The Motherhood Myth (wage gap series, part 5)

(This is one of a series of posts on the wage gap.)

Myth: The pay gap only exists because women take time off from work to raise kids.

This is a common belief, especially among anti-feminists. Typical is Patricia Hausman’s article on The National Review’s website, which claimed that “it is not being a woman, but being a mother, that causes noteworthy differences in earnings.” In Ms. Hausman’s view, sexism doesn’t harm women; instead, “females make trade-offs between high wages and other rewards in life.”

Motherhood doesn’t account for all of the pay gap.

Hausman is simply wrong to say that motherhood accounts for all “noteworthy differences in earnings.” Motherhood makes a difference, of course; many mothers spend a few years (and sometimes longer) out of the workforce. When a mother returns to the workforce, she of course has less work experience than her male co-workers, and understandably gets paid less.

But how much difference does that make, exactly? The economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn calculated the impact of a number of factors on the wage gap (Journal of Labor Economics volume 15, pages 1-42.). The largest factor (other than “unexplained”) was labor force experience; the average female worker has 12.79 years of full-time experience, while the average male worker has 17.41. This difference accounted for between 26% and 30% of the total wage gap.

Another approach was taken by the economists Robert Wood, Mary Corcoran and Paul Courant (Journal of Labor Economics, volume 11, pages 417-441). They examined one profession (lawyering) in great detail, following the careers of female and male graduates of the University of Michigan Law School. Fifteen years after graduation, the women in their sample were earning 61% of what men earned. A lot of that difference is because many of the mothers had taken time off from work, or worked fewer hours, in order to raise children. But even when the mothers were excluded from the sample, women were still paid only about 80% of what men were paid.

Why assume the “motherhood penalty” has nothing to do with sexism?

It’s true that motherhood makes a difference in wages. But why assume that difference has nothing to do with sexism?

There’s no reason to narrow the discussion to the narrow question of employer discrimination, overlooking ways that the larger society is sexist. Many feminists believe that in a non-sexist society, fathers and mothers would share equally in childcare; and therefore, any “parenting wage penalty” would be split equally among men and women. The fact that women are virtually the only ones hit by the parenting wage penalty doesn’t prove that sexism no longer exists; on the contrary, it shows that sexism still matters, and has a big negative impact on women’s wages. (It also has a negative impact on men’s contact with their families.)

The American job market was designed for men – in particular, it was developed in a society in which workers were men who had a wife at home to take care of the kids. Society has changed, but our jobs haven’t, and that works to the disadvantage of all working mothers (and to mothers who would like to work, but can’t find a job that will give them the flexibility they need to combine work and motherhood). Isn’t it sexist to expect mothers to fit into a work system that was designed for Father Knows Best?

Critics of the wage gap, like Ms. Hausman, claim that mothers freely choose to sacrifice work for family, but how free a choice is that? Mothers don’t have the option of simply ignoring their children’s needs (not only would that be inhumane, it’s also illegal). Even if a father is present, he may refuse to do half of the childcare – or his boss may not be willing to give him the time off. Nor is it practical to just say that “women shouldn’t have children if they want to work” – most families can’t afford to have mothers not work, and our society can’t survive if no one is producing the next generation.

Finally, to whatever extent some women freely choose to stay out of the labor market, the choice isn’t made in a void. The fact that women – even non-mothers – get rewarded less for wage-work than men means that women give less up if they choose to trade off paid work for motherhood. Women’s lower pay means women have less reason to stay in the paid work market; it also means that when a married couple decides that the lower-paid spouse should give up work for children, the spouse who happens to be lower paid will almost always be the wife. Economists call this a “feedback effect”; it’s likely that women earn less because they work less, but it’s also likely that women work less because of lower earnings.

To sum up, motherhood can account for a significant part of the wage gap. But motherhood doesn’t account for all of the wage gap. Nor is it safe to assume that the “motherhood penalty” has nothing to do with discrimination or sexism.