Author Description

"This study contributes to the debate about the role of self-employment in helping women improve family–work balance by offering evidence from a uniquely rich dataset that links individual records from the 2006 Census of Population to records from the 2011 National Household Survey. It focuses directly on changes in the main labour market activities of women with newborn children. The study shows that becoming a new mother increases the probability of making a transition from wage employment to self-employment. Furthermore, the weekly work hours of the new mothers who make such a transition become far more uniformly distributed than their hours were when they were wage earners. The work-hour distribution of new mothers who make a transition to self-employment is also considerably more uniform than the work-hour distribution of new mothers who remain wage earners"--Abstract, p. 5.