Occupational Inflexibility and Women's Employment During the Transition to Parenthood

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Labor Economics
• Gender Studies

Background:

• The U.S. workplace largely retains rigid work hour norms, ill-suited to modern family structures.
• Occupational job structures and pay influence gender inequality, especially during parenthood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how occupational work hour inflexibility affects new mothers' employment.
• To provide novel evidence on the link between job structure and maternal labor force participation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a fixed-effects approach with individual-level data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (N=2,239 women).
• Merged this data with occupational characteristics from the American Community Survey.

Main Results:

• Women in occupations with a higher prevalence of 40+ hour workweeks and greater wage premiums for longer hours were less likely to be employed post-birth.
• These effects were not statistically significant for men and absent in placebo regressions with childless women.

Conclusions:

• Occupational inflexibility significantly constrains new mothers' employment decisions.
• Labor market structures, combined with gendered cultural norms around work and caregiving, perpetuate gender inequality.