Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies

Although the gender wage gap in the United States has narrowed, women's career trajectories diverge from men's after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to any employer-provided paid leave and this differential is entirely explained by part-time status. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we find that young women are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave, even in part-time jobs. Both data sets show insignificant gender differentials in access to employer-subsidized childcare and access to scheduling flexibility. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.

Fifty-five years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, gender differences in the labor market remain. The gender gap in pay has narrowed but not closed, and female participation rates seem to have plateaued. Indeed, the United States now lags behind many other advanced industrial countries on measures of gender equality in the workplace. In particular, substantial gender gaps in labor-force participation and wages exist, especially for mothers. The larger gender gaps faced by mothers suggest that family-friendly employer policies, such as paid leave, childcare, and work scheduling flexibility, could play a potentially consequential role.

We fill an important gap in the literature by considering whether access to employer-provided paid leave, childcare, and work scheduling flexibility shows gender differentials. We focus on employer-provided benefits for two main reasons: first, in the United States, employers are the major source of these types of benefits; and, second, relatively little information exists in the literature on gender differences in access to such benefits. We also discuss current public policy provisions and the role that new or expanded public policies might play.

Using two nationally representative data sets, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to employer-provided paid leave—including paid parental leave, paid sick leave, and other types of paid leave—and this differential is entirely explained by the fact that women are more likely to work part time. Young women are found to be more likely than young men to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave even in part-time jobs. Women and men are equally unlikely to have access to childcare and scheduling flexibility. We find substantial heterogeneity by educational level: although women at all levels of education are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave than similar men, highly educated women are less likely to have access to employer-provided childcare or scheduling flexibility than comparable men. These results have important implications for policymakers.

Recent trends and developments

U.S. equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies were established with the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (EEOC 1997). The Equal Pay Act prohibits unequal pay on the basis of sex for equal work. Title VII makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against employees or job applicants on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, nationality, disability, and other characteristics.

Since the 1960s, when EEO became law, the participation rate of women in the labor market increased steadily, until peaking in 2000 at 60.7 percent (Goldin 2014; Black, Schanzenbach, and Breitwieser 2017). Labor-force participation particularly increased among women under age thirty-five (Goldin and Mitchell 2017). This may be partly attributable to the affirmative action policies that came about after EEO: reviewing the literature, Harry Holzer and David Neumark (2000, 2006) present descriptive evidence suggesting that firms using affirmative action practices have more women apply and be hired for open positions.

In addition, the gender wage gap steadily decreased in the latter part of the twentieth century. Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn (2017) show that, although female wages have dramatically increased since the 1960s, they have not reached parity with men's, as progress largely stagnated since 2000. Their decomposition analysis finds that both individual- and firm-level characteristics account for gender wage differences. In 2010, occupation and industry accounted for the majority of the explained gender wage gap; the worker's race, experience, and region also contributed. The authors conclude that it is plausible that EEO policies were responsible for the decline in the gap, but the evidence does not definitively indicate a causal effect.

One important factor in the narrowing of the gender wage gap is the new life cycle of women's employment. The average age at first birth has increased with recent cohorts, resulting in decreases in labor-force participation later in the life cycle as women leave the labor force to care for children, a trend that Claudia Goldin and Joshua Mitchell call the "sagging middle" (2017). This midlife retreat from work has two important implications. First, as the age of first birth has shifted later, employment has increased for younger women (Goldin and Mitchell 2017). Younger women and men experience greater parity in the labor market prior to childbirth, indicating that EEO policies have the desired effect before women have children but are potentially less effective once workers become parents.¹ Second, because women are giving birth later, they have greater attachment to the labor force, take less leave time after birth, and reenter the workforce faster (Dey 2014; Goldin and Mitchell 2017). Yet, although women in their twenties and thirties are out of the labor force for fewer years and work more steadily throughout their lives (Blau and Winkler 2017; Goldin and Mitchell 2017), they do not experience parity in labor-force participation or wages later in life (Black, Schanzenbach, and Breitwieser 2017; Chung et al. 2017).

This new life cycle of women's employment and the narrowing of the gap in labor-force participation are linked to a closing of the education gap (Dey 2014; Goldin 2014; Blau and Kahn 2017). The average woman today has more education than the average man, and more women hold advanced degrees (Blau and Kahn 2017). This increase has ushered in greater labor-force participation and experience (Goldin 2014).

