The gender pay gap has barely changed since the early 2000s. In the US women who work full time earn 84 percent of what men earn. Twenty years ago they earned 80 percent. One of the main reasons for this is that women spend a lot of time bearing and caring for children, especially during their early years. This work provides significant public benefit, but it comes at a private cost: women’s wages drop after giving birth and never fully recover.
Women know this gap exists and plan accordingly: in countries where the motherhood penalty is keenest, the birth rate is lower.
Governments have worked to address gender pay gaps by introducing maternity and paternity leave, creating preschool programs, providing tax benefits to parents, and more. These policies have helped, but they are limited in what they can achieve so long as women continue to have children during the years most critical to their careers.
Taking time out of the workforce to bear and raise children while in their twenties and thirties means women have less time to accumulate the network, skills, and experience necessary to rise to the top of their fields. The later women wait to have their first child, the more they earn.
But unfortunately, women’s fertility falls with age. If women wait until they are 40 to have children, they can probably achieve the career they want, but they are unlikely to have as many children as they would like – and they may not be able to have children at all. How to manage this tradeoff is a pressing question for any woman in the modern world. But emerging technology may solve this problem