Mothers suffer with 3% less pay per child

Mothers suffer with a pay deduction of three per cent for every child they have, in comparison to female colleagues without children and Fathers, a new report has found.

Researchers from Université Paris-Saclay studied the effect of childbirth, separate to other firm-specific wage determinants, and accounting for full-time and part-time work over a 16-year period in the French private sector between 1995 and 2011.

They found that the difference between mothers and non-mothers is approximately a three per cent lower hourly wage.

Lionel Wilner, Director of Graduate Studies at engineering and statistics school ENSAE, Founding Member of Université Paris-Saclay, found that the effect was more pronounced after the birth of the first child.