Motherhood and Gender Wage Differentials within a Chinese Firm

Abstract

The within-firm gender wage gap plays an important role in understanding the overall gender gap in the labor market. This paper describes how parenthood is associated with the within-firm gender gap using a unique personnel dataset from a large Chinese company. We find that the wage gap is small in the early stages of careers and becomes more evident when female employees get married. The wage gap peaks at childbirth, returning to the pre-pregnancy level ten months afterwards. Following this stage, the wage gap gradually widens and persists. Whereas the short-term peak around childbirth can be explained by female employees' reduced working hours, the long-term trend is caused by women's concentration in lower-level jobs. Our study highlights the importance of internal gender segregation in understanding gender wage differentials.

Keywords: Firm Personnel Data, Within-firm Gender Gap, Motherhood Wage Penalty

JEL Classification: J16, J31, M50