A "motherhood penalty": this is the term used by two studies published on October 23 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to explain the effect of children on the potential employment opportunities of migrant women. Foreign women who are mothers clearly find themselves mostly excluded from employment in several countries, according to the authors.

France occupies a special position in the study. Around half of migrant mothers with small children (aged 0 to 4) are employed in OECD countries, a 20-percentage point gap compared to their native-born peers. In France and a handful of neighbors like Germany and Belgium, this gap between immigrants and natives is as high as 30 points, according to an initial study led by Alicia Adsera (Princeton University) and Marcela Valdivia (OECD).

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"From the second child on, the employment penalty increases the most for immigrant women in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and France," they write.

For women with higher education qualifications, the gap increases to 50 points between immigrants and non-immigrants in France, according to the study.

Furthermore, employers hire immigrant women more frequently in part-time positions and they are also "over-represented" in low-skilled jobs.

'A double, a triple, a quadruple punishment'

"Being a woman, being an immigrant and starting a family are all elements which interact and which are at the origin of specific constraints which deserve the attention of the public authorities," write the authors. Whatever the indicators scrutinized in the study, "immigrant mothers are often trapped in inactivity because of their family responsibilities," according to the document.

These women suffer "a double, a triple, a quadruple punishment," said Jean-Christophe Dumont, head of the Migration division of the OECD in an interview with the French news agency Agence France Presse AFP, referring to their professional downgrading or even the difficulties of accessing childcare. "Not only are immigrant women more likely to have children (often because they arrive in France through family reunification), but when they have children, they have much greater difficulty entering the labor market [in France]", he said. 

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According to the report "Immigrants and descendants of immigrants" from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) published in March 2023, women born abroad have an average of 2.3 children, compared to an average of 1.7 for women born in France, a statistic below the threshold for population renewal (2.1).

In spite of the gap, France does have an ambitious family policy, with public spending on family benefits, which represents 3.5% of GDP, "the highest level in the OECD", according to the organization. Various benefits (parental leave, childcare services, family allowances, tax share, etc.) benefit both foreigners and French people.

At the end of August, the Montaigne Institute concluded that "only immigration" could counterbalance the demographic "decline" of France in the years to come.