Researchers Andrea Albanese, Adrian Nieto Castro and Konstantinos Tatsiramos of the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Liser) have published a study on the impact of birth on gender equality among cross-border workers.

Why were you interested in the impact of a first birth on gender equality in employment?

Andrea Albanese. - When we did our first study on Belgian cross-border workers, we noticed that there were fewer women working in Luxembourg than men. We then saw that the difference appeared after the birth of the first child. So we dedicated a study to this.

The result showed a greater impact for women…

Until now, studies have shown that the birth of a child has an impact on the employment rate of women compared to men. But what we have found is that a large part of this gap comes from jobs that are far from home. There is a drop in the employment rate of women in jobs far from their homes. And we know, especially in the case of cross-border commuters, that they can find better pay, better conditions, by moving away from home.

What are the numbers?

75% of the employment gap between men and women after the birth of a first child is due to non-local jobs [meaning that women stop working more in jobs far from their place of residence if compared to men.]

How cam this be explained?

Women are still taking on more responsibility for childcare today. They are therefore more easily pushed out of the labour market when the travel time to get there is longer.

Are these short-term consequences?

We've been tracking individuals for seven years, it's something that sticks.

So you are asking politicians to react. How do you do that?

Perhaps by allowing better access to the market, by improving public transport. By making the childcare system as cheap as possible. And, of course, there is what happens inside the home, when the decision is made between the man and the woman as to who will leave their perhaps better paid but distant job.

What else did the study find?

After the first birth, parents stop moving. But men continue to look for jobs further away, while women restrict themselves to the local labour market.

Why did you study the province of Luxembourg alone?

We wanted to study cross-border behaviour and we had good data for Belgium, not for France and Germany.

Do you think that these conclusions can be transposed to French and German border workers?

What we see in the data is so massive that there is a good chance that the impact is similar in other countries.

How did you work to obtain these results?

We observed 53,494 individuals between 2007 and 2017. Some had a first child, others did not. We compared the employment rate of women with and without children. The same for men. Then we checked the variation in the employment rate in local jobs, and then in distant jobs, meaning outside the borough of residence.

Are they only cross-border employees?

Both. The behaviour and the gap are the same, whether it is a distant job in Belgium or in Luxembourg.

What about the effect of a second child?

The fact that the negative effects on the gender gap persist in the long term may also come from the arrival of a second child. Preliminary data show that the first child has a greater impact than the second. This may be due to the fact that women had already left their jobs.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.