Pregnancy and Employment: A Literature Review - Crisis Pregnancy ...

Pregnancy and Employment: A Literature Review
While having pre-school age children did not significantly alter the risk of downward mobility attached to shifts to
part-time work, Connolly and Gregory (2008) did find that the (lack of) availability of part-time opportunities in the
previous employment strongly influenced the chance of downgrading.
It should be noted that the polarisation between part-time workers and full-time workers is particularly acute in the
UK and so the results might be stronger than in other societies (Gornick & Meyers, 2003; McGinnity and McManus,
2007; O’Reilly and Fagan, 1998).
The literature on occupational downgrading highlights that returning to the pre-birth employer is a decisive factor
in avoiding occupational downgrading on return to work, particularly for mothers who wish to reduce their work
hours. The availability of job protected leave is crucial for women to maintain this link with their previous employer.
While all EU countries provide a minimum of 14 weeks paid leave with job protection, there is wide variation in
the maximum period of job-protected leave (see Banks & Russell, 2011). Employment practices, particularly the
availability of reduced or part-time hours, are also likely to influence women’s likelihood of remaining with their
pre-birth employer. Where an employer does not provide such flexibility women may be pushed into a job move
despite an entitlement to return to their previous employment. The evidence in the UK shows that such moves
may be extremely costly in terms of occupational downgrading. In the following section we examine a very similar
set of issues in relation to women’s pay levels.
4.3 The Motherhood Pay Penalty
In this section of the review, we describe studies that have investigated the effect of childbirth on women’s
subsequent earnings. We use the term motherhood pay penalty to encompass the pay disadvantage that women
experience as a result of interrupting their careers to have children and the gap in pay that this leads to, both
between women and men, and between mothers and non-mothers (when other relevant characteristics have
been held constant).
Numerous studies have demonstrated that time out of the labour market has a negative impact on women’s
earnings across a wide selection of countries (Stafford & Sundstrum, 1996, in Sweden; Mincer & Ofek, 1982, in
the US; Wetzels & Tijdens, 2002, in the Netherlands; Beblo & Wolf, 2002, in Germany). Various studies have also
demonstrated that differences in length of labour market experience and time out of employment account for
a significant part of the male-female wage gap (Albrecht et al, 1999; Barrett et al, 2000; Callan & Russell, 2003;
McGuinness et al, 2009; Waldfogel, 1997a).
We begin with the Irish studies. The most recent analysis of gender differences in pay was carried out by
McGuinness et al (2009), using data from the 2003 National Employment Survey. The survey is a matched sample
of employers and employees, and the number of employees used in the analyses was 38,752. The unadjusted gap
in men and women’s hourly wages was 22%. When a wide range of individual and organisational characteristics
were controlled for, a gap of 8% remained. The authors found that the difference in the labour-market experience
of men and women – which widened the gap by three percentage points, equivalent to 14% of the raw gap –
was the largest single influence on the gender wage gap (McGuinness et al, 2009). This difference in experience
between women and men is mainly accounted for by the time women spend looking after family, but is also
contributed to by the younger age profile and higher educational qualifications of women in employment. Family
structures account for 10% of the gap in men’s and women’s earnings, but marriage rather than children was found
to have the larger impact (2009, p20). The consequences of childbirth and childcare on pay are also likely to be
captured in the effects of working part-time, since many women enter part-time work only after they have had
children. Women working part-time are found to earn considerably less than part-time men, even though they
have higher qualifications and more employment experience. When these and other characteristics are taken into
account, there is a 10% gender pay gap among part-time workers. Moreover, part-timers are also found to earn
significantly less than similarly qualified full-time workers, and women’s greater concentration in part-time work
contributes to the gender pay gap (ibid, p20).
Similar results emerged from earlier Irish studies. Using data on earnings for 1997 38 , Barrett et al (2000) found the
unadjusted gap in men’s and women’s earnings was 20% and that years out of the labour market accounted for
38 The data come from the Living in Ireland Survey.
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