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Young women are beginning to overtake male peers in education and employment in developed countries in Europe and North America. Data show that women in their early 20s are more likely to have a college education and be on the job than men of the same age.
However, this cohort under the age of 30 will not yet have a baby, one of the most important carrier disorders.
“Parents and children are hits, and all of a sudden these (gender) gaps appear,” says Susan Harkness, a professor of social policy at the University of Bristol in the UK who studies families and the labor market. “Even if a woman earns more than her partner before her first child, it turns out pretty quickly within the first five years.”
The permanent “maternal penalty” reflects a variety of economic and cultural factors. While the number of mothers at home is declining, women are much more likely to stagnate their revenues as they are tailored to work commitments around their families and are silenced from career-enhancing employment moves.
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Generally speaking, “This woman is the one who does flexible work, handles sick days at 3pm and picks her up from school,” says Henrik Kleven, professor of economics and public relations at Princeton University in the United States.
“All of these things make it a little harder to get promoted,” he adds.
From high childcare costs to tax policies, financial pressures encourage couples to prioritize one parent’s career over the other.
About a decade after the birth of their first child, mothers are less likely to be employed than their fathers in nearly 85 percent of the 134 economies included in the 2024 study co-authored by Cleven. In more than half of the population, including the US, UK and Germany, women are 20% less likely to get a job 10 years after their first child is born.
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However, research by Kleven also suggests that an increase in working mothers has changed children’s expectations about combining parental and employment. In fact, there is an indirect effect on the expectations of fellow students that their mothers will hire.
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Nevertheless, research in both the US and the UK shows that gender norms continue as women continue to take on far more childcare and household chores than men, despite having more responsibility in the workplace.
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Harkness says the good news is “culture is not static,” but changes to policy such as addressing childcare costs can make a difference. And she adds: “One thing a company can do is pay more attention to who they are being promoted, as fathers staying (with the same employer) tend to get promoted, but women aren’t.”
The latest women’s report from consulting McKinsey’s workplace shows that corporate management representatives have improved over the past decade. However, it also highlights a decline in mentoring and sponsorship programs, helping to bridge the promotion gap between mothers and fathers.
Against this backdrop, the number of companies providing infertility support to future parents is rapidly increasing. Workplace consultancy Mercer reports that 70% of US companies with more than 20,000 employees and almost half of employees with more than 500 employees offer IVF health insurance coverage as employee benefits five years ago, twice as much.
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Companies around the world view fertility support as an investment, says Tammysan, founder of Carrot, a reproductive benefits company. “Women are building families later than their previous generations. And the benefits of fertility are increasingly seen as a standard part of compensation in the workplace,” she said.
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In the UK, the latest data from the Department of Human Fertilization and Development, regulators show that egg freeze and storage use increased 10 times, and embryo storage increased 16 times between 2012 and 2022.
Sun adds that conversations about fertility and parent-child relationships are significantly more open than they were a decade ago. And that includes men too. “I serve women to include men for conversation, and I think that’s happening now.”
