Maternity Benefits

Maternity Benefits across UK HEIs

Productivity takes Leave? Examining the Causes and Impact of Maternity Leave Policies on Academic Careers

This project is funded by the ESRC centre CAGE, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust

Summary:

Motherhood and professional advancements often conflict. Studies of female academics highlight gender disparities in senior ranks. One explanation for this inequality is unequal caregiving responsibilities borne by women, particularly early in their children’s lives. This project asks whether differential maternity leave provisions across 160 UK higher education institutions exacerbate differentials in the productivity, career paths and job satisfaction of female academics. Research on maternity benefits usually is confined to case studies of a few universities or is discipline specific. Systematic empirical research on how changes in maternity leave policies affect career outcomes in the sector is lacking. This project seeks to fill this gap by providing reliable empirical results that allow examining the degree to which more generous maternity leave benefits affect female academics with children. Analyses consider variation in outcomes that potentially result both from changes in UK law and the wide variation in maternity leave benefits across the sector. We also analyse why universities across the UK have implemented occupational maternity policies that vary largely with respect to their generosity.

See me talk about our maternity research: 

• "How maternity benefits can improve careers and productivity" [YouTube Video Q1]

• "Research on maternity benefits on female academics" [YouTube Video Q2]

• "Better ways to design maternity policy " - [YouTube Video Q3]

Publications:

• Motherhood in academia: A novel data set of UK academic women with an application to maternity leave uptake - with Mariaelisa Epifanio, Riccardo Di Leo & Thomas Scotto. Social Policy & Administration, 29 July 2024.
• Bargaining over Maternity Pay : Evidence from UK Universities -  with Mariaelisa Epifanio. Journal of Public Policy, 06 May 2019
• CAGE/SMF policy briefing paper  , 17 April 2018

Working Papers:

• PDF - How much do children really cost? Maternity benefits and career opportunities of women in academia

Media Coverage / Press Releases

• Times Higher Education08/2024
• Blog Politik 100 x 100  03/2020
• CUP blog, 15/05/2019
• World Economic Forum, 18/02/2018
• The Conversation, 15/02/2018
• British Academy Blog Post, 07/02/2018
• BBC Radio4 Women's Hour, 26/01/2018
• Better maternity leave could help universities retain women, The Guardian, 21/01/2018
• More generous maternity pay could boost productivity, workingmums.co.uk, 19/01/2018
• How much do children really cost?, CAGE Advantage magazine, Winter 2018

Collaborators:

• Vera E. Troeger, Department of Economics, University of Warwick / Department of Political Science, University of Hamburg
• Mariaelisa Epifanio, Department of Politics, University of Liverpool
• Thomas Scotto, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde
• Riccardo di Leo Department of Political and Social Science, European University Institute