Working Moms Make Less Than Childless Women
As a working mom, I found this statistic a little shocking and very disappointing.
A recent study has found that the pay gap for women with one child and women with no kids is about 15%. And when you have more than one kid that gap rises to 20%.
Researchers call it the Motherhood Penalty
So not only are women making 81 cents to every dollar a man makes, mothers are making even less than that.
And perhaps the most appalling part of this research...most men are actually given raises when kids come into the picture.
The researchers behind this study, Eunjung Jee, a PhD candidate at UMASS Amherst, Joya Mirsa, Professor of Sociology at UMASS Amherst, and Marta Murray-Close, a Research Economist with the U.S. Census Bureau, call it the Motherhood Penalty.
Their study finds that even though many more moms are working after having kids, they aren't seeing any pay changes to help handle the financial responsibilities of a new child (like their male counterparts are).
Mirsa seems to even go so far as to say women may want to avoid mentioning they are a mom in their interview to avoid the pay discrepancy altogether.
And they hope that their findings can help bring about policies aimed at supporting mothers' employment.