Women continue to be paid less than men even for the same work, skills and abilities. Nowhere in the world has gender equality in wages and rights been achieved. This is also confirmed by the latest Global Gender Gap Index 2024, in which Italy ranked 87th and there are various studies and research to support how this influences the birth rate.
But it is realities like the that are surprising Norwaywhere gender norms are relatively egalitarian, but in which the wage gap still stands at 12.4% (2022 data). Right there, studies have been conducted to understand how much work, professional expectations, earnings and time management influence birth rates. Here’s what emerged.
Work flexibility and fertility: what link
Recently, theories about why the gender wage gap persists have focused on time flexibility. The teacher of Harvard Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, has argued several times that “greedy work”, that is, work that takes time away from private life, plays a key role: the ability to work at specific hours increases wages. Women who struggle to provide this time flexibility due to the demands of childcare will earn a lower wage.
L’Institute for Fiscal Studies decided to develop a theoretical model in which women with “greedy” work and motherhood that required equally much time and care were taken as examples and found a link between the increase in flexibility and the increase in fertility.
“We take advantage of the first Covid-19 lockdown in Norway in March 2020, that is, an unexpected and exogenous event, to study the impact that the increase in flexibility at work has on fertility – explained the researchers -. Norway has experienced distancing measures, travel restrictions and closures of schools and a number of service industries, with most higher-level occupations shutting down. transferred to smart working and home environments. The first surprising thing that emerged was the persistent number of births, nine months after the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown: around 0.8 additional monthly births per 1000 women, or 11% of baseline births in the same months in the previous three years. The increase in fertility is concentrated among employed women aged 25-39 with a partner.”
Scholars have categorized women among those in low- or high-flexible jobs immediately before the first lockdown. This categorization produced the possibility of measuring how much the lockdown increased flexibility: jobs with low flexibility had an increase in flexibility with the restrictions and those with high flexibility were already flexible and less affected by the transition to working from home. And the result is that the increase in fertility was concentrated among women with less flexible jobs before the lockdown: “We interpret this as evidence that increased flexibility due to lockdown has allowed these women to better balance career and family, in line with our theoretical model. We also establish that fertility increased more for women who earned above the average income before the lockdown.”
The results
Women who participated in the survey experienced more work interruptions during the day, but appreciated the option to work from home, they also benefit from parental leave from fathers and become more productive with more flexibility. “In the United States, the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a baby boom among American women, especially women with college degrees; the latter is similar to our results for Norway – the researchers continue -. Similar birth booms have been observed in Finland and Spain. Demographers have highlighted the role that the social security system may have played in increasing fertility in Norway; this is consistent with our findings, as the safety net reduced the Covid-19 uncertainty that Norwegian women faced, allowing changes in flexibility to increase fertility independently.”
The researchers collected data from three administrative sources: the Central Population Register, the Annual Income Register and the Monthly Employer-Employee Register of Statistics Norway and the Norwegian Tax and Social Security Administrations. Although many of the structural factors that contribute to the gender wage gap, including education and experience gaps, have disappeared, women continue to earn less than men for the same work. Recent research has supported that High-income careers pose specific time demands that are difficult to reconcile with family life.
“Our contribution is twofold – concluded the researchers -. First of all, we were able to demonstrate that when flexibility at work increases, the odds of giving birth increase for all women, but more so for women who experience a greater increase in flexibility, or who work long hours and earn more. Second, we were able to provide empirical evidence that changes in work flexibility drive fertility. During the first Covid-19 lockdown in Norway, the probability of giving birth increased more for women with less flexible jobs before the lockdown, and with incomes above the median, consistently with the theoretical model. If increased flexibility at work “levels the playing field” between mothers and non-mothers, this should have an additional stimulating effect on fertility. Until now, the discussion about declining fertility has focused on policies such as maternity leave and the provision of child care. Our findings highlight the importance of another dimension – flexibility at work – which has the power to guide fertility decisions and may become increasingly important as the nature of work changes.”
