Gender, parenthood, pay, working time, and organizational authority among social workers in China

Research on parenthood-related labor-market inequality increasingly distinguishes hourly pay from employment, working time, earnings, occupational allocation, and authority. We examine these dimensions within Chinese social work, a female-dominated occupation in which numerical representation may coexist with unequal organizational authority. Using the 2019 China Social Work Longitudinal Study (N = 6,776), we estimate OLS models for log hourly wage, weekly hours, and log monthly salary, and logit models for management and supervisory roles.

All labor-outcome models use a common sample (N = 6,102) and six gender-marriage-parenthood groups, with unmarried childless men as the reference group. In adjusted models, mothers worked 1.31 fewer hours per week (p < .001) and had lower monthly salary (b = -0.066, p < .001) than reference men; their hourly-wage difference was smaller and nonsignificant (b = -0.024, p = .240). Direct comparisons showed no hourly-wage difference between mothers and unmarried childless women, but a difference relative to married childless women; winsorized and single-year-age specifications also indicated modest sensitivity.

Mothers had lower odds of management (OR = 0.62) and supervision (OR = 0.52) than reference men. Fathers did not differ significantly from married childless men. Among currently employed social workers, parenthood-related inequality is therefore more consistent across working time, monthly earnings, and organizational positions than across hourly wage rates.

Cross-sectional employed-worker data do not capture employment or occupational exit and cannot establish causal effects. Department of Social Work, School of Law, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China Congde Xu, Yang Wang, Jinlin Pang & Zhen Li The authors declare no competing interests. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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