Why having a baby remains a career obstacle for women

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Young women are starting to overtake their male peers in education and employment in developed economies across Europe and North America. Data shows that women in their early twenties are more likely to be university educated and in work than men of the same age.

However, this cohort of under 30-year-olds has not yet encountered one of the most significant career obstacles: having a baby.

“Parenthood hits and suddenly these [gender] gaps emerge,” says Susan Harkness, a professor of social policy at the UK’s University of Bristol, who researches family and the labour market. “Even where women are earning more than their partners before their first child, that reverses pretty quickly within the first five years.”

The enduring “motherhood penalty” reflects a range of economic and cultural factors. While the number of stay-at-home mothers has declined, women are still far more likely to find their earnings stagnate as they fit work commitments around family and hold back from job moves that would advance their career.

Generally speaking, “the woman is the one who takes the flexible job, handles sick days and picks up from school at 3pm”, says Henrik Kleven, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, in the US.

“All these things make it a little harder to get promoted,” he adds.

Financial pressures, from high childcare costs to taxation policies, also incentivise couples to prioritise one parent’s career over the other.

As much as a decade after the birth of the first child, mothers are less likely to be employed than fathers in almost 85 per cent of the 134 economies included in a 2024 study co-authored by Kleven. In more than half, including the US, UK and Germany, women are 20 per cent less likely to be in work a decade after their first child is born.

Yet research by Kleven also suggests that the rise in working mothers is reshaping their children’s expectations about combining parenthood and employment. In fact, there is an indirect effect on expectations by their fellow students that mothers will be in employment.

Nevertheless, surveys in both the US and UK show that gender norms persist in that women continue to shoulder far more of the childcare and household chores than men, despite also taking on more responsibility in the workplace.

Harkness says the good news is that “culture isn’t static”, while policy changes, such as tackling childcare costs, can make a difference. And, she adds: “One thing companies could do is to pay more attention to who they’re promoting, as fathers who stay [at the same employer] tend to get promoted but women don’t.”

The most recent annual Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey, the consultancy, shows that representation in corporate management has improved over the past decade. But it also highlights a decline in mentoring and sponsorship programmes, which can help to close the promotion gap between mothers and fathers.

Against this background, there has been a sharp rise in companies offering fertility support for prospective parents. Workplace consultancy Mercer reports that 70 per cent of US companies with 20,000-plus employees and almost half those with 500-plus employees now offer IVF health insurance coverage as an employee benefit, twice as many as five years ago.

Companies across the globe increasingly regard fertility support as an investment, says Tammy Sun, founder of Carrot, a reproductive benefits company. “Women are building their families later than previous generations . . . and increasingly see fertility benefits as a standard part of compensation at work,” she observes.

In the UK, the latest data from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the regulator, shows that the use of egg freezing and storage has increased ten-fold and embryo storage has increased 16-fold between 2012 and 2022. US data shows egg and embryo freezing has increased seven-fold over the decade to 2022.

Sun adds that conversations around fertility and parenthood are noticeably more open than a decade ago. And that includes men too: “It serves women for the conversation to also include men — and I think that’s now happening.”