At the intersection of gender and parenthood: the motherhood ceiling among skilled women
This article deals with the professional inequalities affecting women, from an intersectional lens associating gender and parenthood. For fifty years, women took their place on the labour market in Quebec. They nevertheless continue to suffer from discrimination based on gender. This said, an important shift seems to occur when they become parent, which has been qualified of «mother ceiling». From this point in time, the professional inequalities between men and women appear to increase drastically and in an often irreversible way. Based on our previous researches, this article presents some of the mechanisms through which the career plateauing of mothers is constructed. We then discuss the stakes associated to the “mother ceiling”, in particular those related to fertility intentions.