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Welcome to the working mother penalty: less pay for work that costs you much more

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Welcome to the working mother penalty: less pay for work that costs you much more

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Attention, human women! Here is another piece of research telling us what we already know, but are too busy doing un/underpaid work to do anything about. No, not that "the BBC doesn't do equal pay", as one woman who submitted evidence to last week's parliamentary select committee hearing was reportedly told by her line manager. This time, it is that part-time work, most of which is done by women with young children, plays a major role in the gender pay gap, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

What is that noise? It is the sound of millions of women smacking their foreheads and shouting "duh", probably at CBeebies. While writing an email. And bouncing a baby on one hip. And feeling guilty. And knowing that, by the time their baby is 20, she will earn far less per hour than similarly educated men.

There is no pay progression if you work part-time - and I say this as a mother of two children under five who last got a pay rise in 2007. Despite being an integral part of the workforce (the number of working mothers with dependent children has risen by more than a million in the past two decades), we are not being paid according to our experience. We are unable to rise to senior positions because these tend not to favour flexible working - or, indeed, anyone who is not a white man. If we happen to be graduates, the penalty is greater still: the wage gap has not decreased in the past 25 years for the highest-educated women. Female graduates earn around 22% less per hour than male graduates.

Many women with young children know all this through bitter experience. They know the stress of returning to work following what is often poorly paid maternity leave. The panic of slipping down the career ladder because of the inconvenience to society of having a child. The frustration of shoe-horning part-time work into an already overstuffed life in which you are always rushing to meet someone else's needs. And, finally, the nail in the coffin: being paid less than you deserve for work that, on every level, probably costs you more.
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Welcome to the working mother penalty: less pay for work that costs you much more

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Attention, human women! Here is another piece of research telling us what we already know, but are too busy doing un/underpaid work to do anything about. No, not that "the BBC doesn't do equal pay", as one woman who submitted evidence to last week's parliamentary select committee hearing was reportedly told by her line manager.

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Surge in number of working mothers with dependent children

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Surge in number of working mothers with dependent children

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The number of mothers with dependent children employed in England has surged by more than a million over the past two decades, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics said there had been a step-change in the employment rate for working mothers since records began in 1996 with almost three-quarters of women with dependent children either in full-time or part-time work.

Encouraging women with young children back into the jobs market has been a priority for Labour and Conservative governments, with the latest initiative an offer of 30 hours free childcare for eligible working families.

The ONS said the figures showed there were 4.9 million mothers with dependent children in work in 2017, up from 3.7 million in 1996. The employment rate rose by 11.8 percentage points to 73.7% over the same period.

Although the ONS said women with three- and four-year-old children were least likely to work full-time - and the most likely to work part-time - it found there had been a marked increase in employment among this group.

Mothers were more likely to have a full-time job when their children went to secondary school at 11, the ONS said. Childcare responsibilities tended to make it more likely that mothers of younger children worked part-time.

The ONS statistician Emily Glastonbury said: "The continuing rise in the number of working mothers has been a major feature of the labour market in England in the last two decades. Reasons for this might include more flexible working practices, shared parental leave and changes to government policy on the availability of childcare."

The ONS said single parents were less likely to be in employment than parents in a couple. In 2017, 71.7% of single fathers were working, compared with 93% of fathers in a couple; and 68.5% of single mothers were in employment, as opposed to 75% of mothers in a couple.

Single mothers were least likely to be employed when the youngest dependent child was aged under three, at 48.4%. Single fathers were least likely to be in employment when their youngest dependent child was aged three or four (62.3%).
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uk unemployment and employment statistics

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Surge in number of working mothers with dependent children

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The number of mothers with dependent children employed in England has surged by more than a million over the past two decades, according to official figures. The Office for National Statistics said there had been a step-change in the employment rate for working mothers since records began in 1996 with almost three-quarters of women with dependent children either in full-time or part-time work.

