生育数量对两性就业质量的影响研究

Abstract Based on data from the 2016 and 2022 waves of the China family panel studies (CFPS), this study employs unconditional quantile regression and the RIF-Oaxaca decomposition method to systematically examine gender disparities and their evolving mechanisms in the employment quality of young people in China. The findings reveal that young women face significant constraints in accessing high-quality employment, with gender gaps exhibiting a “glass ceiling” pattern characterized by “high-end differentiation.” Decomposition results indicate that this inequality primarily stems from structural inequities in market return mechanisms rather than differences in individual endowments, placing women in a predicament of “high input but low return.” Moreover, marriage and family responsibilities impose a pronounced “motherhood penalty” on women, with heterogeneous effects across the distribution of employment quality. The study underscores that gender inequality in youth employment quality has deep-seated heterogeneity and structural roots. Accordingly, policy interventions should focus on dismantling structural barriers, optimizing return mechanisms, and improving tiered family support policies to effectively promote employment equity and sustainable development among the youth.

No abstract available

The paper examines the association between fertility and female wage employment in Kenya using nationally representative cross-sectional data collected by the Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics, a government-owned statistical organization. Two findings emerge from our analysis. The first finding is that female wage employment is negatively correlated with the number of births. Incompatibility of childrearing with wage employment is one of the main explanations for this evidence. The other finding is a much larger magnitude of the negative association between wage employment and male births relative to female newborns, but the difference in the estimated gender-specific coefficients is statistically insignificant. However, there is need for further significance tests on the difference between the gendered coefficients because the larger drop in the number of male births relative to female, as female wage employment expands, has strong support in the biomedical literature. The relevance of the second finding in the context of the biomedical literature on the link between a child’s gender at birth and the environment in which the mother works and lives provides a justification for further research on this issue. The tentative findings of the paper point to labor market policies that could be explored in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa to address the problem of excess fertility, and thus enhance women’s health, agency, and socioeconomic empowerment.

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2020, this study examines how spousal contributions to household income and domestic labor influence the fertility and employment dynamics of Chinese women. Applying Multi-State Models (MSMs), we analyze transitions between employment and childbearing states to evaluate the applicability of Gender Equity Theory in China. Results show significant heterogeneity in the effects of household labor division on women’s fertility and employment stability. In economically equal households, increased husband’s domestic labor contribution is linked to lower fertility rates among employed women. Conversely, in female-breadwinner households, employed women are more likely to leave the workforce to focus on childbearing. These findings highlight the “work–fertility” conflict in China, challenging Gender Equity Theory predictions. Future research should explore the interplay between public and private spheres and its impact on fertility behavior within the gender equality framework.

Along with the changes of the times, there are different development trends in demographics, labor supply, and employment opportunities in various industries. The serious aging of the population, the lack of labor in the market, and the decline of the fertility rate have been social topics with serious impact. The female employment rate is also deeply related to it. However, the participation of women in various industries is closely related to their biological and social characteristics, which leads to different trends in the future development of each sector. Gender differences are unavoidable in the social selection process for employment, where family structure, aging population, socio-demographic structure, and salary distribution are all issues that cannot be ignored. On the other hand, the decline of the fertility rate and the female employment rate are closely related, and this relationship will have a profound impact on labor productivity, consumption, industry, and the demographic structure of society.

The article presents some results of a study on the impact of fertility on women's employment using the example of the Samarkand region of the Republic of Uzbekistan based on data for 2014–2023. The author emphasizes the growing relevance of these issues due to the continuing key role of women in the country's economic development and raising the living standards.Issues of gender equality in the labor market are considered with an emphasis on the impact of fertility on women's employment. It is noted that ensuring gender equality is embedded in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is studied by many international organizations.The study used methods of trend analysis, correlation and regression analysis, and a projection of possible scenarios based on special and total fertility rates. The described methodology includes several complementary methods of data analysis that allow a comprehensive assessment of the impact of fertility on female employment and modelling potential changes in employment levels with changes in fertility.The study showed a close direct relationship between the female employment rate and the overall employment rate in the region, as well as an inverse relationship between the fertility rate and female employment, which hinders their active participation in labor activity. The author concluded that a high fertility rate hurts the female employment rate since women are often forced to leave work to take care of their children. In this regard, the need to develop public policies aimed at supporting women in combining work and family responsibilities, improving access to preschool educational institutions and increasing the efficiency of their functioning is emphasized. Addressing the problems associated with women's return to the labor market after the birth of children can help reduce gender differences in employment.

Persistent gender inequality in industrial employment continues to challenge inclusive labor systems worldwide. While education and labor market reforms have expanded opportunities for women, structural barriers remain deeply embedded in manufacturing sectors. This study adopts a systems-based perspective to investigate the institutional, demographic, and health-related factors shaping female employment in manufacturing across ten countries from 2013 to 2022. By integrating feminist political economy with interpretable machine learning techniques—including Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and Extra Trees regressors—the study models non-linear and interactive relationships among thirteen structural indicators drawn from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. The findings reveal that general female labor force participation is the strongest and most consistent predictor of women’s inclusion in manufacturing. Health-related variables, such as maternal mortality and fertility rates, exhibit strong negative effects, underscoring the continued influence of caregiving burdens and inadequate health systems. Education indicators show more variable impacts, suggesting that institutional context mediates their effectiveness. The use of SHAP and Partial Dependence Plots enhances the transparency of the models and supports a more nuanced understanding of how structural forces shape gendered labor outcomes. In addition to modeling structural inequalities, this study highlights how gender knowledges and cultures of equality are contextually produced and negotiated within the manufacturing sector. The findings underscore the importance of understanding both global systems and local cultural frameworks in shaping gendered employment outcomes. By linking interpretable machine learning with systems thinking, this research provides a holistic and data-driven account of industrial gender inequality. The results offer policy-relevant insights for designing more inclusive labor strategies that address not only economic incentives but also the social and institutional systems in which employment patterns are embedded.

This study aims at investigating the dual impact of trade openness and economic growth on gender-gap in employment for selected Arab countries in the last three decades. The panel data were extracted from the World Bank Indicators (WBI). To account for potential heterogeneity and non-stationarity in some series, the method of Weighted estimation for Dynamic Least Squares (DOLS) is used. The main findings substantiate the importance of both demand side factors such as economic growth and trade openness on gender-gap in employment as well as the supply side factors like education and fertility rate. The main variable of concern which is the trade openness has revealed as expected a positive and highly significant impact on gender-gap in employment. The GDP growth shows negative and significant impact on the gender-gap in employment, which was in favor of more male employment. Other factors such as education were no more drivers for more female employment but it might be driver for more female unemployment. It shows a negative impact for only young females but it was insignificant for other groups. Finally, fertility rates and urbanization have shown as expected a negative and significant impact on gender-gap in employment which still band more female employment with lack of convenient and affordable child care services.

