Expert Comment: Why do we structure work as though working mothers don’t exist?

Across advanced economies, motherhood continues to reshape women’s careers in systematic ways. Mothers earn less than women without children and experience slower career progression. In the UK, earnings trajectories diverge sharply after childbirth, with long-term penalties persisting even after women return to work.

In academia, the pattern is more subtle but equally consequential. Salaries may not fall immediately, but career progression slows, as mothers accumulate fewer of the markers – publications, grants, and visibility – that underpin advancement. Some step away from research entirely. Alongside this sits a quieter reality: many academic mothers continue working through maternity leave, aware that stepping away risks being left behind. In one study, 69% women reported working during leave, often to mitigate precisely this risk.

The motherhood penalty, then, is not a moment, but a trajectory. And the problem is not motherhood – it is the structure of work.

One explanation is bias. Mothers may be perceived as less committed or less available. Experimental studies confirm that otherwise identical candidates are judged differently once motherhood enters the frame.

But bias alone does not explain the durability of the gap. Careers are structured around implicit norms about who the “ideal worker” is and how success is measured. In many professions, rewards are tied to continuity, availability, and uninterrupted productivity. As a growing body of research shows, such systems penalise discontinuity and, therefore, disproportionately disadvantage those with caregiving responsibilities. In fact, while parental leave has expanded significantly across OECD countries, longer leave can inadvertently widen career gaps, suggesting that extended career interruptions carry persistent penalties even after return.

Flexible working presents a similar paradox. While it may ease short-term pressures, it does little to challenge deeper assumptions about availability as a proxy for commitment. The UK offers a clear illustration: mothers remain far more likely to reduce working hours, while fathers’ participation in care is constrained by policy and norms. 

In other words, mothers are not failing to meet expectations. The expectations themselves are misaligned with the realities of childcare.

Research on academic careers, including my own work with Sue Dopson, suggests we often focus on visible symptoms – mentorship gaps, training deficits, or policy shortfalls – while overlooking deeper structural drivers of gender inequality. Our work identifies persistent barriers to the career progression of women and other underrepresented groups. These barriers are linked to how accomplishment is recognised, whose agency is valued, whose credibility is assumed, who is expected to “do more”, and how productivity is defined. The motherhood penalty does not sit outside these dynamics; it intensifies them. For example, mothers continue to be seen as insufficiently dedicated, need to do more to establish credibility, and continue to have their individual circumstances unaccounted for by the organisation.

Crucially, many interventions target access rather than evaluation. They enable women to take leave but do not adjust the criteria by which they are subsequently judged when they return.

There is also a deeper paradox – a growing body of research suggests that the experience of parenting can enhance precisely the capabilities organisations claim to value in leaders. Parenting can develop supportive leadership behaviours such as empathy and emotional awareness, which are strongly associated with leadership effectiveness. Other work highlights how motherhood can build resilience and more inclusive leadership styles, shaping how leaders engage with others.

Yet, research reveals that taking parental leave advantages men’s careers but not women’s. Organisational systems continue to privilege visibility and uninterrupted presence over relational intelligence and adaptability. The result is a striking misalignment: the experience of motherhood may strengthen leadership capability, while the structures of work simultaneously penalise those who acquire it.

Encouragingly, this is now a conversation gaining traction. The recent Mind the Motherhood Gap conference, co-convened by the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, brought together academics, policymakers, and sector leaders to confront the persistence of the motherhood penalty and explore what meaningful change might look like. Discussions focused not only on the motherhood gap’s costs, but on how leadership norms, reward systems, and career structures might be redesigned to recognise caregiving as a source of capability rather than risk.

If we are serious about addressing the motherhood gap, incremental reforms will not suffice. We need to rethink how work itself is organised.

First, by rethinking what we reward. Success remains tied to availability and visibility. Rewarding resilience, relational intelligence, and inclusive leadership behaviours would shift this logic.

Second, by redesigning career trajectories. Linear, uninterrupted progression is a poor fit for modern working lives. Non-linear careers must be normalised, not penalised.

Third, by redistributing care. Expanding well-paid parental leave for fathers, and reframing policy around “parents”, is critical. More broadly, flexibility must become the default. When flexibility is marginal, it carries stigma. When it is universal, it reshapes expectations.

The motherhood gap persists not because we lack evidence or policy ideas. It persists because we continue to treat it as a problem of individuals adapting to systems, rather than systems adapting to lives. 

The more provocative question, then, is not why mothers fall behind. It is why, in 2026, we are still organising work as if working mothers does not exist.

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