Having children affects  women's employment rate negatively but has positive impact for men 

Having children in the household negatively affects the employment rate of women while it positively affects the employment rate of men.

Women with children are less likely to have a job than those without, while the opposite is true for men, EU data on the gender employment gap show.

The European Commission's data analysis wing Eurostat has published a series of findings in relation to gender disparity to coincide with International Women's Day.

It found that the gender pay gap has closed in the EU over the past decade, but remains glaringly high.

In 2020, women's gross hourly earnings were on average 13% below those of men in the EU, it said. 

"In the space of eight years, between 2012 and 2020, the EU gender pay gap was reduced from 16.4% to 13%."

No data was supplied for Ireland, but Luxembourg was the closest when it came to pay equality between men and women.

"The unadjusted gender pay gap varied among the EU member states, with the highest differences observed in: Latvia (22.3%); Estonia (21.1%); Austria (18.9%); and Germany (18.3%).

"On the other end of the scale, the differences were smallest in: Luxembourg (0.7%); Romania (2.4%); Slovenia (3.1%); and Italy (4.2%)," Eurostat said.

Having children in the household negatively affects the employment rate of women while it positively affects the employment rate of men, whatever the educational attainment level of the parents, the body said.

"In 2020, 77% of women aged 25-54 without children were employed in the EU. On the other hand, women of this age with children had a lower employment rate (72%, or minus 5 percentage points).

"Children in the household had an opposite effect on the employment rate of men in this age group. Men without children had a lower employment rate (81%) than men with children (91%, or 9 percentage points)."

When it comes to part-time work, Eurostat said that almost one in four women with children aged 25-54 had such a job in 2020, while this share reached 16% among women without children. 

"Once again, this had the opposite effect for men: men with children had a lower part-time employment rate (5%) than men without children (7%)," it said.

The higher the level of education, the smaller the employment gap between people with and without children, according to the data.

Part-time jobs were much less common for women without children, among those with a high level of education.

In the third quarter of 2021, there were more women than men working in activities for households, human health and social work, and education. However, women made up only 10% of workers in construction and 13% in mining and quarrying.