The article presents a three-stage assessment of women's access to quality employment in Kazakhstan based on macro and microdata for 2013-2023. The methodological basis of the study includes a three-stage analytical approach combining dynamic and index analysis of key indicators of participation and remuneration. The empirical database is based on official data from the Bureau of National Statistics for 2013-2023. The results of the study indicate that the gender gap in the labor market remains stable. The gender pay gap remained in the range of 25-34% for a decade, despite the growth of nominal incomes. Structural analysis revealed a high concentration of women in low- and medium-paid service sectors (education, healthcare, trade) and their critically low representation in capital-intensive and high-income industries (mining, construction, transport). Vertical segregation is manifested in the fact that the proportion of women in managerial positions does not exceed 41%, and in technical and engineering professions – 21%. In 2023, women in the Atyrau region received 399,015 tenge (54% of men's salaries – 738,421 tenge), in Mangystau, 49.6% of men's earnings. At the same time, in low-paid regions (Zhetysu, Zhambyl, North Kazakhstan region), a “low equalisation effect” is observed: the gap is minimal, but with low absolute incomes (women 250-280 thousand tenge). The results confirm that gender inequality is reproduced through institutional gaps, persistent horizontal and vertical segregation and regional polarization. Policy directions are proposed: a gender audit; reducing the "child penalty"; increasing women's participation in STEM and industrial professions; space-oriented measures to develop high-quality female employment.  

One of the most important tasks on the way to the global sustainable development in the 21st century is gender equality. The article considers one aspect of this task - achieving more complete gender equality in the labor market by providing women with additional opportunities to combine professional and family responsibilities. The covid-19 pandemic contributed to gender equality in the labor market and to the growth of birth rate. On the one hand, digitalization and remote forms of employment allow women to better combine family and professional activities. On the other hand, for employers, the gender of the employee is becoming less significant. However, the impact of the pandemic on gender equality depends on the structure of the economy. Thus, in countries with a higher share or a more developed tertiary sector, remote forms of employment develop faster, which contributes to gender equality in the labor market. On the example of the BRICS countries the author shows some dependencies between gender inequality in economy and education, female employment and birth rate. Thus, in the BRICS countries with expanded and narrowed reproduction, a higher level of gender equality in economy corresponds to a higher level of fertility and a higher mean age of women at the birth of the first child. All BRICS countries show the direct relationship between birth rate and female employment: a higher level of female employment corresponds to a higher level of birth rate, and vice versa.

No abstract available

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This 'motherhood wage gap' has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.6-3.8%. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers' human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers' choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.

Abstract:Prior scholarship demonstrates that motherhood wage penalties and fatherhood wage premiums contribute to the gender pay gap. These analyses typically take a cross-sectional perspective, asking to what extent gender inequalities in the association between parenthood and wages can explain gender pay inequality for a given cohort or at a given moment in time. By contrast, explorations of gender pay convergence over time have tended to start at the firm's door, testing the explanatory power of changes in men's and women's human capital and job characteristics and neglecting the contributions of fertility change. We bring these two strands of research together, asking to what extent declines 1980–2018 in US employees' number of children can explain gender pay convergence over the same period. Using a descriptive decomposition and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we show that, in gross terms, fertility decline can explain almost one-quarter of gender pay convergence from 1980 to 2018. Even net of a host of controls for human capital and job characteristics, fertility decline explains 8 percent of the attenuation of the US gender pay gap 1980–2018—about half as much as changes in education and about a quarter as much as changes in full-time work experience and job tenure combined. Finally, we show that employees' fertility decline was fastest in the 1980s and subsequently slowed; this, in conjunction with persistent gender differences in parenthood–wage associations, helps explain stalled progress toward gender pay parity.

Although the gender wage gap in Japan has become increasingly narrower, it remains large compared to other developed countries. To address this situation, the government enacted the Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life in 2016. This study investigates how the gender wage gap has changed during this period using data from 2016 to 2022. The main findings are as follows: First, the gender wage gap narrowed over these six years based on attributes such as age, tenure, college degree, marital status, firm size, and managerial position. Second, the presence of children contributed in the opposite direction; specifically, in 2022, the presence of children slightly decreased the wages of highly educated females but increased the male wage premium at every educational level, thus widening the wage gap. Our findings suggest that political measures aimed at reducing the female child penalty, especially those targeting individuals with higher education, are indispensable for narrowing the gender wage gap in Japan.

ABSTRACT South Korea’s gender wage and employment gaps are among the largest in the OECD. Using labour force survey data over 2010–19, we estimate gender wage and employment gaps, and child earnings penalties, for women aged 25–54. We show (i) that the large gender gaps in South Korea’s labour market are mostly not a function of differential sorting by gender along education, occupation, or industry lines, (ii) that caring for children (and, perhaps increasingly, for the elderly) is the major factor inhibiting women’s labour force participation, and (iii) that large gender wage gaps exist even for women without care responsibilities. These findings suggest that improving opportunities for work–family balance is crucial to helping increase women’s labour force participation, but may do little to close gender wage gaps: other major obstacles also appear to stand in the way of Korean women’s full inclusion in the labour force.

Although the gender wage gap in Japan has become increasingly narrower, it remains large compared to that in other developed countries. To address this situation, the government enacted the Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life in 2016. This study investigates how the gender wage gap has changed during this period using data from 2016 to 2022. The main findings show that the presence of children contributed in the opposite direction; specifically, in 2022, the presence of children slightly decreased the wages of highly educated females but increased the male wage premium at every educational level, thus widening the wage gap.

PurposeThis study aims at estimating the gender wage gap in Ecuador, and its evolution over the last decade and a half, exploring its heterogeneity through different working conditions (formal/informal, full employment/underemployment, short term/long term and tenure/no tenure) and workers personal characteristics (education level; age and children).Design/methodology/approachPropensity score matching (PSM) and coarsened exact matching (CEM) are used to examine the gender pay inequality of wage earners in Ecuador, using the National Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment Survey (ENEMDU) data set from 2007 to 2022.FindingsResults show a persistent gender pay gap, evidencing a significant heterogeneity through the different dimensions taken into account, in terms of working conditions and workers personal characteristics. The evolution of the pay gap during the years analyzed hardly shows any reduction of differences in earnings between men and women; on the contrary, women exposure to precarious and unregulated jobs seems to be increasing wage inequality.Practical implicationsThe results make the case for active policies oriented not only at containing the negative effects of the traditional division of labor within the family but also at improving labor law enforcement, mitigating informality and workers rapid turnover.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few that use matching techniques to study the gender wage gap and the first in Ecuador; the time span taken into account is larger than previous studies, allowing a medium-long run perspective across different economic phases.

Entrepreneurship is notably characterized by gender disparities, adversely impacting aggregate income and productivity. Accordingly, this study investigates the determinants of gender gaps in entrepreneurship in Russia, where the entrepreneurship gender gap, which is defined as the difference in entrepreneurial participation rates between men and women, is approximately 2%. Since the 2000s, this gap has remained relatively stable and is notably smaller than in many developed and developing countries. As such, the article highlights Russia’s relatively strong performance in fostering inclusive entrepreneurship using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, encompassing 197,699 observations from 33,889 individuals (55% women) between 2000 and 2019. Based on panel data regression models and incorporating a comprehensive set of independent variables, including age, education, health status, marital status, number of children, religious participation, physical exercise, trust, migration background, ethnicity, and residence in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The findings reveal that participation in physical exercise and religious events significantly predicts entrepreneurial activity by gender, offering insights for reducing gender disparities in entrepreneurship. In contrast, traditional variables such as education, marital status, and number of children exhibit negligible effects. These results remain robust across different measures of entrepreneurship and hold when differentiating between necessity-driven and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Therefore, the findings suggest that Russia’s experience in narrowing gender gaps in entrepreneurship may serve as a model for other countries.

