoritative than non-mothers. Thus, mothers may experience disadvantages in terms of hiring, pay, and daily job experience. In assigning a starting salary to the applicants, participants offered non-mothers an average of $11,000 more than mothers. An audit study also showed that prospective employers were less likely to call back mothers for interviews than non-mothers. The motherhood wage penalty is not limited to the United States, and has been documented in over a dozen other industrialized nations including Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. The penalty has not shown any signs of declining over time.

The most frequently hypothesized explanation of the motherhood wage penalty is that childbearing and childrearing disrupt formal education and on-the-job training. However, evidence suggests that educational and training differences between mothers and non-mothers do not entirely explain the penalty for motherhood. Lower wages for women with children may reflect the choices made by mothers, like trading more flexible hours for lower wages. However, it also may reflect employer bias and discrimination. The different assumptions behind these theories are important because it leads to different hypotheses of what the true causes of the gender wage gap are.

Economic theories largely focus on comparing differences between the skills, traits, and behaviors of the workers themselves to explain the gender wage gap. In particular, some economic theories examine statistical discrimination, which is that employers apply an unbiased standard to accurate estimates of worker productivity.

According to the human capital theory, having children diminishes the wages of mothers because it impedes the development of human capital. Both childbearing and childrearing detract from time that could be spent developing job skills, furthering education, or gaining experience in the workforce. Research shows that mothers acquire fewer years of schooling and work experience than non-mothers. Worldwide there is a tendency for more career-minded and highly educated women to postpone and often forgo childbearing. A study conducted in Britain found that the probability of being a mother falls with a woman's increasing education level. However, work experience, time in school, and employment breaks only explain approximately one-third of the wage penalty for motherhood.

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