Heterogeneity is substantial in labor-force participation rates among subgroups of women, particularly mothers. For men and women without children, labor-force participation has nearly reached parity; but for mothers and fathers, a wide gap still exists (Weeden, Cha, and Bucca 2016). This gap is exacerbated by gender differences in labor-force exits after the birth of a child. In the year following childbirth, women's likelihood of employment decreases by 30 to 40 percent (Kuziemko et al. 2018). Women also stay out of the labor force for longer than men; this differential is narrowing, though, because women are taking shorter leaves (Dey 2014).

Progress on narrowing the gender gap in pay has also been uneven, particularly for workers with children. The motherhood wage penalty, whereby having children is linked to lower wages for women, is well documented in survey data (Waldfogel 1997; Budig and England 2001; Pal and Waldfogel 2016; Blau and Kahn 2017) and in experiments (Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007). Recent estimates indicate that, on average, childless women earn 87 percent of the wages of similar childless men, and that mothers earn 75 percent of the wages of similar fathers (Chung et al. 2017). The motherhood wage penalty may explain wage divergence across the life cycle: although men and women begin their careers with roughly equivalent wages, the gen der wage gap widens as cohorts age (Goldin 2014; Chung et al. 2017).

The motherhood wage penalty varies greatly across subgroups. Mothers in low-skill and low-wage jobs bear the bulk of the wage penalty (Blau and Winkler 2017; Budig and Hodges 2014; Budig 2014). Nonmarried mothers and African American mothers also face a greater wage gap than married, white, or Hispanic mothers do (Pal and Waldfogel 2016).

It is difficult to determine whether the relationship between motherhood and lower wages is causal or results from the selection of women with lower wages into motherhood. The timing of the emergence of a prominent gender wage gap—after age thirty-five, when many workers are married and begin to have children—indicates a plausible causal story (Budig 2014). Blau and Kahn (2017) posit several reasons to expect the motherhood wage penalty to be causal. First, without paid parental leave, women may be more likely to leave their employers upon the birth of a child; they may exit the labor force or join an employer with more family-friendly policies. Second, if firms expect women to leave after childbirth, they may refrain from hiring or investing in women. Finally, having children may change worker behavior in ways difficult to measure, such as decreased productivity or work scheduling restrictions. It is likely, therefore, that the motherhood penalty occurs due to issues that arise after childbirth (Goldin 2014; Blau and Kahn 2017), indicating that EEO policies are not enough to close the gap.

In summary, although EEO policies have likely played a role in narrowing gender gaps, progress in recent years has stalled. Men and women may begin their careers on similar ground, but their trajectories diverge after children are born. This may be due in large part to the fact that the time demands associated with having children are largely borne by women, which can decrease labor-force participation and wages (Blau and Kahn 2017).

Family-Friendly Policies

Relative to EEO policies, on which the United States has been a leader, in the domain of family-friendly policies it lags behind its peers. Although EEO policies have likely helped narrow overall gender wage and employment gaps, these policies do not address gaps for women with children, which are now the major drivers of overall gender gaps. Family-friendly policies—which would help women maintain labor-force attachment after having children—are needed to continue the foundation set by EEO policies.

Evidence from peer countries indicates that family-friendly policies may help reduce gender gaps. Blau and Kahn (2013) find that though the gender gap in labor-force participation in the United States fell from 19.4 percentage points in 1990 to 14.1 percentage points in 2010, it fell much more substantially—on average, from 26.9 percentage points to 13.0 percentage points—in twenty-one other countries over the same period. Applying average family-friendly policies in other countries to the United States, they estimate that family-friendly policies would have increased U.S. women's labor-force participation rate from 75.2 percent to 82 percent during this period. Further, although other nations have experienced similar economic and technological challenges, they have not experienced the stalled female labor-force participation of the United States (Black, Schanzenbach, and Breitwieser 2017). Taken together, this evidence suggests that strengthening family-friendly policies may help close gender gaps for mothers that EEO policies have not yet touched. Michelle Budig, Joya Misra, and Irene Boeckmann (2015), using data from twenty-two nations, find that the most effective policies to keep mothers in the labor force after childbirth are midlength leaves and childcare, and that both policies reduce the motherhood wage penalty.²

Given the potentially important role that family-friendly policies might play in reducing the gender gaps in workforce participation and earnings in the United States, we focus on three key family-friendly policies: paid family leave, childcare, and work scheduling flexibility. Our analysis explores whether men and women have differential access to these policies because this information is important to policy decisions. If a gender difference in access does exist—particularly one favoring men—it would suggest that equalizing access to employer policies may play a role in reducing gaps. If one does not exist, it would suggest that low levels of access to these benefits across the workforce may be hindering progress toward closing the gender gap, and that public policies should focus on raising the overall level of access to these benefits for all workers.

