Occupational Attainment Among Parents in Germany and the US 2000–2016: The Role of Gender and Immigration Status

In many OECD countries, women are underrepresented in high status, high paying occupations and overrepresented in lower status work. One reason for this inequity is the “motherhood penalty,” where women with children face more roadblocks in hiring and promotions than women without children or men with children. This research focuses on divergent occupational outcomes between men and women with children and analyzes whether parental gender gaps in occupational status are more extreme for immigrant populations. Using data from the Luxembourg Cross-National Data Center, I compare changes in gendered occupational segregation from 2000 to 2016 in Germany and the USA among immigrant and native-born parents. Multinomial logistic regression models and predicted probabilities show that despite instituting policies intended to reduce parental gender inequality in the workforce, Germany fares worse than the USA in gendered occupational outcomes overall. While the gap between mothers’ and fathers’ probabilities of employment in high status jobs is shrinking over time in Germany, particularly for immigrant mothers, Germany’s gender gaps in professional occupations are consistently larger than gaps in the US. Likewise, gender gaps in elementary/labor work participation are also larger in Germany, with immigrant mothers having a much higher likelihood of working in labor/elementary occupations than any other group—including US immigrant women. These findings suggest that work-family policies—at least those implemented in Germany—are not cure-all solutions for entrenched gender inequality. Results also demonstrate the importance of considering the interaction between gender and other demographic characteristics—like immigrant status—when determining the potential effectiveness of proposed work-family policies.