As a measure of gender inequality, the gender wage gap has come to play an important role both in academic research and the public debate. In 2016, the majority of full-time employed women in the United States earned significantly less than comparable men. The extent to which women were affected by gender inequality in earnings, however, depended greatly on socio-economic characteristics, such as marital status or educational attainment. In this paper, we analyse data from the 2016 American Community Survey using a high-dimensional wage regression and applying double lasso to quantify heterogeneity in the gender wage gap. We find that the wage gap varied substantially across women and that the magnitude of the gap varied primarily by marital status, having children at home, race, occupation, industry, and educational attainment. These insights are helpful in designing policies that can reduce discrimination and unequal pay more effectively.

No abstract available

Using CGSS data, this paper explores the relationship between age and wage growth rates in China’s financial sector by developing a fixed effects model. I find that the wage growth rate declines slowly with age, although the absolute value of wages has been rising. After a brief comparison of the financial sector, the information technology sector, and agriculture, I find that the pattern of their wage growth rates is similar, i.e., the wage growth rate declines slowly with age. Then, through empirical tests, I find that a gender wage gap does exist in the finance industry and that the gender wage gap gradually increases with age. Based on this, I further investigate the relationship between the age of female workers and the wage growth rate, and the possible reasons why the wages of female workers are lower than those of male workers. I find that the wage growth rate of female workers also gradually decreases as their age increases. Moreover, having children has a significant negative effect on the wage growth rate, but the marital status does not.

To obtain a more complete understanding of the persisting gender earnings gap in Germany, this paper investigates both the cross‐sectional and lifetime dimension of gender inequalities. Based on a dynamic microsimulation model, we analyse how gender differences accumulate over work lives to examine the lifetime dimension of the gender gap. We estimate an average gender gap in lifetime earnings of 51.5 per cent for birth cohorts 1964–72. We show that this unadjusted gender lifetime earnings gap increases strongly with the number of children, ranging from 17.3 per cent for childless women to 68.0 per cent for women with three or more children. Results from a counterfactual analysis approach show an adjusted gender gap in lifetime earnings of around 10 per cent, suggesting that the gender gap in lifetime earnings is rather driven by gender differences in observable characteristics than by differences in rewards.

This study applied an Extension of the Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition method to the Labour Force Survey 2020 data to decompose the gender gap and estimate the impacts of factors on the gender gap in social insurance participation in Vietnam. The results showed there was a gender gap in social insurance participation between male and female group of workers in Vietnam. Although there were some differences between the two samples according to the age of workers, there were three groups of determinants of the gender gap including individual characteristics, household structure characteristics, and characteristics of differences in the labor market. The 6 observed characteristics with the greatest impact belonging to the 3 groups of determinants above are income level, job position, economic sector, education level, the number of school-age children in the household, and the number of elderly in the household. Furthermore, this study discussed policy implications for narrowing the gender gap in social insurance participation in Vietnam.

PurposeThis paper investigates the relationship of both technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovation with the gender wage gap at firms.Design/methodology/approachUsing employer–employee level data from Estonia, the authors estimate Mincerian wage equations, in order to show how innovation at the firm level is associated with the gender wage gap. Next, the authors use propensity score matching (PSM) to study the effects of the movement of men and women into innovative firms, how this shapes the gender wage gap at firms.FindingsThe authors find that both technological and non-technological innovation are associated with a larger gender wage gap at firms. The relationship between innovation and the contemporaneous gender wage gap at firms reflects to a significant extent the different selection of men and women with different time-invariant characteristics to innovative firms. Further, the authors find that movement of men and women to work at innovative firms is in longer term associated with larger gains in wages for men. The authors also observe that the relationship of innovation with gender wage gap is stronger in the case of women with children.Originality/valueMuch of the prior analysis focuses on the effects of technological innovation on gender-related labour market outcomes. The authors show here that the relationship of innovation at firms with higher gender wage gap is not only specific to technological innovation, but is more general, and is observed across different types of innovation indicators, including non-technological innovation. This study's results suggest that the effects of innovation on gender wage gap may reflect to an extent the higher demand for flexibility of employees for work purposes at innovative firms, which may increase the gender wage gap, especially between men and women with children.

This research article investigates the impact of childbearing and horizontal segregation on income disparities among young academics in Hungary. Using a comprehensive, large-scale survey data set on the demographics and working conditions of academics in Hungary, this research highlights the precarious conditions in the Hungarian academic sector. The findings reveal that researchers and lecturers often rely on multiple sources of income and work extra hours to secure their livelihoods, creating a disadvantageous situation for women with young children, especially during the highly competitive early stages of their careers. The results suggest that the income differences between men and women are to a large extent explained by the so-called fatherhood wage premium and that horizontal gender segregation of the scientific fields has a significant effect on income disparities as well.

Gender inequality in the labour market remains a persistent issue in Kazakhstan despite legislative progress and improved educational attainment among women. This study aims to assess the impact of motherhood, part-time employment, and access to preschool education on women’s economic participation and the gender pay gap. The research applies a quantitative methodology based on official data from the Bureau of National Statistics of Kazakhstan for the period 2001–2023. Descriptive statistics, growth rate analysis, and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to examine key structural, institutional, and demographic indicators. The analysis reveals a strong negative correlation between the share of children under age three enrolled in preschool and the gender pay gap (r = –0.878), as well as a strong positive correlation between part-time employment and the gender pay gap (r = 0.811). Over two decades, preschool coverage increased from 4.3% to 47.8%, while the share of women working part-time dropped from 41% to 6%. Additionally, a negative correlation was found between the number of women applying to employment services and the gender pay gap (r = –0.769), indicating the importance of active labour market policies. The findings confirm that expanding preschool infrastructure, promoting formal employment, and supporting women’s return to work can reduce gender disparities. Policy recommendations are proposed to strengthen gender equity and female economic empowerment in alignment with SDG 5.

This paper analyses the gender pay gap in Slovakia, with an emphasis on the impact of motherhood, using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. The results indicate that the gender wage gap is 16.8%, while the gap between mothers and the rest of the workforce is even higher (18.3%). A significant share of this inequality remains unexplained, suggesting the influence of unobserved factors such as differences in men's and women's decisions, bargaining power, or systemic biases and discrimination. The penalties associated with motherhood are most pronounced in women's 30s and 40s, particularly for those with children under three. In contrast, the difference between mothers and childless women is at 9.9% and is almost entirely explained by observed factors. These findings highlight the need for systemic changes in the working environment to facilitate better career integration and fairer pay for mothers.

No abstract available

This study estimates the long‐term effect of parenthood on labor market outcomes and explores the variations within this effect by gender and education. We use the event study method to track changes in a range of labor market outcomes from 3 years before to 8 years after the first birth, with a sample of 556 married women and 528 married men from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). We find that women experience an immediate drop in wages following birth, whereas men experience continuous wage growth even before birth. The decline in women's wages arises largely from their withdrawal from the labor market, while the increase in men's wages could be explained by a positive selection bias among fathers. In addition, mothers' wage trajectories do not vary significantly by education level, whereas other labor market outcomes show discernible trends. These patterns are the opposite of those observed for men. The findings indicate that severe gender inequality in the Korean labor market lowers the wages of mothers, regardless of their education, while the wages of fathers are more likely to be affected by education. Based on the findings, we make policy suggestions for improving the work‐family balance for all genders.