Paid Family Leave

The United States is the only industrialized country that does not provide paid and job-protected leave for new parents. Qualified employees may take up to twelve weeks of job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), though only approximately 60 percent of workers are eligible (Klerman, Daley, and Pozniak 2012). Paid family leave (PFL) has garnered increased attention in recent years, as California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and, most recently, New York, have implemented these policies; Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, and Washington state will be implementing these policies in the coming years. These policies augment long-standing temporary disability insurance (TDI) programs through which mothers in five states (California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island) can take some paid leave during pregnancy and after childbirth. The effects of PFL are theoretically unclear, given that they depend on how mothers and employers react to leave availability and leave-taking (Rossin-Slater 2017). On the one hand, women who would have exited the labor market in the absence of paid leave may be induced to return to work after childbirth, leading to increased participation; on the other hand, women who would have continued working without leave likely would take more leave, but with no effect on participation. Further, employers may discriminate against hiring or promoting women of childbearing age if they do not believe they can manage the short-term cost of temporary employee replacement, but may also reward employees who remain with them after the child's birth.

California's PFL is the most extensively studied U.S. program because it dates back the furthest, to 2004. Research generally finds positive outcomes for children and parents (Milkman and Appelbaum 2013; Bartel et al. 2014; Stearns 2015; Bedard and Rossin-Slater 2016; Boushey 2016; Rossin-Slater 2017). Specifically, with regard to labor-market outcomes, the evidence from California suggests that PFL increases the likelihood that mothers return to work in the nine to twelve months following a birth by 18 percentage points, increases weeks and hours worked by mothers when children are one and two years old (Baum and Ruhm 2016), and increases weekly work hours for mothers of children under the age of three by 10 to 17 percent (Rossin-Slater, Ruhm, and Waldfogel 2013). One potential mechanism is that PFL may keep women in the workforce who otherwise would have dropped out after having a child (Rossin-Slater 2017). PFL is therefore a promising strategy to boost the sagging U.S. labor-force participation for midcareer women, potentially decreasing the gender gaps in labor-force participation and wages.

Childcare

Childcare is a critical component of family-friendly policy, especially for mothers of young children. Relative to parental leave, childcare may be particularly relevant in reducing gender gaps because it allows mothers to continue in employment without taking time off or reducing work hours, and because it affects a longer portion of their working life (Olivetti and Petrongolo 2017). However, childcare is largely seen as a private responsibility in the United States (Craig and Mullan 2010; Chaudry et al. 2017). Subsidies are available for low-income families, but only about 15 percent of eligible families receive such assistance (Chaudry et al. 2017). Tax credits are available to low-and middle-income families but are not widely used due to cumbersome program rules (Chaudry et al. 2017). Publicly funded childcare centers, preschools, and pre-kindergartens serve only a small share of preschool age children.

Access to high-quality and affordable childcare has the potential to improve a variety of parent and child outcomes, including parental attachment to the labor market and wages (Usdansky and Wolf 2008; Ha and Miller 2015; Chaudry et al. 2017). International evidence indicates that greater spending on childcare is associated with increased female employment and decreased gender wage gaps (Olivetti and Petrongolo 2017). Recent evidence from Washington, D.C., shows that providing free preschool for three- and four-year-olds increases maternal labor-force participation by 10 percentage points (Malik 2018). Affordability is particularly crucial. Considerable evidence indicates that childcare costs affect women's wages and labor-force participation, especially for low-income families (Herbst 2010; Ahn 2012; Ha and Miller 2015). In 2011, families who used childcare spent an average of 7 percent of income on care; low-income families spent 30 percent or more (Laughlin 2013). Yet current U.S. spending on childcare is low relative to other high-income countries. The federal government spends approximately 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on children, and less than 0.2 percent of GDP on programs only for young children, such as childcare subsidies and Head Start (Chaudry et al. 2017). In contrast, the average Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development country spends 0.8 percent of GDP on programs only for young children, with the United Kingdom spending 0.5 percent, France spending 0.8 percent, and Sweden and Norway each spending nearly 2 percent (OECD 2017).

