The Influence of Organizational Family-Friendly Arrangements on Labour Market Behaviour of Mothers after Childbirth

Corinna Frodermann , Institute for Employment Research
Ann-Christin Bächmann, Institute for Employment Research

Employment has become an inherent part of women’s life concept in Germany. Nevertheless, women are still primarily responsible for household and family work—especially after a child is born. Accordingly, mothers still interrupt their careers more often to take care of the child than fathers. These family-related employment interruptions are accompanied by far-reaching negative career consequences such as wage losses and lower promotion prospects promoting gender inequalities in the labour market. Research has shown that the extent of these negative consequences is highly correlated with the duration of the employment interruption as well as with employer changes when re-entering the labour market. Simultaneously, an increasing share of German establishments offers arrangements to improve the reconciliation of family and working life. However, there have been only few studies to date on the effect of these organizational arrangements, none of them analysing the effect on labour market behaviour of mothers after childbirth. By using German linked employer-employee data and running time-specific piecewise constant models, our results based on almost 10.000 women reveal that organizational family-friendly measures have a positive effect on women's return to the labour market after childbirth. However, the effects are determined by the structural context and are not time constant but vary according to the age of the child. Furthermore, family-friendly arrangements reduce the likelihood of employer changes when re-entering the labour market.

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 Presented in Session 40. Partner Formation, Union Dissolution and Consequences