Abstract This study examines the dynamics of caregiving and its impact on labor market outcomes, with a focus on the often-overlooked segment of sandwich caregivers defined as individuals engaged in both childcare and adult care. Utilizing data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) spanning the years 2012 to 2022, our findings reveal significant trends: women of all ages are more likely than men to be sandwich caregivers, individuals with higher educational attainment tend to assume sandwich caregiving roles later in life, and black workers are more inclined to provide sandwich care at an earlier age. Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) is used to estimate unbiased treatment effects while propensity score matching is utilized to model interactions between sandwich caregiving and gender. Results indicate that sandwich caregivers are 5.7 percent less likely to participate in the labor force and, for those employed, work 5 hours less per week compared to non-caregiving workers, with more pronounced effects on women. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the impacts of sandwich caregiving responsibilities on extensive and intensive margins, highlighting the need for policies that address the unique challenges faced by sandwich caregivers.

The sharp decline in employment after the COVID-19 lockdown was not uniformly felt across demographic groups. Utilizing the 2017 to 2020 monthly Current Population Survey and using a difference-in-difference design, we investigate the varying impacts of COVID-19 on at-work status among the prime-working-age population, accounting for typical seasonal fluctuations in employment. The target population is grouped by gender, marital status, parenthood, and level of education. Our results uncover complex variations by gender, marital status, and children’s age. Contrary to popular belief, married women without school-aged children did not experience a relative decline in employment compared to married fathers. A majority of disadvantages in employment that married women experienced are accounted for by controlling for typical seasonal fluctuations. The women whose employment was most distinctively adversely affected by COVID-19 during 2020 were less-educated never-married childless women and never-married mothers. Less-educated men who were not currently married also experienced a disadvantage in employment relative to equally educated married fathers. These findings imply that, during the pandemic recession, marriage offered a form of within-family insurance that we call the “added caregiver effect.” The further implications of these findings are discussed.

With the massive COVID-19 lockdown, teleworkability, i.e., the feasibility of telework, plays an important role in determining whether workers can maintain productivity and keep their jobs. However, the impact of teleworkability is likely to be heterogeneous, varying by worker characteristics, such as gender and childcare constraints. This study examines the heterogeneous impact of teleworkability on labor market outcomes (including unemployment, work absence, and layoff). Using stay-at-home order as a measure of labor market disruption, we find that teleworkability offsets the increase in unemployment due to the disruption of COVID-19 by 20%, that in work absence by 28%, and that in layoff by 26%. Specifically, the positive effect of teleworkability is i) stronger for females than males; ii) stronger for females with kids than their male counterparts as well as those without kids. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on gender inequality by underscoring the nuanced impact of teleworkability.

This study investigates the differences on women aged 25–45 in maternal employment in the US by child age, number of children, and marital status. The analysis utilized the data from the Women's Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to emphasize maternal employment in different situations. The findings indicate that while mothers typically show greater relative employment rates than childless women, maternal employment is most constrained when the youngest child is under three, which shows an early-childhood penalty from this situation. As children get older, rates gradually rise, but families with several children face additional time and financial issues. Results are further differentiated by marital status: married mothers have more stability in the labor market, but single mothers with young children face income and employment penalty because of their lack of resources and inferior social support networks. These findings show that maternal labor force participation is shaped by intersecting demographic and structural factors rather than uniform patterns. Policy implications include expanding childcare subsidies, redesigning welfare and tax systems to smooth benefit phase-outs, promoting inclusive parental leave with paternal involvement, and enhancing flexible work arrangements. Also, it is essential to provide targeted workforce development and income-graded support for single mother. Overall, such integrated strategies can reduce maternal employment losses, reduce gender inequality, and support broader economic and intergenerational equity.

While social scientists have increasingly focused on the relationship between fields of study and labor market outcomes, our understanding of how men and women differ in the utilization of college major skills at work and how such differences are linked to labor market outcomes remains limited. To fill this gap, I use nationally representative cross‐sectional data from Japan to examine how fields that offer portable skills, which are beneficial across different employers, are related to earnings and employment likelihood. Results from ordinary least squares regression and Heckman two‐stage models indicate that fields offering portable skills, such as medicine and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), have a positive association with earnings for both genders. Moreover, results from linear probability models suggest that law/business, medicine, and STEM have a positive relationship with employment status among women. The relationship is stronger for women than men, showing no differences between mothers with young children (0–5 years) and nonmothers. These findings indicate that acquiring portable skills through education makes women's careers more compatible with their family responsibilities. Considering the increasing salience of fields of study in the world of work, these findings provide important insights into the interplay between gender, higher education, and labor market stratification in Japan.

This study employs quantile regression, fixed-effects regression, and other statistical methods to examine the “motherhood penalty” (MP) and “fatherhood premium” (FP) using China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data from 1989 to 2015. Quantile regression results indicate that after controlling for standard labor market return characteristics, an increase in motherhood proportion significantly reduces earnings among low-income women, while the expansion of fatherhood steadily enhances wages at lower quantiles. Fixed-effects regressions further reveal persistent long-term effects: women’s earnings decline by approximately 15% following childbirth and do not recover over time, whereas men’s wages remain around 20% higher than their pre-fatherhood levels, exhibiting a stable premium without signs of convergence. The FEIS model suggests that prospective mothers already experience earnings reductions before childbirth, reinforcing cumulative labor market disadvantages. These findings highlight the inadequacies of existing fertility support and gender equality policies. Strengthening employment protections, optimizing parental leave policies, and promoting workplace inclusivity are essential to mitigating fertility decline, advancing gender equity, and fostering sustainable socioeconomic development. JEL Classification: J16; J31; C21 Plain Language Summary This study investigates how parenthood affects men’s and women’s earnings in China, using longitudinal survey data from 1989 to 2015. It finds that women face a significant “motherhood penalty” in the labor market—wages drop sharply after childbirth and remain lower for years. In contrast, men often receive a “fatherhood premium”—a wage increase that persists over time. These effects are not uniform across all workers; they are particularly severe for low-income women and more favorable for high-income men. To capture how these impacts differ across income levels, the study uses quantile regression models. The results show that low-income mothers can lose more than 20% of their wages after childbirth, while higher-income women experience milder losses or even neutral effects. For fathers, wage increases are most pronounced in lower- and middle-income groups, reaching more than 30% in some cases. These patterns reveal how parenthood can exacerbate existing income inequality, especially when reinforced by traditional gender roles and limited institutional support. Importantly, the study finds that women’s wages start to decline even before childbirth, suggesting that they may adjust their career choices in anticipation of family responsibilities. Meanwhile, men’s wage gains appear largely unrelated to childrearing burdens and instead reflect employer bias or social expectations around fatherhood. The findings highlight the need for stronger policies to reduce the motherhood penalty and support gender equality. Key recommendations include expanding paid parental leave for both parents, improving access to affordable childcare, and enforcing workplace protections against gender-based discrimination. Addressing these issues is essential not only to improving women’s career prospects but also to encouraging higher fertility rates and creating a more inclusive labor market.

The fatherhood premium and motherhood penalty have been primary subjects in the issue of gender income gaps. Using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model, influencing mechanism analysis, and Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we examine gig workers’ income changes before and after parenthood by gender. We find that the motherhood penalty is vanishing, while the fatherhood premium has devolved into a fatherhood penalty in the gig economy due to work pressures and the gender segregation of occupations that force men to balance time and energy between work and childcare in a way that is not as prevalent outside the gig economy.

