Women start their careers ahead, but the child penalty grinds the advantage away
Right out of college, male and female labor force participation is nearly identical; ten years later women have fallen behind, and over the next decade or two they partly come back — a curve that lines up closely with the timing of childbirth. What gets ground down is not ability, but continuous accumulation.
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Market competition is a woman's best friend
Zhao Yaohui relays an economic theory: market competition is the best friend of minorities or women. The logic is that employers initially wanted only single women, but market demand for white-collar work rose — once manufacturing scaled up it needed people to keep books, do accounting, sell — and women were better at these jobs, so employers were forced to recognize the value of married, already-childbearing women. Firms that discriminate against women cannot hire when the labor market is tight, get squeezed out, and have to change their attitudes and practices. She also notes that in the ranking of variables across this century of change, the birth control pill probably comes in third, because the quiet revolution let women postpone marriage and childbirth and pursue career success.
— Zhao YaohuiTop pay buys being on call at all times
The child penalty is most obvious in the fifth group of women in Goldin's classification. The mechanism is greedy jobs: in recent decades the wage gap has widened, mainly at the top occupations — finance, law, medicine — where incomes keep rising, and the price of that raise is the loss of free time, being summonable at any moment. Because women are the primary caregivers, they cannot walk out when a child has a fever during a board meeting or gets sick during surgery, so they can only choose fewer of these high-income occupations. The result is that before a child is born there is a ratio between husband's and wife's incomes, and after the birth the distance starts to widen: the husband's wage is unaffected, the wife's income drops, and this loss does not disappear even where benefits are generous — it runs 20 to 30 percent.
— Zhao YaohuiOnly unequal pay for equal work counts as discrimination
Zhao Yaohui first draws the boundary of discrimination: unequal pay for equal work is discrimination, unequal pay for unequal work is not. When women voluntarily choose jobs without overtime or simpler cases for family reasons, the resulting income gap is a child penalty, not discrimination. Real discrimination comes in two forms — differential treatment in hiring and promotion, and statistical discrimination: employers predict that although you have not had a child yet, you will in the future, that your future labor productivity may be low, and so they hire fewer women. She says this kind of discrimination is still quite common at the job-search stage.
— Zhao YaohuiRetiring female associate professors at 55 is discrimination
Zhao Yaohui names China's most obvious discrimination as not in the labor market but in the retirement age. Female university teachers who have not been promoted to full professor retire at 55, while men at the same level can go to 60; female workers retire at 50. This stems from a 1950s rule, when most work was manual and early retirement was a form of labor protection for women. But she says the era is completely different now: the share of manual labor is quite low, mental work has little to do with age, and the gap between men and women in mental ability can be considered nonexistent, so retiring five years early is utterly unreasonable. The other extreme is rural women, who are systematically excluded from collective property rights and land compensation; after divorce, neither her husband's family's land nor her natal family's land may include her.
— Zhao YaohuiWomen's advantage is not saved up, it slowly leaks away
Zhao Yaohui uses two cross-sections to illustrate this curve. Goldin found that right after college graduation, male and female labor force participation is nearly identical; ten years later women have fallen behind, and over the next decade or two they can come back somewhat, but not to where they were — because 996 and being on call at all times have a huge effect on individual skill upgrading, and that is exactly the period they are forced to give up. In schools there are many female lecturers, but far fewer full professors; in government there are quite a few female section and division chiefs, but at the director-general and minister level they are rare as phoenix feathers. She calls this a process of being filtered out.
— Zhao YaohuiPronatalist money cannot cover the opportunity cost
Why, with the three-child policy, extended maternity leave, parental leave and childcare subsidies appearing frequently, has the birth rate still not risen? Zhao Yaohui's explanation is that a large part of the cost of childbearing is indirect cost, opportunity cost, and direct cash payments are a drop in the bucket compared to the loss from giving up a career. More critical is coverage: female workers who actually have maternity leave are very few, less than half, and a large number of people in enterprises, self-employment, flexible employment and platform employment have no one paying maternity insurance for them. So the first priority of policy is to extend maternity leave coverage to all groups, so that during childbirth they have income compensation and can return to their original posts. She also warns that women in the career-promotion period, even with maternity leave, worry that after the leave the position and promotion opportunities will no longer be theirs.
