Do Family-friendly Job Amenities Explain Women’s Lower Earnings? The Effects of Paid Leave and Flextime

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14. Work-Life Balance

Abstract

One explanation for the gender gap in pay is that women choose to maximize non-waged amenities in their choice of employment, while men prioritize earnings. Prior research has tested this theory of compensating differentials by examining the relationship between wages and hazardous working conditions and flexible scheduling, but with mixed results. We argue that certain forms of non-monetary compensation, especially so-called “family friendly benefits”, can be theorized as job amenities that would allow women to better balance their work and family responsibilities. If the theory of compensating differentials is correct, these family-friendly job amenities should help explain the gender wage gap. Using individual-level data from 5,006 working adults in the Leave Module of the American Time Use Survey, we document the association between access to various forms of paid leave and women’s employment. We show that access to paid sick leave, paid parental leave, paid family leave, paid personal leave, and flextime is generally higher for women than for men, and in female-dominated occupations compared to male-dominated ones. However, including these amenities in regression models does not attenuate the negative effect being female has on wages. Our findings indicate that the gender wage gap is not offset by women choosing to take a larger portion of their total compensation in the form of family-friendly job amenities. We discuss the significance of our findings for the gender wage-gap and motherhood penalty.

Authors

• Miriam Barcus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Leann M. Tigges, University of Wisconsin - Madison