Mothers’ Salaries Worldwide Shrink With Every Child – UN

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Above the general pay gap between the genders, women across the globe face a so-called motherhood pay gap, and can expect their income to fall further with each child they have, UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) said Friday.

"All studies show that women experience a fall in pay with childbirth, and that this penalty rises in line with the number of children," the ILO said in a report released ahead of International Women's Day.

Societal expectations affect both the behavior of mothers and the options open to them, leading employers to believe that mothers are less productive.

However, certain policy options may be used to address the motherhood pay gap, ILO said.

These include job-protected parental leave "of adequate duration and with income-related pay funded by social insurance or public funds for both women and men, with specific provision for fathers," accessible and affordable child care services, as well as tax and benefit rules which treat mothers as "economically independent adults."

According to the UN agency's data, women globally earn about 77 percent of what men earn, a figure that has barely improved over the past two decades.