A Parliamentary Pay Gap? Gender and Parenthood Pay Gaps in National Parliaments

Members of Parliament regularly supplement their salaries through formal parliamentary or government roles as well as income from work outside of Parliament. Using data from four countries - Canada, the UK, Spain and Australia we examine these incomes. Was ask whether there is a parenthood income gap in Parliaments, including baseline salary and extra earnings, and how any parenthood pay gap may be gendered. A pay gap operates as a measure of how parenthood may impact the career trajectories and ability of parents, and particularly mothers, to fully participate as elected representatives, as well as their potential for outside influence. Scholarship has long shown gender bias exists in the formal and informal rules of elections and institutions (Krook and Mackay 2011; Carroll and Fox 2018) and that parenthood can compound these effects with a lack of family-friendly work practices in legislatures (Allen, Cutts and Winn 2016). In this work, we question another way that women, as mothers, may lose out in politics relative to men. Just as gendered pay gaps are well documented in many sectors and industries, we investigate their presence in parliaments. An inequality in pay sheds light on the barriers to women’s career progress in politics and their ability to exercise influence through outside work.