The Motherhood Penalty
Photo credit: CBO creative planet . Have you heard of the term "The motherhood penalty"? It is the systemic disadvantage and loss of earnings women face in the workplace after having children, largely driven by lost career momentum, wage gaps, and caregiving biases. The severity varies globally based on cultural and economic factors. However, its impact is consistently felt across multiple areas of a woman's career. Research shows that in the U.S., full-time working mothers earn about 35% less than full-time working fathers. How will it then look like in Africa? Motherhood penalty does not only include wage gap, hiring and promotion bias, but also the "care penalty", where the burden of unpaid domestic labor and childcare disproportionately falls on women. The cost of child care is high and also is the cost of hiring domestic labour, hence, many women are forced to leave the workforce entirely or take reduced-hour/more flexible roles that pay less. If the...