Giving Compass' Take:

• A report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research analyzes the disparities between the number of hours that mothers work compared to other men and women. 

• The author notes that if the laws around paid time off, family leave and overtime could change, then it could help end disparities between men and women's workweeks.  What are the first steps to changing labor laws, and how can donors help?

• Learn about efforts to create a pipeline for more women business leaders. 

More women than ever are serving as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, though still far fewer women than men reach this level. American women are being paid more in general, but still less than men. And according to new research, they’re also working more hours—again, however, fewer than men—and they are starting to outnumber men in part-time work. These disparities are even more pronounced when the women are mothers and the men are fathers, and they’re persistent, according to a report released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research last week.

“The role of the father still is to ‘bring in the bacon,’ and make money,” said Ariane Hegewisch, one of the authors of IWPR’s report. “The role of the mother is to work for pay but to [also] have the main care responsibilities.” It sounds like a sexist trope, but after analyzing the U.S. Current Population Survey through 2017 for workers ages 25 to 64, IWPR found that for the average worker, it’s true: Fathers work more hours than other men, and mothers work fewer hours than other women.

That’s not to discount the fact that women across the board have started working a whole lot more than they used to. In the last 40 years, women have picked up five more weeks of full-time work a year, while men are only working one more full-time week than before.

For parents, the difference is greater over the same period: Mothers have worked 300 more paid hours a year since 1977, while fathers’ annual paid hours fell by 8 hours. Black mothers work the most paid hours of all mothers—on average, “104 hours more than Hispanic mothers, 89 hours more than White mothers, and 52 hours more than Asian mothers,” according to the report—as did white fathers, out of all fathers.

Read the full article about working moms by Sarah Holder at CityLab.