Where in Europe is it best to be a working mother?

The glass ceiling is often seen as the benchmark of gender inequality in the labour market.

Economist Pauline Grosjean, in her book Patriarcapitalisme (Seuil, 2021) has shown that the 1980s were marked by tremendous economic progress for women. By the end of that decade, they had become, on average, more educated than men and had entered professions from which they had previously been excluded.

But there remains a glass ceiling - an invisible barrier preventing women from rising to the top - especially in the most prestigious and highly-paid professions. Grosjean argued that it's the structure of gender culture interacting with previously existing economic structures that causes inequalities to persist.

The gender gap in the workplace widens even more when a woman becomes a mother. We talked about some of the features of this period with the sociologist Marta Domínguez Folgueras of the Observatoire de Sociologique du Changement (OSC).

"Motherhood is a very important phase during which the gender gap widens because some women stop working," she told Euronews. 

"Women who've been dedicated to their careers are more likely than men to quit their jobs to take care of their children. Some change jobs, some go part-time. 

"They cannot devote the same amount of time to the labour market, while we don't see this in the case of men. Some studies even show that men tend to earn higher wages when parenthood arrives."

Sociologists' research suggests that women who switch to a part-time job end up losing more in salary terms than those who go for short-term parental leave from a full-time job.

"We did the research in Spain," Domínguez Folgueras explained.

"Both women and men can take parental leave there. But we analysed women. They can take