Because public provision is limited, employer-provided childcare could potentially be a promising solution. Although employer-supported childcare would have direct costs, it could also promote worker productivity and commitment (Hipp, Morrissey, and Warner 2017) and reduce absences and interruptions (Usdansky and Wolf 2008). Yet most American employers do not provide any support for childcare: the National Compensation Survey indicates that only 11 percent of workers have access to employer-provided childcare, a proportion that has held roughly constant for the past two decades (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017). Little is known about whether women are less likely to have access to this benefit than their male peers.

Work Scheduling

Finally, policies that affect work hours and schedules, such as the right to request part-time or flexible hours and advance work schedules, can help women stay in the labor force after having children by providing an avenue by which to reconcile responsibilities to an employer and the family. These policies may be beneficial to women across the income distribution. For salaried workers, scheduling flexibility policies are associated both with an increase in female labor-force participation after childbirth (Herr and Wolfram 2012) and an increase in female wages (Weeden 2005). These policies may be particularly beneficial for women in low-wage jobs because they tend to have the least flexibility and may be penalized by being assigned fewer hours if they request it (Goldin 2014; Boushey 2016).

Although less research has been undertaken to date on these policies than on other types of family-friendly policies, recent studies have brought work scheduling practices to the forefront of public attention and have identified three primary types of unpredictable scheduling: lack of advance notice, last-minute scheduling changes, and changes in weekly work schedules (Henly and Lambert 2014). Recent results from the first randomized controlled trial of an intervention targeting unpredictable scheduling are promising (Williams et al. 2018). The intervention, conducted at Gap stores in San Francisco and Chicago from November 2015 to August 2016, addressed unpredictable work scheduling by requiring stores to provide two-weeks advance notice of schedules, end the use of just-in-time scheduling, allow swapping of shifts among employees through an app, improve consistency of schedules from week to week, and guarantee some workers a minimum number of hours per week, among other practices. Results show that these practices increased median sales by 7 percent, increased worker productivity by 5 percent, and were generally welcomed both by employees and managers.

National surveys suggest that 6 percent of the workforce has flexibility in location of work and 49 percent has flexibility in hours or days worked (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017). But the specific types of flexibility measured vary considerably, and little evidence exists as to gender differences in access to flexible work arrangements.

Access to family-friendly benefits

We first describe the data and methods used to examine gender differentials in access to family-friendly benefits. Next, we present primary regression results for gender differences in access to paid leave, employer-provided childcare, and scheduling flexibility. Finally, we show differences in access to family-friendly benefits by educational attainment, as education is typically related to the types of firms and jobs into which workers sort.

Data and Methods

We use national survey data from two data sets to provide new evidence on access to employer-provided paid leave, childcare, and work scheduling flexibility in the United States and consider whether gender differentials in such access are evident. The first data set, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) 2011 Leave Module, is a nationally representative sample of the working-age population age fifteen to eighty-five years. Critical for our purposes, the Leave Module contains detailed measures of whether respondents receive paid leave from their employer, including whether they are able to take paid leave for vacation, errands or personal reasons, own illness or medical care, a family member's illness or medical care, childcare, eldercare, or the birth or adoption of a child. Although the ATUS provides important details about whether and how workers can use paid leave, it does not measure whether workers have access to paid parental leave specifically set aside for new mothers and fathers.

We therefore turn to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), which has measures of paid leave specifically to be used by new parents. The NLSY97 is a nationally representative sample of persons who were ages twelve to sixteen in 1997; we use data from 2011, 2013, and 2015, when the respondents are ages twenty-six to thirty-six. Thus, the NLSY97 not only provides measures not captured in the ATUS, but also provides a large sample of working adults in prime childbearing years. We also use the NLSY97 to examine access to employer-provided or subsidized childcare; the ATUS does not measure childcare benefits.