Investigating the impact of fertility on the wage earnings of men and women and its trends is important for understanding and coping with both the widening gender wage gap and the continuously declining fertility rate in China. Through an in-depth analysis of China Health and Nutrition Survey data from 1989 to 2015, the study finds that in the late 1980s, fertility had a significant positive impact on the wage earnings of men in China, while the negative impact on women's wages was not significant. Over time, the fatherhood wage premium has been declining, while the motherhood wage penalty has been rising at a faster rate, and the gender wage gap has been widening. The expansion of the market sector in China since the deepening of reforms in 1992 is an important reason for the rapid increase of motherhood wage penalty.

In this paper, we present evidence from the Current Population Survey examining the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on parental status and gender inequalities in employment in the United States. We show that the drop in the employment rate in post-outbreak months was largely driven by mass layoffs and not by workers quitting their jobs. Results from fixed-effects regression models show a strong fatherhood premium in the likelihood of being laid off for post-outbreak months compared to mothers, men without children, and women without children. We also found that the “fatherhood premium” was higher among lower-educated and mid-educated workers. These findings show that gaps in layoff rates exacerbated pre-existing forms of parental status and gender inequality in employment. Possible mechanisms are discussed, but more work is needed to explain why employers were less likely to lay off fathers following the outbreak, and the short- and long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in reinforcing parental status and gender inequality in employment in the United States.

BACKGROUND Many previous empirical findings on 'motherhood penalty' and 'fatherhood premium' remain inconclusive due to potential selection biases. China's regional variation in exemptions to the one-child policy enables us to use the gender of the first child as a powerful instrumental variable (IV) in identifying the gendered fertility effects. OBJECTIVE We aim to estimate the causal effects of fertility on fathers' and mothers' various outcomes in China. METHODS Using the IV approach, this paper examines the gender-specific fertility effects on parents' time use, income, and subjective well-being, using data for 2010 from the China Family Panel Studies. RESULTS Results show that while fathers spend more time at work and less time taking care of family members with more children, mothers report better subjective well-being. Moreover, fathers gain self-confidence in both their careers and the future, and mothers are happier, more satisfied with life and report better social ability. CONCLUSIONS Our findings do not directly support the gendered fertility effects on parents. However, the differential fertility effects on specific domains for mothers versus fathers are consistent with household specialisation. By interpreting this conclusion within the context of China's one-child family planning policy, our research suggests that parents would do better if the one-child policy were abolished - i.e., if parents were allowed to have more children.

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Despite large literatures on gender and family wage gaps (e.g., the motherhood wage penalty, fatherhood wage premium, and the marriage premium) and widespread recognition that the two gaps are intertwined, the extent and pattern of their relationships are underexplored. Using data from the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we show that family wage gaps are strongly associated with the gender wage gap, as long assumed in the literature, but with important caveats. The gender-differentiated wage returns to parenthood contribute 29 percent of the gender wage gap. One third of this is associated with occupation, but very little with other worker and job attributes. The gender-differentiated returns to marriage contribute another 33 percent, two thirds of which is associated with worker and job attributes but very little with occupation. However, 36 percent of the gender wage gap is unrelated to these family wage gaps, and the gender wage gap among childless workers remains substantial. Moreover, for Black and Hispanic workers, the pattern of association is more complex and generally weaker than for White workers. These results caution against focusing solely on the wage gap between “mothers and others” and suggest new directions for research.

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This paper utilizes a natural experiment created by Australia's first national mandate for paid parental leave in 2011, to investigate employer‐side mechanisms in motherhood wage penalties. Drawing on literature on cognitive bias, we hypothesize that maternity leave taking behaviors could trigger employer discrimination. We test this proposition by comparing whether and how four types of leave‐taking behaviors affect the wage prospects of working mothers. Using fixed effect models with lagged dependent variables and nationally representative panel data, the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) for the period 2005–2019, this study reveals that before the mandate, mothers who had to use unpaid leave due to ineligibility for employer‐funded leave suffered pay penalties. After the mandate, mothers who forwent paid leave received pay premiums. Our study contributes to debates about parental leave policy and gender discrimination in the labor market by indicating that employers interpret contrasting leave taking behaviors differently, and reward employees in accordance with what they believe maternity leave behaviors imply about working mothers' conformity to the “ideal worker” norm.

The paper discusses the results of a simulation study of the motherhood penalty that leads to lower pensions for women in defined contribution pension systems. The study uses a hybrid simulation model that combines forecasting demographic changes with modeling pension capital accumulation. The models were built using numerical simulation methods, i.e. discrete event simulation and system dynamics, and then fed with real data from 2000 to 2023. The demographic model forecasts the size of age-gender cohorts over a multi-decade horizon, allowing us to forecast the size of the working-age population which, in turn, is the basis for estimating the amount of pension contribution premiums. The annual amount of premiums written determines the values of indexes of pension capital accumulated in individual pension accounts. The simulation model monitors various women’s careers from the time they start working at age 25 until retirement. The simulation experiments are designed to study the causes of the motherhood penalty and determine the amount of the penalty under different scenarios of a woman’s career. The results show that the pension of a woman deciding to have one child will be lower than that of a childless woman by about 25%. For a woman raising two children, the difference drops to about 40%.

This paper underlines the importance of accounting for non‐base compensation in explaining the motherhood wage gap. We consider two alternative measures of hourly wage using Italian EU‐SILC data from 2007 to 2019: the base‐wage and the full‐wage. The former refers to the contractual base wage, while the latter includes performance‐based bonuses, productivity bonuses, commissions, pay incentives, and other extra payments. We address the endogeneity issues of motherhood and examine the effect of motherhood status across various quantiles of the wage distribution for the two hourly wage measures. Empirical findings provide evidence of a motherhood base‐wage premium, which becomes nonsignificant when using the full‐wage measure, suggesting that non‐base compensation is a source of inequality for mothers. These findings are consistent across the wage distribution. Exploring potential heterogeneity across macro‐regions and periods, we find no notable regional disparities except minor distinctions for the Southern regions, alongside a decline in the base‐wage premium over time and the emergence of a full‐wage penalty in recent years. A comparative analysis with a sample of men reveals that fathers enjoy a premium with both wage measures. Nevertheless, fatherhood is also associated with reduced extra remunerations, yet to a lesser extent than motherhood.

Gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work are well documented, but patterns of advantage or disadvantage in further job-related training have been less explored. Previous cross-sectional studies indicate gender differences in further training, with lower participation rates and shorter training sessions for women, especially mothers. Based on the National Educational Panel Study for Germany (adult cohort, 2008–2020), this study is the first to examine gendered parenthood effects on participation in non-formal further job-related training using panel analyses. The results from fixed-effects regressions provide evidence of parenthood training penalties that are particularly pronounced for mothers and in the first years after childbirth. While fatherhood training penalties are mostly explained, motherhood gaps remain robust when accounting for a large number of time-varying characteristics. The results point towards further relevant changes in mothers’ aspirations or employer support. Thus, they underline the importance of training opportunities for reducing childbirth-related inequalities later in life.

Upon becoming mothers, women often experience a wage decline-a "motherhood wage penalty." Recent scholarship suggests the penalty's magnitude differs by educational attainment. Yet education is also predictive of when women have children and how many they have, which can affect the wage penalty's size too. Using fixed-effects models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I estimate heterogeneous effects of motherhood by parity and by age at births, considering how these relationships differ by education. For college graduates, first births were associated with a small wage penalty overall, but the penalty was larger for earlier first births and declined with higher ages at first birth. Women who delayed fertility until their mid-thirties reaped a premium. Second and third births were associated with wage penalties. Less educated women instead faced a wage penalty at all births and delaying fertility did not minimize the penalty.

