Occupational inflexibility and women’s employment during the transition to parenthood

Abstract

The typical U.S. workplace has adapted little to changes in the family and remains bound to norms of a workweek of 40 or more hours. How jobs are structured and remunerated within occupations shapes gender inequality in the labor market, and this may be particularly true at the critical juncture of parenthood. This study provides novel evi­dence show­ing how the inflex­i­bil­ity of occu­pa­tional work hours shapes new moth­ers’ employ­ment. We use a fixed-effects approach and indi­vid­ual-level data from nation-ally representative panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 2,239 women) merged with occupational characteristics from the American Community Survey. We find that women in pre-birth occu­pa­tions with higher shares work­ing 40 or more hours per week and higher wage pre­mi­ums to lon­ger work hours are sig­nifi­­cantly less likely to be employed post-birth. These asso­ci­a­tions are small in mag­ni­tude and not sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nifi­­cant for men, and pla­cebo regres­sions with child­less women show no asso­ci­a­tions between occu­pa­tional inflex­i­bil­ity and sub­se­quent employ­ment. Results illus­trate how indi­vid­ual employ­ment deci­sions are jointly constrained by the struc­ture of the labor market and persistent gendered cultural norms about breadwinning and caregiving.