The Motherhood Penalty

This is an excerpt from the Women’s Policy Group Consultation to the Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations.

Pay inequalities are further amplified when women have dependent children. An NIC ICTU policy document Childcare in Northern Ireland: Care, Cost and Gender Equality14 found that women with dependent children are overrepresented in part-time employment, compared with men with or without dependent children, and women with no dependent children. They are also more likely to be in temporary employment and much less likely to be self-employed than men with dependent children.

Men with no children are more likely than women to be in a full-time permanent job and having children greatly amplifies the difference in likelihood of being in a permanent, full-time job. Having one or more children reduces a woman’s likelihood of being in a permanent, full-time job by almost one-third, with only 45% of women with one or more children working in a permanent, full-time job.

The decrease in the proportion of women with children employed in permanent, full time employment appears to be driven almost entirely by the much higher likelihood of women with children working part-time. Fewer than 1 in 3 women with no dependent children work part-time. This compares to almost 1 in 2 women with dependent children who are employed on a part-time basis.

Having dependent children reduces average weekly working hours of both men and women. There is, however, a much greater reduction in average working hours for women than there is for men. Women with dependent children work 5 hours less per week on average compared to women with no dependent children, whilst men with dependent children work 1 hour less on average compared with men with no dependent children. Women with no dependent children work around 8 fewer hours per week, on average, compared to men with no dependent children.

Women with dependent children work an average of 11 hours less per week than men with dependent children. The latest Women in Northern Ireland report prepared by NISRA also details the differences in employment patterns experienced by men and women with dependent children.

Key findings include:

76% of women with dependent children were economically active, compared with 92% of men with dependent children.

The economic activity rate for women with preschool age children (74%) was substantially lower than for men with preschool age children (93%).

The following graph also shows the differential impact having dependent children has on the working patterns of men and women, with women much more likely than men to be working part-time schedules, regardless of whether they have dependent children.