The Job Task Penalty for Motherhood

Motherhood is one of the most important sources of gendered labor market inequalities. Working mothers have less prestige, less authority than childless women and experience a substantial wage penalty. Scholars have highlighted the potential relevance of motherhood effects on job tasks in explaining motherhood penalties, yet little is known about how job tasks change due to motherhood. Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study and employing fixed-effects models, we study within-person changes in job tasks following childbirth. Deriving hypotheses from central explanations of motherhood penalties—work-family strain, human capital deterioration, compensating differentials—we examine changes in job tasks and how they vary with mothers’ working hours, length of time out, and occupational mobility. The findings show that mothers execute fewer analytic, complex, and interactive tasks; however, this penalty is mostly limited to mothers who reduce their working hours. The reduction in job tasks does not vary by occupational mobility nor by length of leave. Overall, these findings are consistent with explanations that focus on work-family strain, and provide additional evidence for the importance of improving job conditions and the care infrastructure to mitigate motherhood disadvantages in the labor market.