Lucila Berniell
Economista Principal, CAF -banco de desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe-
Lucila Berniell (CAF) and Dolores de la Mata (CAF), co-authoring with Inés Berniell (FCE-UNLP and CEDLAS), María Edo (UdeSA) and Mariana Marchionni (FCE-UNLP, CEDLAS and CONICET).
In Latin America, gender gaps in the labor market remain large despite significant progress in recent decades in female labor force participation. This situation is also common in the most developed regions, where recent evidence concludes that motherhood is a key factor behind the persistence of these gaps. In Denmark, for instance, while motherhood explained 40% of gender gaps in job income back in 1980, in 2017 almost 80% can be attributed to women having children. Indeed, for many mothers, the birth of their first child involves quitting their job or working fewer hours, while those who remain employed receive a lower wage. Conversely, fathers are rarely affected by parenthood. This opens up gender gaps that persist even many years after the birth of the first child.
Is motherhood in Latin America also a determining factor in women’s labor outcomes? In this working document we show that despite institutional and cultural differences between our region and the most developed countries, motherhood here is also largely responsible for gender gaps in jobs and wages.
The effect of motherhood on labor market outcomes in Latin America
Gender gaps in Latin America are very large. In particular, female labor force participation is 27 percentage points lower than men’s. In addition, women earn 17% less than men with similar education and experience, and are highly underrepresented in senior positions, both in the private and public sectors. However, the available evidence on the effects of motherhood for our region is still very scarce. One exception is the recent publication in which we analyzed the impact of motherhood on labor informality in the Chilean case.
As shown in Figure 1, female labor force participation (panel A) falls dramatically after the birth of the first child (t=0), with a subsequent drop in earnings (panel B). In contrast, among women who remain employed, motherhood is associated with a very significant increase in informal work (Panel C). Noteworthy is that these results remain for up to 10 years after the birth of the first child.
Graph 1. Effects of the birth of the first child on mothers’ and fathers’ job situation in Chile
Source: Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect. Berniell, I; Berniell L.; de la Mata, D.; Edo, M.; Marchionni, M. Journal of Development Economics, Volume 150, 2021.
In a new working document we complement the analysis for Chile with three other Latin American countries: Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. We focus on these four countries because they have the necessary data to perform this type of analysis: Following up individuals over time is a must, covering both their labor trajectory and fertility of women and men. Our results in all cases are similar to the Chilean case, in particular in terms of virtually zero labor-related impacts on fathers and strong impacts on mothers.
The high price of time flexibility to balance family and work
In the four countries analyzed we find that motherhood drives mothers to engage in occupations that allow for greater time flexibility. For example, motherhood increases part-time job rate of mothers by 16 to 29 percent in the medium term, depending on the country, and up to 43 percent in the longer term. In addition, the birth of the first child triggers a significant increase in self-employment and work informality for mothers, but not for fathers. In the medium term, self-employment rates for mothers remain between 17 and 42 percent above their pre-children situation, while work informality rises by between 16 and 50 percent, depending on the country.
These occupational choices hide the high costs for women. Part-time employment, self-employment and informal work imply lower wages, absence or lower quality of social protection coverage, greater job instability and worse professional or career development prospects. In return, they only offer the much-needed time flexibility. Why are women – and not both parents – paying this high cost in the labor market when they become mothers? The answer to this question is closely related to social norms and the depth of public policies to reconcile family and work life in each country.
Using information from 18 Latin American countries, we compare the share in the job market of women who are mothers to those without children, as a way to assess the effect of motherhood in countries that do not have sufficient information to perform such analysis. Our finding is that in those countries with more equal social norms or better labor-family balance policies, mothers’ earnings tend to be more similar to those of non-mothers, i.e. the cost of motherhood in the labor market is lower. Figure 2 shows this relationship.
Graph 2. Changes in female employment associated with maternity: Falls in female labor force participation are greater in countries with less equal norms (panel A) and in those with less access to initial education (panel B)
Source: Motherhood and flexible jobs: Evidence from Latin American countries. Berniell, I; Berniell L.; de la Mata, D.; Edo, M.; Marchionni, M. CAF Working Papers Series 2021/01.
First, we found that in more equal countries the cost of motherhood appears to be lower (Panel A, Figure 2), which can be associated with social norms shaping unequal expectations about the role that mothers and fathers must play in childcare. In addition, and since mothers are the main care providers, the existence of broad child care policies is associated with a lower cost of motherhood in terms of female labor force participation (Panel B, Figure 2).
Promoting policies that foster co-responsibility at home, as well as those that allow for better work-life balance are key pillars for promoting female labor force participation, thus improving the quality of women’s jobs and reducing gender gaps in wages. In Latin America, there is still plenty of room to improve in this area.
