Gender wage gap

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The gender wage gap is a well-known phenomenon, both in the academic literature and in the broader social discourse. Such inequalities in the employment sphere are shown to accumulate over a lifetime into even larger economic differences between women and men (lifetime earnings, pension income). There are many reasons for this put forth by the literature. Chief among them are the birth-related career interruptions or consequent employment needs andpreferences of mothers during child-bearing and -rearing years which result in mothers receiving lower wages compared to childless women (i.e. "motherhood penalty"), whereas an opposing increase in economic outcomes for fathers emerges (i.e. "fatherhood premium"). However, assessing the motherhood penalty or the fatherhood premium independently and thereby considering only within-gender inequality, the existing literature risks underestimating the extent of gender inequalities. For the same reason it is important to consider different life course stages, as these parenthood gaps are likely to vary between different points in parents' lifetime. My research aims to close this gap by considering how family characteristics, norms and policies contribute to shaping unequal occupational trajectories for mothers and fathers over their respective lifetimes and result in inequalities in old-age.