Is delayed fertility associated with a reduced motherhood wage gap in all occupations? Using multilevel models and data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey, O*NET, and the Current Population Survey, I examine whether delayed fertility is associated with a reduced motherhood wage gap in 140 occupations. Delayed childbearing is one strategy women use to mitigate the motherhood wage penalty. Findings indicate that mothers in high-earning professional occupations experienced the largest wage penalties with early motherhood but also the largest premiums with delayed childbearing. Although delaying a first birth mitigated the motherhood wage penalty in high-wage occupations requiring extensive career preparation, the majority of women who worked in lower wage occupations with more limited human capital requirements experienced no economic benefit from older motherhood. These results challenge the broader narrative that most women can improve their long-term earnings and partly overcome the structural motherhood wage gap by delaying fertility.

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While multinational enterprises (MNEs) are widely recognized for providing employment to a significant number of women around the globe, empirical evidence suggests that existing gender inequalities may be aggravated rather than alleviated in their subsidiaries. We build on gender theory to better understand how gender is construed and enacted differently in MNE subsidiaries compared to domestic firms, particularly with regard to the differential effects of parenthood on wage gaps for male versus female employees. Because of the relatively more demanding working conditions in MNE subsidiaries and their gendered policies and practices, we hypothesize that the motherhood penalty and fatherhood bonus are larger in MNE subsidiaries than in domestic firms. Using an extensive database of micro-level data of over 36,500 employees in 57 countries, we find a larger fatherhood bonus in MNE subsidiaries compared to domestic firms, but no significant difference in the motherhood penalty. Our results suggest that shifting entrenched gendered social beliefs and divisions of household labor is not the only pathway to gender equality, and call for a critical examination of gender-related values, perceptions, policies, and practices in MNEs, beyond a focus on supporting women (with children). We discuss managerial, theoretical, and societal implications accordingly.

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We use cross-national data on 26 EU countries to estimate how parenthood contributes to the gender wage gap, and assess how institutional elements affect this relationship. We find that irrespective of cultural norms and policies, fathers receive a wage premium, which increases the gender gap. Motherhood gaps vary across countries. The highest gaps are seen in Eastern European countries, where policies and norms lead to long absences from work. Moderate to small penalties are found in Continental Europe, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries, alongside higher maternal employment. No motherhood penalties are found for Southern EU countries, where mothers return to work quickly or exit the labor market indefinitely.

Abstract Background Historically, women’s roles were predominantly associated with motherhood, leading to significant career interruptions and lower incomes compared to men. As gender roles have evolved, as did labor policies protecting parents, it would be expected that income penalties in women and income premiums in men would attenuate, especially in the long term. This study aims to assess the association between the number of children and the income earned by women and men in older adulthood. Methods We used data from wave 8 of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which includes 43,772 participants with 50 years old or over and their partners, living in 26 European countries. Multilevel analysis was employed to estimate the association between having children and the total, employment-related, and pensions-related incomes, adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and clustering by country. Results The highest median annual total income was identified for individuals living in Bismarkian (€19,000) and Scandinavian countries (€17,708), more than twice the income earned in the European remaining countries. Having had children was associated with lower total income (OR = 0.870 for 1-2 children, OR = 0.773 for 3-5 children, OR = 0.666 for more than 5 children; p < 0.005), and women received lower total incomes (OR = 0.694; p < 0.001). These patterns were also found for employment- and pensions-related incomes. Conclusions There is a long-term negative effect of having had children, and of the number of children, on income, both employment and pension-related, but women continue to receive about 30% lower incomes than men. The adoption of comprehensive policies stimulating a more equal gender distribution of childrearing responsibilities, while protecting parenthood, along with recognizing caregiving responsibilities in pension calculations, could mitigate these disparities and promote gender equity and better living conditions at the older ages.

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Population and fertility problems are gaining wider attention recently. We studied the impact of an extra child on parents' labor supply using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Studies (CHARLS) data. By making use of the sex composition of the first two children in the household as the instrumental variable, we identified a causal relationship between the variables of study. IV regression results show that an extra child increases females' probability of working for pay by 20% and decreases the household income by 63%. Also, the educational level smoothens the shock of fertility on labor supply. However, little effect is observed on the work hours. Moreover, considering that mental health as a human capital improves the quality of labor supply, we found that an extra child impairs females' psychological wellbeing and cognitive function. According to these findings, we suggest the government adopting relevant policies to compensate families' loss due to giving birth.

This study examines the impact of the number of children and external factors on married women’s employment choices using probit models and Instrumental Variable (IV) regression with data from the International Social Survey Programme: Family and Changing Gender Roles IV. The analysis includes both an “employment choice” model and a “working hours” model to assess how fertility influences labour market outcomes. To address endogeneity, the study employs an IV measuring perceived restrictions on parental freedom, justified by the Second Demographic Transition Theory. While this variable reflects fertility preferences, it does not directly influence employment beyond its effect on child count, ensuring exogeneity. First-stage tests confirm relevance, with F-statistics exceeding the empirical threshold. Results show that having more children significantly increases women’s self-employment rates while reducing their likelihood of being employed by companies. IV regression further reveals that the effect of childbearing on employment varies by education level and husband’s employment status. Additionally, when the number of children increases, husbands are more likely to seek employment. These findings contribute to the literature on fertility and women’s employment, highlighting the need for family-friendly policies and cultural shifts to support women’s workforce participation while balancing family responsibilities.

The aim of the article is to estimate and compare wage elasticities of labor supply of Mexican married women with different numbers of children. In addition, we analyze the treatment effect of fertility on labor supply of these women. To obtain the estimates, we use Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data on Mexico for the year 2020. First, we apply a least squares regression. Second, we use an instrumental variables estimator to address the endogeneity of wages. Third, we extend this estimator to ad-dress the issue of self-selection into employment by considering a Heckman model with instrumental variables. Finally, we generalize the latter model to account for endogenous switching based on the number of children. We found a notable heterogeneity in the wage elasticities of labor supply among married women with different numbers of children. Specifically, after addressing the endogeneity of wages, fertility and employment, our analysis reveals that married women with children exhibit positive labor supply elasticities of significantly greater magnitude than those with no children. Furthermore, the elasticities show a tendency to increase with the number of children. The fertility-induced heterogeneity in the wage elasticity of labor supply may have significant policy implications, particularly for optimizing wage tax rates to account for variations in women’s childbearing choices. Our article contributes to the literature on the estimation of wage elasticities by considering their heterogeneity based on the number of children. To study this heterogeneity, we propose a novel three-step estimator, which allows us to address the endogeneity of wages, self-selection into employment and endogenous switching based on the number of children. In addition, for this model we derive the expressions for the average treatment effects and average treatment effect on the treated.

Country’s economic growth depends among other factors on the extent to which labour particularly female labour force participates on economic growth enhancing activities. Being the largest contributor in economic activities particularly agriculture in developing countries (over 50%), their participation enables economies to grow in response to higher labour inputs injected. As an outcome, as countries develop; women’s capabilities typically improve as well, whereas social constraints weaken, which enables females to participate on work outside the home. However, the existing literature on this topic is scant and has mixed results. This study sought to analyse female fertility rate and its influence on provision of labour in Tanzania using females aged 15–49 years from the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey 2015–2016. The study used instrumental variable-probit and a two-stage residual inclusion as methods of analysis. Results showed that, an increase in female’s fertility rate reduces participation of females in provision of market labour by about 1.1–13%. Similarly, household size, education, contraceptive use, self-employment of their husbands and residing in rural areas was associated with increased participation while female’s age exhibited an inverted U-shaped relationship with female participation. The results imply that, to foster a more sustainable female participation in labour force, family planning, educating females as well as fostering self-employment and improving rural infrastructures is inevitable.