Finally, we return to the ATUS to study access to work scheduling flexibility. The Leave Module asks respondents whether they can vary their work schedules in lieu of using leave time. Respondents indicate whether they can vary work scheduling by the day of the week, hours worked in a day, or work location. This measure captures flexibility that workers may use when they would otherwise have to use paid or unpaid leave, but does not capture whether they have access to more regular flexibility. We therefore use the NLSY97 to examine whether workers report a regularly accessible flexible work schedule. Last, we use the ATUS to study working from home, which is another method for achieving flexibility. To do so, we examine the number of minutes that respondents report working while at home in a given day.

For ease of interpretation, ordinary least squares (OLS) linear probability models are estimated to predict access to family-friendly policies. (Results from probit models are similar.) We restrict our analysis of the ATUS sample to prime-age workers ages twenty-five to fifty-four; as noted earlier, the NLSY97 sample contains only respondents ages twenty-six to thirty-six. Our primary variable of interest is gender. We also include a set of individual and employer control variables. Individual covariates include race and ethnicity (white non-Hispanic, black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, or other non-Hispanic), age, age-squared, education (high school degree or less, some college, or college degree or more), relationship status (married, cohabiting, or single), household composition (no children, youngest child ages zero to five, or youngest child ages six to seventeen), and citizenship status (native-born citizen, foreign-born citizen, or foreign-born noncitizen). Employer covariates include industry (thirteen dummies using the 2007 Census Industry Classification system), occupation (six dummies using the 2010 Census Occupation Classification system), sector (government, private nonprofit, or private for-profit), and union status. We also include controls for geographic area (state fixed effects in the ATUS; region fixed effects in the NLSY97). As the NLSY97 includes observations from multiple years, we include year fixed effects in these models.

We estimate three sets of models. The first includes only controls for individual characteristics (plus the relevant geographic fixed effects and, in the NLSY97, year effects). The second adds potentially endogenous controls for employer characteristics, and the third adds a control for part-time status, which is also potentially endogenous. We estimate the following equations:

Equations (1), (2), and (3) measure gender differences in access to paid leave and scheduling flexibility as well as minutes spent working from home in a given day, in the ATUS. Equations (4), (5), and (6) measure gender differences in access to paid parental leave, employer-provided or subsidized childcare, and regular scheduling flexibility in the NLSY97. In equations (1), (2), and (3), y is access to a family-friendly policy for worker i living in state s, female is a dichotomous indicator set to one (zero) for female (male) workers, X is a vector of individual covariates, S is a vector of state indicator variables, Z is a vector of employer covariates, and W is an indicator variable for part-time status. In equations (4), (5), and (6), y is access to a family-friendly policy for worker i living in region r in year t, female is a dichotomous indicator set to one (zero) for female (male) workers, X is a vector of individual covariates, R and T are vectors of region and year indicator variables, Z is a vector of employer covariates, and W is an indicator variable for part-time status.

Primary Results

Table 1 presents unadjusted means for access to family-friendly policies by gender in the ATUS and NLSY97. Although the majority of respondents of both genders report access to some type of paid leave, a significantly smaller share of female respondents (4.3 percentage points fewer than men) have paid leave (panel A). Results from the ATUS show no significant gender differentials in access to paid leave for infant bonding. Results from the NLSY97 (panel B), however, reveal that significantly more women have access to paid parental leave. Turning to employer-provided or subsidized childcare, results from the NLSY97 indicate that fewer than one in ten workers receive this benefit with no gender differential in access (panel B). Finally, ATUS results in panel A show no significant gender difference in access to scheduling flexibility in lieu of using leave, and no significant gender difference in daily minutes spent working from home. However, results for the NLSY97 measure of regular access to scheduling flexibility (panel B) indicate a significantly greater share of women have access to this benefit.

The gender differences observed in Table 1 could be explained by a sorting model in which workers sort into firms based on characteristics such as wages, family-friendly policies, and the availability of part-time hours. Male and female workers may value these characteristics differently, both because of personal preferences and because of the constraints they face, such as requiring time for caregiving. Women with children, or women who anticipate having children, may be more likely to sort into firms that accommodate their preferences and constraints, even if doing so requires a trade-off of pay and other benefits. For example, a mother with young children may prefer a job in which she can work part-time, though this may mean she does not have access to paid time off.