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Spot the working mother: happy, busy, and still treated as the caretaker

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Spot the working mother: happy, busy, and still treated as the caretaker

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I didn't have many positive images of working mothers when I was growing up in New York in the 1980s. Ferris Bueller's estate agent mother was the first one I remember taking notice of, and what I noticed was that she was constantly being reprimanded by authority figures for being a slack parent while Mr Bueller was left alone in his high-tower office, bothered by neither his children's irate headmaster nor the local police, so he could get on with his day of having fancy lunches. Then there was JC, the Wall Street executive in 1987's Baby Boom, played by Diane Keaton, whose bosses were so horrified when she became a mother that they basically pushed her out the door. (Banished to Vermont, JC made money the only way open to mothers, which was making baby food.) Probably the best was Clair Huxtable, the lawyer mother in The Cosby Show. But let's be honest, she never seemed to do much lawyering and, let's be even more honest, if your most positive example comes from The Cosby Show, then you're really scraping the barrel.

Like the majority of mothers in Britain, I work. My mother stopped working when I was born and I loved that she was always there when I got home from school - but that is not a financial possibility for me and, anyway, I really like my job. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of working mothers in England has gone up by more than a million in the past two decades, which means there's a lot of us who grew up without a roadmap for how to do this. And that can feel at times a little like getting dressed without a mirror.

So when Guardian contributor Fiona Freund asked if she could photograph me with my kids for an exhibition to celebrate working mothers in recognition of International Women's Day, I said yes. Normally I'd rather eat my own hands than be in front of a camera but I was curious about what I looked like, working and mothering, and when I looked at the photo I saw the prosaic truth: I looked busy, and I looked happy.

You don't need to come over all Andrea "as a MOTHER" Leadsom to say that you learn a lot about yourself when you combine work and motherhood. What I have mainly learned is that the stereotypes I feared most aren't true. My brain hasn't become a baby-centric pudding - in fact, since I had my twins, I've never been so full of ideas. Where once I could turn dicking around into an Olympic sport, I can now knock off two articles by lunchtime. One of my friends said she'd become a much better boss since having kids "because I'm used to having to spell things out to the kids all the time". Also, contrary to all the stories about the guilt working mothers feel, I appreciate my job more than ever, because nothing makes the office feel more like a relaxing holiday than having two toddlers at home. And I will always believe that whatever negligible effect my occasional absence has on my boys, this is more than compensated for by the benefits they get from seeing an ambitious and professionally satisfied woman as the norm.

But some stereotypes remain all too true. My partner and I are both journalists and the only way we could be more professionally equal is if we were the same person. And yet I'm still seen by others as the caretaker: I'm the one the doctor calls if something is wrong and I'm the one who other parents contact to make playdates (and by "other parents" I inevitably mean "other working mothers"). If my boys ever skip school, Ferris Bueller-style, I'll be the one the headmaster calls, even though I work in an office and my partner works from home.

I emailed my female friends who also have kids and work, and asked how they see their situations, and my inbox filled with mixed emotions, and not just of the busy/happy variety. They felt "lucky" but also "furious", "good" but also "often crying". My friends spoke of husbands who get irritable about doing the "childcare" (aka parenting) and male bosses grumbling about their female employees leaving work early for the school pick-up. "I have kids and I work full-time," one boss crossly told a friend of mine who asked to have Fridays off. "Yes, and your wife quit her job to look after the kids," my friend couldn't quite bring herself to reply. Working mothers are becoming the norm, but residuals of the old patriarchy remain - in office practices and also in relationship dynamics.

So here's my wish for the next International Women's Day: as well as exhibitions about working mothers, there will be ones depicting fathers doing the school run; male bosses will write articles about the long-term benefits of accommodating women so devoted to their jobs they return to them after giving birth; and no one will take it as a given that it's the mother who goes part-time after having kids. Because I love the photo of me with my boys, I really do. But if we're talking about working mothers without looking at the role men have to play, we're seeing only half the picture.
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Spot the working mother: happy, busy, and still treated as the caretaker | Hadley Freeman

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I didn't have many positive images of working mothers when I was growing up in New York in the 1980s.

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Working mothers face pay and childcare challenges, reports find

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Working mothers face pay and childcare challenges, reports find

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Whether it's the gender pay gap, a lack of promotion opportunities or the demand from retailers to work longer shifts - often standing at checkouts for 10 hours straight - life can be tough for women in the shop trade.

