The Role of Motherhood

EBERHARD-­‐KARLS-­‐UNIVERSITÄT TÜBINGEN INSTITUT FÜR SOZIOLOGIE SEMINAR: GENDER INEQUALITY WS 2012/2013 DOZENTIN: PROF. DR. LEEN VANDECASTEELE

COMMENTARY PAPER THE ROLE OF MOTHERHOOD Getting a Job: Is there a Motherhood Penalty?

The main topic in the text written by Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard and In Paik is the discrimination of mothers in the search of a job and in their working environment. The authors of the text deal with the question if there is some sort of a “motherhood penalty“. First, they give an insight on the current state of research and summarize the result of different studies and come to the conclusion that there is a lot of discrimination against mother in their workplace. The different studies did find some interesting results: Mothers suffer from „a substantial wage penalty”, especially women under the age of 35, where the pay gap between mothers and nonmothers is even lager than the pay gap between the genders. But the disadvantages are not limited to pay: Another study concludes that a mother appears less competent than a woman without children. This also applies to visibly pregnant women,