Tables 2 and 3 provide evidence consistent with this type of sorting. Results in Table 2 show that women, especially those with children, are significantly more likely to work part time than men. Table 3 considers whether part-time jobs provide fewer family-friendly benefits than full-time jobs. With the exception of scheduling flexibility for the NLSY97 sample, all the part-time and full-time differentials in family-friendly policies are significant. Taken together, tables 2 and 3 demonstrate that women are more likely to engage in part-time work and, in so doing, they forgo access to family-friendly benefits. With regard to wages, we find no significant hourly wage differential for part-time versus full-time workers in the NLSY97; as expected, the difference in annual hours worked is significant.

The results in tables 2 and 3 suggest that part-time status may explain why Table 1 shows gender differentials in access to some family-friendly benefits. To more fully explore whether part-time status alone, or other control variables, explain the gender differentials, we next turn to the OLS regression results. Table 4 reports results using ATUS data, panel A showing results for access to any paid leave by primeage workers, panel B showing access to scheduling flexibility in lieu of leave, and panel C showing time spent working from home on a given day.³ When specified only with individual controls and state fixed effects (column 1), and when adding employer controls (column 2), women are around 5 percentage points less likely to have access to any paid leave than men. Column 3 adds a control for part-time status, which essentially brings the gender differential to zero. This result indicates that, while women have less access to paid leave, this differential is driven by part-time workers, who are 37.7 percentage points less likely to have access to paid leave than full-time workers (see table A1).

Table 1.

Unadjusted Gender Differentials in Access to Family-Friendly Policies

Table 2.

Gender Differences in the Share of Part-Time Workers

Table 3.

Family-Friendly Benefits and Hourly Wages for Part-Time and Full-Time Workers

Table 5 uses the ATUS to study gender differentials by allowed type of paid leave use.⁴ Results from specifications 1 and 2 (panels A and B) indicate that women are significantly less likely (5 to 7 percentage points) to have access to leave that can be used for vacation, per sonal time, their own illness, or someone else's illness. Once we account for part-time status (panel C), these differences are no longer significant. Nor do we see significant gender differences in being able to use paid leave for infant bonding. To explicitly examine paid pa

Table 4.

Primary Regression Results from ATUS 2011

Table 5.

Access to Paid Leave by Allowed Paid Leave Use Type from ATUS 2011

Table 6.

Primary Regression Results from NLSY97

rental leave more closely, we turn to the primary regression results for the NLSY97, as shown in panel A of table 6 (full results shown in table A2). Across all three specifications, these results indicate that, among workers of prime childbearing age, women are up to 7.5 percentage points more likely to have access to paid parental leave than similar men even when we control for part-time status.

Using the NLSY97, access to employer-provided childcare for workers of prime childbearing age is studied in panel B of table 6. Results from specification 1 show no significant gender differential. Results from specification 2 indicate that women are significantly less likely (1.6 percentage points) to have access to childcare than similar men. In specification 3, as in Table 4, the addition of a control for part-time status yields an insignificant gender difference: part-time workers are 4 to 5 percentage points less likely to have access to employer-provided childcare than full-time workers (see table A3).

Gender differentials in access to scheduling flexibility in lieu of taking leave are studied using both data sets. Using the ATUS, results in panel B of Table 4 indicate no significant gender differences in access to any flexibility in lieu of leave nor in access to particular types of flexibility (for full estimates of Table 2, panel B, see table A4; for estimates by type of leave, see table A5). Using the NLSY97, estimates in panel C of table 6 examine gender differentials in regular access to scheduling flexibility (for full estimates, see table A6). Although results from specification 1 suggest that women are 3.6 percentage points more likely to have access to such flexibility than men with similar personal characteristics, results from specifications 2 and 3 indicate no significant gender differential. Taken together, these results show no gender difference in access to scheduling flexibility, whether it is in lieu of leave or is more regularly available. Finally, using the ATUS in panel C of Table 4, we find no significant gender differences in minutes spent working from home on a given day, suggesting that women are not disproportionately likely to work from

Table 7.

Education-Stratified Regression Results, ATUS and NLSY97

home instead of using other forms of scheduling flexibility.

Education-Stratified Results

Educational attainment influences the types of firms and jobs into which workers sort. In supplemental models, we therefore examined results stratified by level of education (high school degree or less, some college but no degree, and a college degree or more). These re gressions (shown in table 7) include state fixed effects, individual controls, employer controls and part-time status. In no case are women significantly less likely to have access to any leave than their male counterparts, and in the NLSY97 women in all education groups are significantly more likely to have access to paid parental leave. When considering childcare, the most highly educated women are 5 percentage points less likely to have access to employer-provided or subsidized childcare than comparable men. Finally, our results indicate that women with a college degree or more are less likely to have access to regular flexibility than similar men, though women with less education do not appear to face these differentials.