— Zhao YaohuiLate marriage and late childbearing should not be encouraged across the board
Faced with the question of whether late marriage and late childbearing is the better solution, Zhao Yaohui's answer is that it depends on the individual. She acknowledges that some studies find later marriage means lower divorce rates — people are more mature, better matched, better at handling relationship problems; but physiologically, childbearing is easier when young and less likely to have problems, and fertility is best before 30. So the precondition is that the husband must understand and support: among her own colleagues there are many male teachers who, because they participate in childcare, also suffer a lot of child penalty. If culturally husbands take responsibility and society can have a large number of high-quality nurseries, women actually need not delay too much. Assisted reproduction is a matter of probability, with success rates perhaps reaching two-thirds; some people try nine times without success, and it cannot be relied on as a backstop.
— Zhao YaohuiA caregiver's attitude depends on whether you have children
Zhao Yaohui studies the elderly and points out that loneliness in old age is a very serious problem; many elderly people are depressed, partly from not getting enough social support. People are quite fragile when old, and nursing homes and nannies cannot replace the importance of children — when you are sick and hospitalized, the attitude of the caregiver, and in a nursing home the attitude of the staff, depends to a large extent on whether you have children. She also says this may make people panic, but the psychological comfort and sense of security children can bring is still quite important. She adds one more thing: being married but childless still does not solve this problem, and especially in old age when widowed, the value of children is even more obvious.
— Zhao YaohuiIn their own words · checked verbatim
About half of them were unable to have children, and one third could not marry. This is very extreme.
大概有一半的人 都没有能够有孩子 三分之一的人呢 都不能结婚 这是一个很极端的
Zhao Yaohui8:06
Economic theory says that market competition is the best friend of our minorities, or of women.
经济学理论上讲到呢 市场竞争 是我们的少数族裔 或者是女性最好的朋友
Zhao Yaohui14:08
For example, when you are in a board meeting and suddenly say your child has a fever, there is no way you can walk out.
比如说你在开董事会的时候 突然说你家孩子发烧了 你是没有办法走掉的
Zhao Yaohui17:11
The main thing is still some of the forms in the workplace, for example, the lack of flexibility in work, which makes it impossible for women to balance career and family.
最主要的呢 还是这个职场上面的一些形态 就是比如说像这个工作上面 缺乏灵活性 导致女性没有办法兼顾 事业和家庭
Zhao Yaohui24:14
Right after graduating from college, men and women are almost the same, but after ten years you find that women have fallen behind.
在刚刚大学毕业的时候 男女生几乎是一样的 但是过了十年 你就会发现女生落下来了
Zhao Yaohui31:21
Children often upend a career, and a career often upends a woman's ability to have children.
孩子往往会颠覆职业生涯 职业生涯则往往会颠覆女性生育孩子的能力
Zhao Yaohui39:27
First, at the mate-selection stage, you probably should not look for that kind of extremely macho man; you should look for a man who takes responsibility, has a sense of duty, and is willing to share the housework and family with you.
首先你在择偶的阶段呢 你可能就不要去找那种 特别大男主义的这种男人 要去找有担当 有责任心 愿意为你去分担 这些家务家庭的这些男人
Zhao Yaohui46:29
Figures
| Share of women in the first group (graduating around 1900) who did not have children | About half | 8:06 |
| Share of women in the same group who did not marry | One third | 8:06 |
| Range where the gender ratio stopped improving | 81% to 83% | 16:11 |
| Wife's income loss relative to husband's after childbirth | 20 to 30 percent | 18:13 |
| Retirement age for female teachers | 55, men 60 | 21:14 |
| Share of women among field students in the pension tracking survey | Three quarters | 28:18 |
| Share of female workers with maternity leave | Less than half | 37:26 |
| Share of women not covered by maternity leave | More than half | 38:27 |
| Assisted reproduction success rate | About two-thirds, optimistically 80% | 44:28 |
Glossary
- greedy jobs
- High-paying occupations that demand being on call at all times and strip away free time; the main source of the child penalty.
- quiet revolution
- The silent transformation in which the spread of the birth control pill allowed women to postpone marriage and childbirth and instead pursue careers.
- marriage bar
- Historical laws barring married women from certain occupations, or requiring them to be dismissed upon marriage.
- statistical discrimination
- Employers predict that a woman will have children in the future and have lower labor productivity, so they hire fewer women.
How to listen
Investors, HR people and policy researchers focused on the gender income gap, birth policy and workplace issues, as well as professional women currently weighing career against childbearing.
After 47:29, the discussion of the surge in feminist drama is fairly general and can be skipped.