For mothers it can be even worse, whatever industry they choose and in whichever part of the country they look for work.

A TUC report last year found there was an overall gender pay gap of 34% for full-time working mothers who were born in 1970 and had their children before the age of 33. The time out from work on maternity leave before they had established themselves in skilled or senior roles effectively killed their chances of advancement, or at best restricted them, the report said.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research this month found that the cost of childcare had risen to the point where some parents in low-income families effectively "pay to work". The thinktank blamed a lack of support under the current system of tax credits as much as it did spiralling nursery charges.

The report said a woman with a partner and two children who works fewer than 16 hours a week and earns the government's "national living wage" of £7.50 an hour would see her childcare costs overwhelm her earnings, leading to a net loss.

This situation is also common for women on higher hourly rates when they live in high-cost areas like London. The IPPR said the capital had the lowest maternal employment rate in the country and urged mayor Sadiq Khan to lobby the government for extra subsidies to plough back into childcare facilities. Metro mayors due to be elected next month in Manchester and the West Midlands will find parents in their areas facing similar difficulties.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked last year whether self-employment was a possible route out of low-paid work, particularly for women. It found the government needed to put in place much more support before people with lower skills - such as former BHS workers - could make the leap. It also highlighted research by the Social Market Foundation that revealed four out of five low-paid workers remained stuck in low pay even after 10 years in self-employment.

But a study by NatWest suggested that while overall interest in starting a business has risen this year, having fallen to a historical low in the run-up to and aftermath of the Brexit vote, the gender gap remains firmly in place. Its research revealed that men are still significantly more likely than women to want to set up their own business.

Sixteen per cent of men say that they want to start their own business compared to 12% of women, the majority of women saying they were discouraged from doing so because of a lack of inspiring role models.
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Working mothers face pay and childcare challenges, reports find

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Whether it's the gender pay gap, a lack of promotion opportunities or the demand from retailers to work longer shifts - often standing at checkouts for 10 hours straight - life can be tough for women in the shop trade.

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Mothers working part-time hit hard by gender pay gap, study shows

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Mothers working part-time hit hard by gender pay gap, study shows

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Women who work part-time after having children are likely to suffer the extremes of the gender pay gap, according to fresh research showing how working mothers are missing out on pay progression.

By the time a first child has reached the age of 20, mothers earn almost a third less per hour, on average, than similarly educated fathers, according to research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) undertaken for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The stark difference in pay according to gender comes as a consequence of the poorer levels of pay progression open to part-time workers - with women making up the vast majority of people taking temporary jobs, as they look to find more flexible working arrangements after having children. As a result, they miss out on earnings growth associated with staying in a permanent job.

There are fears that progress in closing the gender pay gap has stalled, with the latest figures showing that the average female employee currently earns around 9.1% less per hour than the average male employee. While that has come down from about 30% in the early 1990s, the difference remains high.

About a quarter of the wage gap identified by the IFS comes as a result of mothers taking part-time work, while just a tenth of the gap is down to women taking time out of the labour market altogether for a prolonged period of time.

The report also highlights how women's pay suffers at the hands of a cultural norm among nuclear families whereby women more typically juggle work with looking after children than their male partners. For men, part-time employment rates were essentially unaffected by the arrival of a first child, while women were shown to be significantly more likely than men to still be in part-time jobs when their first child reaches adulthood.

The lack of earnings growth in part-time work has a particularly big impact for graduate women, because they would typically stand to gain the most from rising levels of pay from remaining in full-time paid work. The report found that the wage gap has not fallen at all in the last 25 years for the highest-educated women due to this trend.

The government has set a deadline for businesses with more than 250 staff to report their gender pay gap by 4 April. Some companies have already started reporting, including the BBC, which has faced sharp criticism after high-profile female employees were found to have salaries significantly lower than their male counterparts.

Monica Costa Dias of the IFS said: "It is remarkable that periods spent in part-time work lead to virtually no wage progression at all. It should be a priority for governments and others to understand the reasons for this."
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Mothers working part-time hit hard by gender pay gap, study shows

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Women who work part-time after having children are likely to suffer the extremes of the gender pay gap, according to fresh research showing how working mothers are missing out on pay progression.

