In recent decades, women’s employment has increased significantly in Spain. In the period from 2010 to 2022, the percentage of mothers with children under the age of 12 years old fell from 60% to 70%, according to INE. Despite this, there is still a gap against women without children, and partially, time or breaks in a career, continue to disproportionately influence mothers.
The lack of children’s care services remains one of the main barriers, so many women can work or support their work after they were mothers. International data (for example, here) show that access to children’s educational schools can be a powerful tool for reducing gender gap. But not all schools are the same: their quality and accessibility vary, and both measurements can establish family decisions about whether or not after the birth of a child. In this context, the educational policy not only affects children, but also on their mothers. In my study, I analyze as a change in regulation intended to improve the first cycle of preschool education, ultimately influenced the path of women’s work.
In 2006, the organic law of education (LOE) was approved in Spain, which first included quality criteria for educational centers of the first cycle of children. This law established such requirements as the minimum space for one child, the maximum relations of students for teachers and teaching teaching staff. Although his goal was to guarantee high -quality education from the first years of life, the law had an important guarantee: many private schools (most of the market at that time) could not adapt and ultimately closed. The result was a paradoxical phenomenon: the quality has been improved, but many schools were closed. And this, as we will see, had unexpected consequences in the working life of mothers.
To understand what actually happened, I analyze the consequences of this law, combining administrative microdates with the methods of impact assessment. I use the fact that the introduction of the law was stunned in various autonomous communities (see Figure 1), which allows you to compare the regions treated with similar ones, where the law was not applied, or I did it later. Thus, study three types of effects:
- How the quality of schools has changed (using an index built with the financial and working data of centers).
- How your number was reduced.
- What influence this had on the use of mothers after the birth of the first child.
The results show that the quality of schools in the treated regions has improved significantly after applying the law (increasing the quality index by 77% compared to the previous average). However, the number of schools per 1000 children fell by about 52%, especially in the private sector, which amounted to 60% of the total to the reform.
As shown in Figure 2, the availability of schools has fallen significantly after applying the law, which limits reconciliation options for many families. This descent had a clear effect on mothers. In the treatment of provinces, the probability that the mother continues to work after the birth decreased by 15%, and the intensity of employment (the measure as the share of the days worked in the year) also fell by 18% compared to unrelated provinces. The effect was especially strong in the first year after birth, which is extremely important for determining the subsequent path of women’s work (for example, see here).
Figure 3 is reflected this fall in the intensity of maternal employment, which indicates that the reduction of accessible places had specific and unequal economic consequences in terms of sex (since there is no influence on parents).
The negative consequences were more noticeable among mothers without university research, and jobs in the private sector or in families with two parents coincide with previous results, as in this study. On the contrary, single or immigrants have no significant consequences, perhaps because they have already encountered budget restrictions that prevented them from accessing schools from the very beginning and the stopping of work entails higher alternative costs. Also, they do not affect parents or women without children, which enhances the idea that the influence of the law is focused on mothers and was mediated by reconciliation difficulties.
What did families do when the squares disappeared in children’s educational schools? In most cases, they could not support grandparents or other relatives. It was, as it often happened, to mothers who took most of the care.
This change also had a specific impact on the habits and expenses of families. Family expenses increased when caring for children, probably because the schools that remained open were more expensive or because there were fewer accessible options. The use of the school canteen fell, which indicates that less families decided to leave their children all day at school (probably for economic reasons). In addition, the use of school transport increased, a sign that some families had to take their children further to find an affordable square.
This case shows that even a well -given law can have counter -productive effects if all its measurements are not considered. Improving the quality of preschool education schools is desirable, but cannot be made by reducing their accessibility. The results also suggest that families value the quantity (that is, the opportunity to gain access to the place) than quality (in accordance with regulated criteria) when making a decision on whether to work or not. Politicians should find a balance between quality and coverage, especially if they want to promote equal employment opportunities for women.
Finally, this study adds to growing literature, which analyzes the impact of the provision of children’s care services on women’s employment. In contexts such as Norway or Canada, where places expand without reducing quality, there is a significant increase in the participation of mothers. This strengthens the idea that institutional design is key: this is not enough to have educational services, but they should be affordable, high -quality and relevant to the needs of the families.
