By Vivienne Russell | 17 February 2014
Free or more affordable childcare would boost the number of mothers in the workforce and help reduce the gender pay gap, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.
In a report to be published at the end of this week, the IPPR highlights that maternal employment rates (for women whose youngest child is aged between three and five) in the UK are lower that the average rate for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
If the rate were increased by 5%, this would be more in line with the OECD average and would see another 150,000 women would be in work. If the maternal employment rate matched women without dependent children, 570,000 more mothers could be in work, the IPPR said.
‘The government needs to focus on supporting mothers into work as a priority and then make it easier for them to increase the hours that they work,’ said Dalia Ben-Galim, associate director at the IPPR.
‘The current entitlement of 15 hours of free childcare for three- and four-year-olds has been hugely beneficial to mothers already in work, but has been largely ineffective in supporting mothers back to work.’
There are very high levels of part-time working among women with young children, the think-tank found, with 60% of employed mothers working less than 30 hours a week. Yet mothers working part-time earn around 22% less per hour than women working full-time, often because they move into lower-skilled employment
Ben-Galim noted that the longer the break in employment, the greater the ‘motherhood pay penalty’.
She added: ‘Providing universal affordable childcare at younger ages is vital for both increasing maternal employment and for reducing the gender pay gap.’
The IPPR’s report, ChildMind the Gap: reforming childcare to support mothers into work, will be published on February 21.
