At the end of 2015, the Institute for Democracy and Economic Analysis (IDEA) at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences published two studies focused on the situation of women with young children on the Czech labour market. The first analyses the high risk of unemployment among mothers after maternity leave; the second examines gender differences in wages in relation to maternity and parenthood.
From maternity leave to the labour office
From maternity to unemployment: Women with young children returning to the labour market by Alena Bičáková and Klára Kalíšková states that the behaviour of Czech women in the labour market is exceptional in two ways: "On the one hand, a very high percentage of Czech women without children and with grown-up children are involved in the labour market (the employment rate of women with children over 11 years of age in the Czech Republic is the highest in the EU). On the other hand, most of these women take full advantage of one of the longest periods of maternity leave in the EU and stay at home with their children for at least three years."
Long parental leave, often exceeding even the three-year protection period to return to work, means women are losing the human capital to perform their work. Interruption of their professional development significantly increases the risk of unemployment. Nearly 30% of women with two-year old children and 60% of women with three-year old children become unemployed directly after the end of maternity leave. The entire study is available online on this page.
Lower pay after maternity leave until retirement
Wage Differences Related to Motherhood and Children in the Family by Mariola Pytlíková confirms that the gender pay gap is associated with parenthood and increases with the number of children. The difference in median monthly wages is 20% between men and women with one child, 32% between men and women with two children and 36% between men and women with three or more children.
"The older the children, the lower the difference; however, the pay gap does not close down when children reach adulthood: in fact, it still remains higher than the difference in median wages of childless employees. The gender gap in median monthly wages is around 39% for parents with children aged 3–5; 37% for parents with children aged 6–9; and 30% for parents with children aged 10–18. The wage gap between men and women with adult children is approximately 24%. The difference in median monthly wages between childless men and women is around 15%," writes the author.
The interruption of work caused by long parental leave negatively affects women's subsequent pay until their retirement. A system granting one of the longest parental leaves in the world, along with the lack of institutional care facilities for young children and low number of flexible working schemes, negatively affects not only the economic situation of Czech women and their families but also the prosperity and economic performance of the entire Czech Republic. The study is available online here.
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