Motherhood penalty

The motherhood penalty is a term coined by sociologists who argue that in the workplace, working mothers encounter systematic disadvantages in pay, perceived competence, and benefits relative to childless women. Specifically, women may suffer a per-child wage penalty, resulting in a pay gap between non-mothers and mothers that is larger than the gap between men and women. Mothers may also suffer worse job-site evaluations indicating that they are less committed to their jobs, less dependable, and less authoritative than non-mothers. Thus, mothers may experience disadvantages in terms of hiring, pay, and daily job experience. The motherhood penalty is not limited to one simple cause but can rather be linked to many theories and societal perceptions. However, one prominent theory that can be consistently liked to this penalty is the work-effort theory. It is also based on the mother's intersectionality. There are many effects developed from the motherhood penalty including wage, hiring, and promotion penalties. These effects are not limited to the United States and have been documented in over a dozen other industrialized nations including Japan, South Korea, The United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. The penalty has not shown any signs of declining over time. The motherhood penalty is a term coined by sociologists who argue that in the workplace, working mothers encounter systematic disadvantages in pay, perceived competence, and benefits relative to childless women. Specifically, women may suffer a per-child wage penalty, resulting in a pay gap between non-mothers and mothers that is larger than the gap between men and women. Mothers may also suffer worse job-site evaluations indicating that they are less committed to their jobs, less dependable, and less authoritative than non-mothers. Thus, mothers may experience disadvantages in terms of hiring, pay, and daily job experience. The motherhood penalty is not limited to one simple cause but can rather be linked to many theories and societal perceptions. However, one prominent theory that can be consistently liked to this penalty is the work-effort theory. It is also based on the mother's intersectionality. There are many effects developed from the motherhood penalty including wage, hiring, and promotion penalties. These effects are not limited to the United States and have been documented in over a dozen other industrialized nations including Japan, South Korea, The United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. The penalty has not shown any signs of declining over time. The most frequently hypothesized explanation of the motherhood wage penalty is that childbearing and childrearing disrupt formal education and on-the-job training. However, evidence suggests that educational and training differences between mothers and non-mothers do not entirely explain the penalty for motherhood. The wage gap is not a universal percentage across the US. It varies by state and occupation. It is less prominent in teaching and nursing roles, as these are caregiving careers and therefore seen as 'women's work'. However, in construction, for example, the wage gap becomes more drastic and even more so for African American women and Latina women. If these women become mothers, their wage gap become more significant as they are then faced time off of work and barriers in the resources and policies that their company has in place. When compared it is shown that sole mothers experience not only more financial hard ship but they also lack positive psychosocial interaction and social support in the workforce. Sole mothers also experience an increased likely hood of health complications. Sole mothers face more obstacles when sustaining a job due to their increased risk of missing work due to challenges in finding quality, reliable, and affordable child care. Age plays a large role in the strength of the effects on a mother caused by the motherhood penalty. A study revealed that the effects of motherhood are strong at a younger age and are eventually weakened when the mother reaches her 40s or 50s. Therefore, if a mother chooses to have children at a younger age, her career may be more affected by the penalty than mothers who choose to wait until after their career has been established. Women who have children at the beginning of their careers have to make greater accommodations in their lives such as cutting back on education, taking more time off, and pass up on more promotions. These choices may have a longer lasting effect on the course of a woman's career than having children after being satisfied in a steady job. Having children at a young age reinforces the idea of motherhood as a status of choice and may reflect to an employer that the woman chooses motherhood over a career. A theoretical claim advanced in the performance expectations and evaluations of workplace competence is that motherhood is a 'status characteristic'. Status characteristic theory defines a status as a categorical distinction among people such as a personal attribute (e.g., race, gender, physical attractiveness) or role (e.g., motherhood, manager, level of education), that has a cultural understanding or belief attached to it. Status characteristics associate greater status worthiness and competence in some distinctions than with others, and they become notable when the characteristic is believed to be directly relevant to the task at hand. The theoretical construct linking status characteristics, such as race or gender, to differences in behaviors and evaluations is 'performance expectations'. According to this theory, people implicitly expect more competent task performances from those with more valued status characteristics, and as a result, the people expected to offer more competent performances are evaluated more positively and are given more opportunities. The central idea of the theory and empirical research is that ability standards are stricter for those with lower performance expectations or devalued status characteristics. Since performances of lower status actors (mothers) are critically scrutinized, even when 'objectively' equal to that of their high-status counterparts (non-mothers), they are less likely to be judged as competent in demonstrating task ability. Status characteristics Theory claims that the standard used to evaluate workers is systematically biased in favor of high-status groups. If motherhood is a devalued status in the setting of a workplace, mothers will be judged with harsher standards than non-mothers; therefore, will have to present greater evidence of their competence. Discrimination against mothers also stems from beliefs about control, choice, and autonomy. The concept of choice leads people to perceive disadvantaged individuals as responsible for their own condition, regardless of the social circumstances or unfair application of the disadvantage. In the context of discrimination against mothers in the workforce, beliefs about choice and control affect the penalties associated with becoming a mother. In the past, most women eventually became mothers. Today, more and more women are not becoming mothers largely due to the pursuit of career aspirations and educational goals by women. Therefore, motherhood is increasingly viewed as a choice that women have the freedom to make. Since motherhood is seen as a choice, employers view mothers as choosing children over their work. When a situation, such as motherhood, is perceived as controllable, the moral judgment associated with that perception leads to discrimination. Consequently, mothers who are perceived as having more control over their status as mothers are penalized more than mothers who are perceived as having less control. An experiment done on hiring practices showed that mothers are discriminated against more strongly, in terms of hiring and salary recommendations, when understandings of choice were primed. Normative discrimination stems from descriptive and prescriptive stereotyping. Descriptive stereotypes are widely shared beliefs about different traits and abilities men and women possess. Due to descriptive stereotypes, men are assumed to be intelligent and assertive, which are qualities often associated with leadership and workplace achievement. Women are assumed to possess greater communal qualities and helping behavior such as warmth, empathy, and selflessness. Discrimination based on descriptive stereotypes occurs when women are seen as unfit or insufficiently competent to perform a stereotypical male job. While descriptive stereotypes influence beliefs about what men and women can do, prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes influence beliefs about what men and women should or should not do to follow societal norms. The expectations of an ideal employee and an ideal parent are influenced from the past when men composed the majority of the workforce while women were often confined to household duties and childcare. Benard and Correll conducted a study that found mothers are still currently discriminated against even when they prove their competence and commitment. They discovered that evaluators viewed highly successful mothers as less warm and more interpersonally hostile than comparable workers who are not mothers. Stereotypical gender role expectations cause many challenges for mothers who are reentering the workplace. Due to the fact that women are thought of as more caring, they are often expected to be the primary caregiver. When women break this stereotype, they are liked less because they are violating the prescriptive stereotypes about women as mothers.