Policy implications

Our analysis shows that though women have less access to any employer-provided paid leave than men, this is entirely explained by part-time status. It seems that women are sorting into part-time jobs to have more time for care-giving and, in so doing, are forgoing income and access to paid time off. However, we also found that young women, even those in part-time jobs, are more likely than men to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave. Furthermore, we found insignificant gender differentials in access to employer-provided or subsidized childcare and access to scheduling flexibility. Thus, the problem with access to family-friendly policies is not gender differences but overall low levels of access to such policies for both women and men.

Public policy could expand coverage by two primary mechanisms. One is to mandate that employers provide such coverage. Employer mandates are ill suited to many types of family-friendly policies because they can lead to discrimination against workers with children (Gruber 1994), particularly women, and can impose high costs on employers, particularly small businesses (Mathur et al. 2017). Employer mandates, however, may be the only alternative when the policies involve workplace practices such as scheduling.

The second mechanism—to provide such coverage through public provision—is more appropriate than employer mandates in situations with both high costs and the potential for discrimination. Family-friendly policies often can be funded through a small payroll tax on all workers or employers, thereby distributing the cost of coverage across workers rather than burdening the specific employers whose em ployees take leave. In addition, universal provision mitigates the potential for worker selection into jobs with family-friendly benefits and employer discrimination against these workers, although discrimination could still occur if employers face other costs and believe that particular groups of workers will be more likely to use the benefits.

With these considerations in mind, we turn to a discussion of whether and how family-friendly policies might be expanded to address the shortfalls in coverage that we found.

Access to Paid Family Leave

We find that young women are significantly more likely to have access to paid parental leave than comparable men. Yet overall levels of access to paid parental leave are low, estimates indicating that slightly less than half (NLSY97) to slightly more than half (ATUS) of all workers have access to this benefit. Although public support is strong for mandating employers to provide paid family leave (Horowitz et al. 2017), we do not believe it is the appropriate mechanism by which to provide paid family leave because it would likely be costly for employers and result in discrimination against women of childbearing age.⁵ In regard to public provision, several states have paid family leave policies that are in effect (California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island) or soon to be implemented (Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.). Although these policies vary widely in terms of length of leave, wage replacement rate, and eligibility requirements, they are generally funded through increased payroll taxes either solely on employees or on both employees and employers (National Partnership for Women & Families 2018). For example, California's program, which is funded by employee payroll taxes, costs the average worker $2 per month in additional payroll taxes (Milkman and Appelbaum 2013).

Although the costs to workers are low, the costs to employers are potentially greater. Firms in California argued that the indirect costs of the law, such as paying current workers overtime or hiring and training temporary workers to complete the work of the employee on leave, would be detrimental, although post-law surveys found that a majority of employers indicated they were either unaffected or positively affected by the law (Milkman and Appelbaum 2013). Some employers even report being helped by the law, in that the policy has replaced the costs of providing employees with paid family leave. Employer surveys in Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York also indicate widespread support, with roughly two-thirds of employers supporting the law in their state and an additional 10 to 15 percent having neutral views (Bartel et al. 2017). On the federal level, several congressional representatives from both parties have proposed paid family leave policies (for a discussion of these proposals, see Mathur et al. 2017).

Access to Childcare

Employer mandates are probably ill suited to expand access to childcare. Not only would the cost of such a benefit be burdensome for employers, it could also result in discrimination against workers with children. Evidence indicates that employers discriminate against mothers: mothers who opt out of employment to care for children are seen as less committed, less capable, and less deserving of employment (Weisshaar 2018) and receive fewer callbacks for interviews (Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Weisshaar 2018).⁶ A childcare mandate might exacerbate such discrimination or create additional discrimination to the extent that women would be seen as more costly to employ.

Also, as a practical matter, the share of employers offering this benefit is extremely low (only about one in ten). Thus, rather than mandating employers to dramatically increase childcare provision, which would be costly to employers and may result in gender discrimination, expanding public childcare programs may be the most feasible way to increase access. Although some states and cities have enacted universal pre-kindergarten programs, these programs typically provide only one (or two) years of care and currently serve less than a third of four-year-old children. Expanding childcare subsidies for low-income families while streamlining the application and renewal process and lengthening eligibility periods could greatly benefit households at the bottom of the income distribution. Other measures, such as expanded tax credits or more public funding through sliding-scale fees, will be needed to reach middle-income families who also face high costs but typically receive little employer or public support.

