Is the gender pay gap really a motherhood penalty?

In the UK, we saw a flurry of activity last week with companies publishing their gender pay gap results as the annual deadline approached. The figures are eye-catching and can provoke a real shock factor. After the outrage, curiosity sets in and the next question to ask is “why?”. In this post I explore what the gender pay gap means, what is causing it and whether we should all be braver with asking the difficult questions.

The detail

The nuance between equal pay and gender pay gap reporting can often be lost. Equal pay means that legally men and women must be paid comparably for doing the same role. The gender pay gap instead looks at everyone in the organisation (including the highest paid to the lowest paid) and calculates the average earnings for men and women. A large positive gap is indicative of those at the top earning the big bucks being male, whereas those in the lower paid jobs being female.

Sitting in the discomfort

I’m partial to a controversial statement. I’ve been known to make colleagues squirm in their seats as I poke the boundaries of what I am “allowed” to say. We find it so uncomfortable to ask the difficult questions, particularly when there’s any sort of authority facing us - whether that’s challenging the way thing have always been done or pushing to get to the real underlying reasons on why decisions are being made. I get it - sitting on the receiving end of having difficult questions directed to me this week has been uncomfortable, but it’s in that discomfort that we find our way to the truth.

To tackle the gap, we need to understand what the underlying components are. What’s really causing it? Is it imposter syndrome and a lack of peacocking behaviour from women? Or are we allowed to ask even more uncomfortable questions? What happens if I say how about we look at this data by parents instead? When I’ve voiced this, I thankfully haven’t been silenced, but there’s been a nervous “you can’t talk about this Claire! You’ll offend the women who aren’t mothers.”

Putting a number on it

Since I started becoming more aware of the gender pay gap (and the pensions gap), I’ve always had a hunch that 75% of the gap is down to motherhood. The actuary in me means I just can’t help but want to quantify it! There’s no doubt that maternity leave and part-time working mean that it is harder to climb the career ladder simply from a time perspective. There is of course the impact from the darker side too that we don’t want to publicly talk about - the perception of mothers as having other priorities, not being dedicated enough to their jobs and fundamentally not being as competent.

What the studies say

Imagine my delight when I stumbled across this PwC report which backed up my instinct that the motherhood penalty accounts for 75% of the gap in Northern and Western European countries. Not only that, but it gave me a few more statistics to have in my back pocket next time that I try to make the argument that organisations should be looking at the parenthood gap too:

• A study by a trade union in the UK found that by the age of 42, full-time employed fathers earned 21% more than men with similar backgrounds who did not have children. Rather than a motherhood penalty, there appears to be a “fatherhood bonus”.

• The same study quantified that mothers working full-time in the UK earned 7% less than women who did not have children by the age of 42.

Myth or radical action needed?

To counter my delight at my instincts being right, the reality that the motherhood penalty is indeed the main reason for the gap poses a huge challenge to overcome. Given that Google’s top suggested question on the topic is “is the gender pay gap a myth?”, I’m not sure that the collective desire to make drastic change is there. But I won’t be defeated just yet.

It turns out that you might think that you’re asking a difficult question, when really it might just be that you’re speaking to the wrong audience. Someone else asked the same question that I did and then wrote a 60 page report about it! Let’s take that as a sign to be braver with voicing those thoughts that challenge the status quo.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Let me know how you would like to shake things up to reduce the impact of the motherhood penalty - gentle suggestions are as welcome as the radical ones floating around in my mind!