Your links, especially the WEF link, support the correlation, but explicitly describe a confounding variable as being household work (especially childcare). And that’s consistent with the observation that the motherhood penalty has a different magnitude for different countries and different industries. All that suggests that a combination of household division of labor, parental leave policies (either employer policies or government regulations), and workplace accommodations generally can make a big difference.
None of this is inevitable or immutable. We can learn from the countries and the industries where the motherhood penalty is lower, or doesn’t last as long.
Your links, especially the WEF link, support the correlation, but explicitly describe a confounding variable as being household work (especially childcare). And that’s consistent with the observation that the motherhood penalty has a different magnitude for different countries and different industries. All that suggests that a combination of household division of labor, parental leave policies (either employer policies or government regulations), and workplace accommodations generally can make a big difference.
None of this is inevitable or immutable. We can learn from the countries and the industries where the motherhood penalty is lower, or doesn’t last as long.