Mothers ‘penalised’ for working part time
MOTHERS ARE incurring a “pay penalty” because they tend to spend more time in part-time employment, a new study has found.
As a result of taking part-time jobs, mothers do not benefit from pay rises associated with more experience, so that by the time a first child reaches the age of 20, their mothers earn about 30 per cent less on average than fathers with a similar education.
The pay gap is partially explained by mothers in part-time jobs or taking breaks from work altogether, the study funded by the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation and published by the Institute of Financial Studies (IFS) found. Even before women have children, they earn about ten per cent less than men – and the gap increases “rapidly” for many after they have children.
The study found that overall, the gender wage gap has fallen from 28 per cent to 18 per cent since the early 1990s for the less well-educated, but is still at 22 per cent for the highesteducated.
IFS associate director Monica Costa Dias said many likely reasons for persistent gender wage gaps are being investigated by researchers, but that working parttime has a long-term depressing effect is an important contributing factor.
Ms Dias said: “It is remarkable that periods spent in part-time work lead to virtually no wage progression at all.
“It should be a priority for governments and others to understand the reasons for this. Addressing it would have the potential to narrow the gender wage
gap significantly.” Robert Joyce, IFS associate director, added: “It is now the highest-educated women whose wages are the furthest behind their male counterparts, and this is particularly related to the fact that they lose out so badly from working part-time.”
Sam Smethers, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said the jobs market must change to help parents “to get on” and that the study proves that women’s talents are being undervalued.
“That is a blow to our productivity and a huge problem for the economy as a whole,” she said.
“We need to make it possible for part-time work to keep women on the career ladder. Employers should offer all roles, including more senior ones, as flexible working unless there is a good business case not to, and create more senior part-time roles. It is time to change our jobs market to one which helps parents, especially mothers, to get on.”
Helen Barnard, the head of analysis at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, believes it is not right to treat part-time workers as if they are less valuable than full-timers.
She said: “The majority of women working part-time are mothers, who often work parttime so that they can also take care of children or other adults. But they pay a heavy price for trying to balance these two roles. The poverty rate for part-time workers is double that for fulltime workers.”