The gender pay gap mostly opens up after the first child, not before

Claudia Goldin found men's and women's earnings track closely until parenthood, then a 'motherhood penalty' appears because many top-paying jobs punish flexible hours, what she calls 'greedy work.' Tracing a century of US labour data, she showed the gap isn't mainly employers discriminating in hiring, but which careers reward being always on call. She won the 2023 Nobel for the research.

— Claudia Goldin, Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity — Princeton University Press, 2021; 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
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