Lopsided Gains: Overwork, Job Routineness, and the Motherhood Wage Penalty

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Employment, Economic Context, and Family

Abstract

Overwork is documented to be a positively rewarded commitment signal where employees show conformity to the ideal worker norm. As mothers are stereotypically discriminated against as non-ideal workers due to family-work conflicts, practicing overworking signals may buffer the mother-specific penalties caused by reduced productivity and employers’ under-evaluation. Using data from the 2003-2021 German Socio-Economic Panel and employing fixed-effects regressions, the study examines whether overwork attenuates the motherhood wage penalty and how this effect varies by women’s job routineness. Results show that while overworking beyond the contract-stipulated hours reduces the negative impact of motherhood status on wages, the attenuation effect is not evenly distributed in the labor market in Germany. Overwork lopsidedly mitigates the wage penalty in non-routine jobs, whereas the effect is rather scant in routine ones. The findings reveal that the commitment signal of overwork can attenuate motherhood penalties, but the effect is highly contingent on the job’s structural position in the routineness-based segmented labor market.

Authors

• Chengmin Ma, Fudan University

• Shichao Du, Fudan University