The Motherhood Penalty and Maternity Leave Duration: Evidence from a Field Experiment

There is evidence that women continue to struggle in the labour market across a number of employment outcomes. This is despite the adoption of policies and practices that are designed to support women in achieving equality in the workplace. There is also evidence that women with children face particular challenges in the labour market. This is commonly referred to as the motherhood penalty. The literature offers evidence of the motherhood penalty in the recruitment process but the role of maternity leave has not been examined directly. The purpose of this study is to explore the motherhood penalty in employment-to-employment and nonemployment-to-employment transitions. A field experiment is conducted to examine the effect of maternity leave duration on firm behaviour in the hiring decision. The results indicate that the probability of receiving a callback from potential employers decreases initially with a maternity leave absence but it does not continue to decrease with longer maternity leave absences. There is recent experimental research on duration dependence that does not find similar results for unemployment spells. The evidence from this study then suggests that policies to increase the employment of and the labour force participation of women should be targeted specifically to women, in particular women with young children.Ph.D