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Pregnant Then Screwed
A review of

Pregnant Then Screwed

The Truth About the Motherhood Penalty and How to Fix It

Joeli Brearley • Simon & Schuster UK • 2021

Justice for Mothers

by Patricia Sanders

Women pay a professional and financial price for having children – in employment opportunities, career advancement and salary. In this infuriating, compassionate book, a British women’s rights activist describes exactly how the workplace fails women with children, what women can do to fight back, and how society can start loving its mothers.

In the United States, women earn, on average, approximately 80% of what men do. And women in every country in Europe, too, receive lower average salaries than their male counterparts – an average of 13% lower across the EU in 2020, according to the European Commission.

But it seems statements about the gender pay gap need to carry a startling, heartbreaking qualification: Women who don’t have children earn about the same amount as men. The pay gap arises because women who have children earn far less than women who don’t – a phenomenon sociologists have dubbed “the motherhood penalty.” Author Joeli Brearley also terms it “the procreation gap”: the literal price women pay for perpetuating the human race.

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