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How do parenthood and publishing contribute to gender gaps in academic career advancement? While extensive research examines the causes of gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, we know much less about the factors that constrain women's advancement in the social sciences. Combining detailed career- and administrative register data on 976 Danish social scientists in Business and Management, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology (5703 person-years) that obtained a PhD degree between 2000 and 2015, we estimate gender differences in attainment of senior research positions and parse out how publication outputs, parenthood and parental leave contribute to these differences. Our approach is advantageous over previous longitudinal studies in that we track the careers and publication outputs of graduates from the outset of their PhD education and match this data with time-sensitive information on each individual's publication activities and family situation. In discrete time-event history models, we observe a ∼24 per cent female disadvantage in advancement likelihoods within the first 7 years after PhD graduation, with gender differences increasing over the observation period. A decomposition indicates that variations in publishing, parenthood and parental leave account for ∼ 40 per cent of the gender gap in career advancement, suggesting that other factors, including recruitment disparities, asymmetries in social capital and experiences of unequal treatment at work, may also constrain women's careers.

In standard promotion tournaments, contestants are ranked based on their output or productivity. We argue that workers’ career progression may also depend on their relative rankings in dimensions a priori unrelated to their job performance, such as visibility or in-person presence. Such implicit tour-naments may rationalize a variety of seemingly counterproductive practices in the workplace, including long working hours, low uptake of statutory leave, and presenteeism. We illustrate the significance of implicit tournaments using the case of paternity leave among new fathers, where we exogenously vary a focal worker’s ranking within a contest, not via his own leave status but that of his competitors, exploiting a policy reform. We show that the focal worker is put on a better earnings trajectory than otherwise when a larger share of his competitors take leave because of the reform. The focal worker’s own absolute leave, however, has no direct effect on his earnings path as long as his own and his competitors’ leave statuses are symmetric. With effective coordination, it should thus be possible for all fathers to utilize paternity leave without incurring unwarranted career costs. This has implications for statutory leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and gender equality.

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influenced the career choice and identify the barriers related to the career advancement of female bankers. Quantitative and in-depth interview methods were employed in this study. Close ended questionnaires were administered to female bankers in Metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria. Data were analysed using frequency counts, percentages and mean rankings. The findings showed that factors such as employment opportunities, hope for career advancement, personal skills, prestige and attractiveness of bank job, remuneration, educational qualification and job suitability influenced female bankers’ choice of a career. Family responsibilities, strict banking promotional policies and employment policies and practice were identified as barriers that impedes female career advancement. The study also discovered that there is no form of gender discrimination in the banking sector in Lagos state. The study concluded that the findings would help in the better understanding of the career development of female bankers in Lagos state, Nigeria. The study recommended that Banks promote the personal well-being of their female employees, introduce and effectively implement family friendly policies, and review the promotion and employment policies.

PurposeThis paper contributes to the existing literature on the gender gap in academic career advancement by focusing on the very early stage of the academic career, i.e. the transition from Ph.D. completion to a tenured position.Design/methodology/approachUsing Italian individual-level data, our econometric analyses estimate the likelihood of holding a tenured position conditional on a set of individual-level covariates.FindingsOur findings support the idea that women have a lower probability of obtaining a tenured position. Results hold even when research productivity and experience are controlled for.Originality/valueOur conclusions suggest that there is a significant gender gap in progression through an academic career.

Despite significant advancements in women's higher education in Indonesia, where female enrolment now surpasses that of men, major gender disparities persist in the labor market. This paper investigates the enduring paradox of "Excelling on Campus, Lagging in the Workplace," wherein higher educational attainment for women does not translate into equitable outcomes in labor force participation, remuneration, and career advancement. Employing a qualitative methodology through a systematic literature review, this study synthesizes and critically analyzes existing national data, institutional reports, and academic literature. The analysis is framed by the Feminist Critique of Human Capital Theory, arguing that conventional economic models fail because they ignore the entire sphere of social reproduction the unpaid domestic and caregiving labor that is disproportionately shouldered by women. The findings demonstrate that the participation gap, wage disparities, and the "glass ceiling" are not separate issues but are interconnected manifestations of a system that structurally penalizes women for their socially-mandated reproductive roles. The study concludes that achieving substantive gender equality in Indonesia requires a policy shift beyond merely promoting education, necessitating a fundamental re-evaluation of the value of reproductive labor and the implementation of policies that directly address these structural barriers.

This study investigates whether an increase in the demand for nonconventional work schedules helps explain the gender gap in career advancement. We look at employees of U.S. firms acquired between 2010 and 2014 and distinguish between same and different time-zone acquisitions. The idea is that time-zone differences between the headquarters and the newly acquired firm increase the demand for and value of working outside the standard working schedule. This, combined with social norms about women’s role as caregivers, puts female employees at a disadvantage relative to men. Based on Zephyr-LinkedIn matched data, our results show that women are about 9.5% less likely than men to be promoted in cross-time-zone acquisitions than in same-time-zone acquisitions. The gap rises to 10.6% for managerial occupations, and it is higher for time-zone differences of two and three hours. We discuss the implications of our results for the management, evaluation, and retention of human capital in organizations and, more generally, for gender equality in the workplace. Funding: The authors thank the Editor and three autonomous referees for their comments on previous drafts of the paper. The authors also thank participants to the Strategy Science Virtual Conference 2020, the Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SIE) Virtual Seminars held in December 2020, the Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference 2021, and the Work and Organization Workshop held in Madrid in May 2022. The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Invernizzi Center for Research on Innovation, Organization, Strategy and Entrepreneurship (ICRIOS) at Bocconi University. S. Breschi also acknowledges financial support through the MUSA – Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action [ECS 000037] and the GRINS – Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable [PE00000018] projects, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU, under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17685 .

In Korea, the number of older workers has been increasing due to the rapid aging of the population. However, research addressing the employment issue of older adults is relatively lacking. This study examined the factors that determine the labor market participation, income level, and job satisfaction among individuals who aged 60 and older, focusing on person-related, family-related and job-related characteristics. This study analyzed data on the respondents who aged 60 and over from the 2020 Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (KLoSA) dataset of the Korea Employment Information Service. The Heckman’s sample selection model was applied in the analyses which included data on both labor market participants and non-participants. Data analysis was first conducted on the entire sample, and then data separated by gender were also analyzed. The results showed that the factors determining the older adult’s employment were personal characteristics such as gender, age, subjective health status and so on, as well as household characteristics such as the number of children, cohabitation with children, household net assets and so on. The level of earned income and job satisfaction of the workers were influenced not only by person- or family-related characteristics, but also by job-related characteristics such as occupational type and job status. Moreover, the findings showed that the factors influencing the employment status, earned income level, and job satisfaction of older adults differed by gender. For example, the female older workers tended to have lower incomes, lower job satisfaction, and a lower proportion of full-time workers than the male workers. The discussion raised the need to create high-quality jobs tailored to the individual characteristics of the older workers based on the findings. It was also pointed out that there is a need for stable jobs for older women, who are in worse working conditions than men.

