Those who become mothers before 33 earn 15% less than peers who do not, finds study marking International Women’s Day

Women who become mothers before 33 earn 15% less than their peers who have not had children, the Trades Union Congress is to say as it calls for better childcare support to tackle the “motherhood pay penalty”.

The TUC’s analysis to mark International Women’s Day on Tuesday says the disparity is down to younger mothers being more likely to have had a significant period out of work or working part-time, before returning to full-time work when their children are older.

In contrast to those who have children early in their careers, women who have their first child at 33 or older enjoy a wage bonus of 12% compared with similar women who have not had children, according to the research carried out for the TUC by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The TUC says many older mothers are higher earners and more senior in their workplaces, so are more able to afford full-time childcare.

The researchers said that this cohort of women who had become mothers after 33 and were in full-time work at 42 were more likely to be those women who had “maintained continuity of employment through the transition to motherhood”.



“And they are more likely to be those for whom it made financial sense to return to full-time work when their children were under five (for example, because their earnings significantly outstrip the costs of formal childcare),” the researchers added.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the findings backed up union campaigns for better support for working parents.

“This research shows that millions of mothers still suffer the motherhood pay penalty,” she said. “We need to do far more to support all working mums, starting by increasing the number of quality part-time jobs and making childcare much more affordable. Women in full-time, well-paid jobs shouldn’t be the only ones able to both become parents and see their careers progress.”

Using the 1970 Birth Cohort study, the IPPR analysis compared mothers’ full-time earnings with those of full-time women with similar levels of education and in similar jobs but without children. The research will form part of a wider TUC report on working parents to be published later this year.

To address the pay gap for mothers, the TUC wants more free childcare from the end of maternity leave and support for more equal parenting roles.

“The introduction of shared parental leave was a step towards this but because of the poor pay and restrictive eligibility requirements for fathers it is likely to have limited impact. We need some better paid, fathers’ only [rather than shared] leave,” the study said.

The TUC is also advocating more better-paid jobs to be available on reduced hours or as flexible working, to prevent women getting stuck in low-paid, part-time work after having children.

The Fawcett Society has also highlighted a “motherhood penalty”. The women’s rights charity said its research revealed that mothers were viewed as less committed, while fathers were regarded as more committed.

It polled 8,000 people and found that when a woman has a baby, 46% of people believe she becomes less committed to her job, compared with just 11% believing a man becomes less committed. In contrast, 29% of people believe men become more committed after having children compared with just 8% for women.

The divide in perceptions was driving inequality and forcing women and men into traditional male breadwinner; female carer roles, said Fawcett Society’s chief executive, Sam Smethers.

She called for more flexible work options to help parents, saying: “We need a new option – flexibility first. We need to start from a different place and assume that all jobs are flexible working jobs unless there is a good business case for them not to be.”

A separate report from the International Labour Organisation has highlighted that inequality between women and men persists throughout the global labour market.

Analysing data from 178 countries to mark International Women’s Day, the UN agency concluded that significant progress made by women in education over the last two decades had not translated into comparable improvements in their position at work.

Globally, women still earn on average 77% of what men earn, according to the report Women at Work: Trends 2016.

“The report shows the enormous challenges women continue to face in finding and keeping decent jobs,” said the ILO director general, Guy Ryder.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We’ve gone further than ever before in tackling the gender pay gap – and the gap has been virtually eliminated for women under 40 working full time. However, we know there is more to do to, which is why we are requiring companies with more than 250 workers to publish their gender pay gap and why we are extending this to the public sector as well.

“We are also introducing a range of measures to help both mothers and fathers balance having a family with their career, such as our plans to offer 30 hours of free childcare for working parents, the extension of shared parental leave and the right to request flexible working.”