These public policies have little potential to impose costs on employers because they are generally funded through taxes on earners; employers even may benefit from a reduction in work absences and interruptions. Moreover, as mentioned, childcare access is believed to be particularly beneficial in reducing gender gaps because it allows women to avoid work interruptions or reductions in work hours; programs to support young children and their families may also be beneficial in reducing racial inequality in the workforce (see Rodgers 2019).

Access to Work Scheduling Flexibility

Employer mandates are the most appropriate mechanism by which to promote scheduling flexibility because scheduling involves workplace practices that cannot be provided by public services. Policies to promote scheduling flexibility must address the different issues that hourly workers and salaried workers face. For hourly workers, scheduling flexibility means protections against unpredictable schedules. This can be accomplished by equipping the worker with input into both the number of hours per week and the time of day the hours are worked. For salaried workers, scheduling flexibility often means providing the worker with the ability to adjust when (and potentially where) their work is done, as well as the right to request part-time or flexible work. However, scheduling flexibility policies also are associated with both hiring and wage penalties against women (Goldin 2014) and thus should be joined with equal pay and benefit policies to insure gender equality in the labor market.

Employers may worry that an inability to change workers' schedules at the last-minute will harm their bottom lines, as many employers—particularly in retail and service—have long relied on just-in-time scheduling to match the number of employees to in-store traffic. Experimental evidence indicates that this concern does not bear out: employers who give workers more scheduling control see an increase in sales far greater than the additional cost associated with giving workers greater scheduling control, and workers who control their schedules are significantly more productive on the job (Williams et al. 2018). Scheduling flexibility holds other potential benefits for employers. First, flexibility may boost retention, which could lower recruiting and training costs. On average, replacing a worker costs an employer about 20 percent of the worker's salary (about 16 percent for workers earning less than $30,000 per year) (Boushey 2016).

Several cities, including Emeryville, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, as well as the states of New York and Oregon, have enacted scheduling control policies focused on low-wage workers (Williams et al. 2018). Although provisions vary, they generally mandate employers to adhere to a minimum amount of advance scheduling notice and to pay workers for any last-minute changes to schedules (Williams et al. 2018). Further, all workers, both hourly and salaried, in the cities of Berkeley, San Francisco, and New York, and in the states of New Hampshire and Vermont, have the right to request flexibility in work arrangements. On the federal level, congressional representatives from both parties have proposed policies focused both on scheduling flexibility and on scheduling control (1 Million for Worker Flexibility, n.d.).

Conclusion

EEO policies, in combination with other factors such as changing gender norms and roles, have contributed to substantial progress toward closing gender gaps in the workplace. However, after the birth of children, women's career trajectories diverge significantly from men's. In this article, we considered whether family-friendly policies are a potentially promising solution to promoting workplace gender equality among parents. Using data from the American Time Use Survey and the NLSY97, we provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies, finding that the gender differential in access to paid leave through employers is entirely explained by the greater likelihood of women being in part-time jobs. To accommodate caregiving responsibilities, women sort into part-time jobs and thereby forgo income and various types of paid leave. Offsetting this is the fact that young women are more likely to have access to paid parental leave. Gender differentials in access to childcare through an employer or access to scheduling flexibility are not significant.

Nonetheless, access to such policies remains rather low in the United States. Public policies—such as a federal provision for paid family leave, expanded public or subsidized childcare, and employer mandates for scheduling control and flexibility—could play an important role in helping all families, particularly those who are low income, navigate the tension between work and home and have the potential to continue progress made by EEO toward a more gender-equitable workforce.

Table A1.

Access to Any Paid Leave: Regression Results, ATUS 2011

Table A2.

Access to Paid Parental Leave, NLSY97

Table A3.

Access to Employer-Provided or Subsidized Childcare, NLSY97

Table A4.

Access to Any Scheduling Flexibility in Lieu of Leave, ATUS 2011

Table A5.

Access to Scheduling Flexibility by Allowed Use Type, ATUS 2011

Table A6.

Access to Regular Scheduling Flexibility, NLSY97