This research investigates the impact of flexible working arrangements (FWAs) on individual net labor income. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we employ fixed effects and instrumental variable models to examine whether having more control over work causes a higher wage level. The study indicates that work autonomy is positively and statistically significantly associated with individual net labor income. As job segmentation and house ownership are used as instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity, we find that FWAs improved productivity and income levels with a higher coefficient than we previously concluded in the baseline model. The findings also emphasize the complex interaction between FWAs and work-life balance, where variables such as housework time and the number of children can negatively affect earnings. This study contributes to the understanding of FWAs' function in income determination and provides insights for designing jobs to maximize both worker performance and financial outcomes.

This study examines how public policies affect parents’ preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers’ and fathers’ work–family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of ‘partner months’ in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 (N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers’ preferences for longer and mothers’ preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.

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This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the increase in gender inequality in paid work during the pandemic to unpack the relative relevance of labor market and work-family conflict processes. Using panel data from the United States Current Population Survey, we examine four mechanisms in an integrated analysis that explicitly includes single-parent households and assesses the moderating role of women’s economic position relative to their partners. The results indicate that increases in gender inequality during the pandemic were heavily concentrated in households with children but also partly connected to gender differences in prepandemic labor market positions and to the higher prevalence of women in lower earner position relative to their partners. Single parents were more negatively impacted than partnered parents, but the disproportionate concentration of this impact on women does not contribute much to increases in overall gender inequality due to the relatively smaller size of this group.

For a sample of Central and Eastern European countries, characterized by historically high female labor force participation and currently low fertility rates, we analyze whether fathers’ increased involvement in the family (housework and childcare) has the potential of increasing both fertility and maternal employment. Using two waves of the Generations and Gender Survey, we show that more paternal involvement in the family increases the likelihood that the mother will have a second child and work full-time. Men’s fertility and work decisions are instead unrelated to mothers’ housework and childcare. We also show that fathers’ involvement in housework plays a more important role than involvement in childcare. The role of fathers’ involvement in housework is confirmed when we consider women who initially wanted or intended to have a child, whose partner also wanted a child, or who intended to continue working.

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PurposeAlthough women have advanced in the economic sphere, the gender pay gap (GPG) remains a persisting problem for gender equality. Using Acker's theory of gendered organisations, this study strives to gain a better understanding from a macro and micro approach, how family and work-related policies, especially family-friendly measures (FFMs), and their uptake, contribute and maintain the GPG in Malta and specifically within the Financial and Insurance sector.Design/methodology/approachTwo research instruments were used. National policy documents were analysed through the gender lens, followed by structured interviews with HR managerial participants within this sector.FindingsFindings suggest that at a macro level, family and work-related policies could be divided into two broad categories: A set of family-friendly policies that contribute to the GPG because of their gendered nature, or because the uptake is mostly taken by women. These include make-work pay policies, which initially appear to be gender neutral, but which attracted lower educated inactive women to the Maltese labour market at low pay, contributing to an increase in the GPG. Second, a set of policies that take on a gender-neutral approach and help reduce the GPG. These include policies like the free childcare and after school care scheme that allow mothers to have a better adherence to the labour market. At the micro level within organisations, pay discrepancies between women and men were largely negated and awareness about the issue was low. Here, “ideal worker” values based on masculine norms seemed to lead to covert biases towards mothers who shoulder heavier care responsibilities in the families and make a bigger use of FFMs. Because men are better able to conform to these gendered values and norms, the GPG persists through vertical segregation and glass ceilings, among others.Research limitations/implicationsSince not all the companies in the Eurostat NACE code list participated in this research, results could not be generalised but were indicative to future large-scale studies..Practical implicationsAt the macro and policy level, some FFMs take on a clear gendered approach. For example, the disparity in length between maternity (18 weeks) and paternity leave (1 day) reinforces gender roles and stereotypes, which contribute to the GPG in the long run. While some FFMs like parental leave, career breaks, urgent family leave, telework, flexible and reduced hours seem to take on a more gender-neutral approach, the uptake of FFMs (except childcare) seems to generate discriminatory behaviour that may affect the GPG. When considering the make-work pay policies such as the “in-work benefit” and the “tapering of benefits”, this study showed that these policies attracted lower educated and low-skilled women into the labour market, which in turn may have further contributed to the increasing GPGs. On the other hand, the childcare and after school policies relieve working mothers from caregiving duties, minimising career interruptions, discriminatory behaviour and overall GPGs.Social implicationsThis study confirmed that organisations within the Financial and Insurance sector are gendered and give value to full-time commitment and long working hours, especially in managerial roles. Managerial positions remain associated with men because mothers tend to make more use of FFMs such as parental leave, reduced, flexible hours and teleworking. Mothers are indirectly penalised for doing so, because in gendered organisations, the uptake of FFMs conflict with the demands of work and ideal worker values (Acker, 1990). This maintains the vertical segregation and widens the GPG within the Financial and Insurance sector.Originality/valueBy using the gender lens and taking a wider and more holistic approach from the macro and micro level, this study highlights how interlinking factors lead to and sustain the GPG in the Financial and Insurance sector in Malta.

Although evidence suggests a correlation between fertility and employment, comparative studies on this topic are relatively scarce, particularly when considering the diverse ways in which the two variables interact in different countries. The aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between the employment and reproductive behaviours of women born between 1940 and 1979 in seven European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Georgia, Italy, and Lithuania). Using data from the second wave of Generation and Gender Surveys (GGS) and the Istat survey Famiglia e Soggetti Sociali (FSS) in Italy, we estimated the propensity of first and second childbirth through multi-process modelling. The article’s contribution is both theoretical and methodological. First, this research aims to investigate the correlation between employment and the timing of first and second births in a comparative perspective challenging the traditional East-West divide in Europe and the potential convergence in the impact of employment on fertility behaviours across European countries. Furthermore, the study asks whether the relationship between employment and fertility is changing similarly across European countries or whether differences tend to persist over time. The results are discussed considering women’s emancipation in different institutional settings, highlighting how women’s participation in labour markets affects reproductive behaviour. In particular, the relationship between employment and fertility behaviour is examined in relation to the opposing macro-level thesis, which suggests that the association between employment and fertility changed from negative to positive after the mid-80s. The second contribution of the article is a methodological one. It involves using simultaneous models with three equations to account for potential unobserved factors that influence the timing of the first and second childbirth and the potential endogeneity of employment status on fertility behaviour. The three equations include two log-Hazard equations for the transitions to the first and second birth order and an additional probit model to estimate the probability of being currently employed over the life course. By using this approach, we aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between employment and fertility, while controlling for potential confounding factors. Results suggest relevant national differences. On the one hand, the three Western countries considered in the analysis, France, Germany, and Italy, show a clear incompatibility of work and childbearing. However, in the first two, younger cohorts seem to be less affected by employment, likely because they benefitted from family policies introduced after the mid-1980s. On the other hand, the post-socialist countries are highly heterogeneous. In this area, we can find three different models. First, in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic employment is largely compatible with fertility choices resulting in a higher propensity of having the first and the second childbirth among working women. Second, in Lithuania the positive impact of employment for the first childbirth turns negative for the second one. Third, in Georgia we found a clear postponement of childbirth among working women for both birth orders. Overall, our results show deep differences across countries, suggesting that some European countries are far from demonstrating convergence in the relationship between employment and fertility.

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