The focus of my research is on women and mothers, discrimination and income inequality of gender in our social environment. Having read through some researchers’ articles and journals I can generalize that motherhood penalty still exists. Many sociologists have defined “Motherhood penalty” as when working mothers encounter lots of disadvantages in pay, and benefits when compared to childless women, and they are perceived incompetence at work places. This research project will further summarize motherhood penalty in the private and public sector at a company in France, how mothers are discriminated at getting a job when compared to fathers and women without children, comparison of the early and current year of motherhood penalty in the United …show more content…
The starting salaries of mothers who had the same qualification with non-mothers and fathers were penalized, moreover fathers were not penalized for the same, but received benefits for having children. The researchers used a qualitative method to evaluate most employers, secondly a laboratory experiment was taken on some evaluators to see how they rated the applicants in terms of competence, workplace commitment, hire ability, promotion and salary. The audit study was measured on the number of callbacks from employers, and it was observed that there was no difference in productivity and skills between mothers and non-mothers. The status based (African-American or white) of the mothers were also manipulated in the laboratory experiment to see if race had an effect of getting jobs for mothers when compared to non -mothers, the theory predicted that both African -American and white will experience biases in workplace settings, though the white race mothers are more likely to get promoted than African-Americans. In the results of the experiments taken at the laboratory, it was clearly suggested that real employers did discriminate against mothers, culturally some stated and believed that mothers should not be in workplace but instead be at home with their children. Motherhood penalty also explains “According to this ideal worker’s belief, the best worker is the ‘committed’ worker who demonstrates intensive effort on the job through actions that appear to sacrifice all other concerns for work…examples include a willingness to drop everything at a moment’s notice for a new demand, to devote enormous hours and ‘face time’ at work and to work late nights or weekends.” (Correll.J. et al,2007) Childless women received two times as many