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Working mothers 'do no harm to children's behaviour'

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Working mothers 'do no harm to children's behaviour'

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There is no evidence of ill-effects on children's social and emotional behaviour if their mothers work during the early years, a study suggests.

University College London researchers studied data on 12,000 children and said the best arrangement was where both parents lived at home and worked.

Girls whose mothers did not work showed more difficulties at age five than those with employed mothers, they said.

Other studies show children of working mothers are more likely to be obese.

The new study examined information on the children over a period of five years - although it was limited to those whose ethnicity was classed as white.

Mothers were asked to report on behavioural issues such as hyperactivity, aggression, nervousness, clinging, and difficulties relating to peers affecting their children at the ages of three and five.

The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, then compared this information with data on who was working in the child's household, as well as on income, education and whether the mother was depressed.

'Unexplained'

Lead researcher Anne McMunn told the BBC that some of the findings were partly explained by the fact that mothers who worked were often better educated, in households with higher incomes and were less likely to be depressed.

But even when these factors were taken into account, no detrimental effect of mothers working could be seen - at least within two parent families, she said.

And girls whose mothers had not been in the labour force at all were still twice as likely to have behavioural difficulties at age five as those whose mothers had worked throughout, she added.

The researchers observed that this "may reflect the importance of gender in family role model processes".

This finding remained "unexplained", Ms McMunn said.

"Maybe there's something about girls in particular seeing their mothers going out to work - participating in society and playing an active role - that is good for them... we don't know," she added.

The study also found that boys in homes where the mother worked but the father did not were more likely to have behavioural problems.

But this could be explained by factors such as income and education, Ms McMunn said.

She said that the findings may have been affected by the fact that the observations on children's behaviour were made by mothers, and working mothers may have answered the question slightly differently from those not in the labour force.

'Welcome news'

The researchers noted that existing studies on the impact of mothers working, particularly in the early years, show "mixed results".

Several studies have shown that children of working mothers are more likely to be overweight, have poor diet and sedentary lifestyles.

Dr Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, said: "The fact that no evidence was found to show working mothers restrict the early development of their children is welcome news.

"This study shows what mothers know intuitively - if you are able to get the balance right, your child and your career can both flourish."

Sally Russell, co-founder of the Netmums social networking website, said 62% of the site's members were in full or part-time work and many worried about the effect on their children.

"Previous research that suggested working has a detrimental impact on children added to the pressure, so this latest study will be reassuring and very welcome news for all those millions of working parents," she said.

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There is no evidence of ill-effects on children's social and emotional behaviour if their mothers work during the early years, a study suggests. University College London researchers studied data on 12,000 children and said the best arrangement was where both parents lived at home and worked.

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There has been a big rise in the number of working mothers in England over the past two decades, figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 4.9 million women were working last year while looking after children - up 1.2 million since 1996.

Back then, 62% of mothers with dependent children were in work, either full- or part-time.

Now, 21 years on, the employment rate among this group of mothers in England has risen to 74%.

There has been a particularly big jump in the employment rate among mothers with children aged three or four, from 56% to 65%.

ONS spokeswoman Emily Glastonbury said the continued rise in the number of working mothers had been a "major feature" of the labour market in England.

"Reasons for this might include more flexible working practices, shared parental leave and changes to government policy on the availability of childcare," she added.

Among the other findings of the ONS were that:

in 2017, 72% of families with both a mother and father present ("couple" families) had both parents in work

Where this was the case, fathers were usually working full-time, while most mothers worked part-time

The rate of part-time working among fathers with young children (aged three or four) rose from 3.9% in 1997 to 6.9% in 2017

Single parents were less likely to work than parents in a couple.

The ONS found that, currently, 72% of single fathers and 69% of single mothers are working, while the employment rates for fathers and mothers in a couple are 93% and 75% respectively.

The figures, looking at men and women in England aged between 16 and 64, were estimates based on two surveys - the Labour Force Survey and the Annual Population Survey.

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There has been a big rise in the number of working mothers in England over the past two decades, figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 4.9 million women were working last year while looking after children - up 1.2 million since 1996.