What are the features of the transition from employment to inactivity? For the last nine years, with the exception of 2017, the same pattern has emerged: a larger number of women go from employment to inactivity at the beginning of the school holidays. They abandon their career and, for a time, do not seek a new job. However, this trend is much weaker in the case of men.

Why do women leave the job market? To a large extent, because they take care of the home, their children and family obligations as a whole, which reaches the point of being incompatible with doing their job. Almost four out of every ten women (35.29%) who shift from employment to inactivity between June and September admit that they do so for this reason: family obligations. However, only one out of every ten men (9.5%) cites family reasons for leaving the labour market.

This higher percentage of women who leave the labour market in the third quarter of the year (Graph 2) reflects an ineffective solution to work-family balance. The statistics show that these women are more qualified and accumulate more work experience than the men who also leave the job market in the third quarter. Graph 3 illustrates this: the figures indicate that women who leave their job and become economically inactive amass more studies and more work experience than men who take the same option, in almost all the years analysed over the last nine years. This graph shows the ratio between the educational level of women and men in the same age bracket (25-50) who are employed in the second quarter and inactive in the third quarter (for the period 2010-2019).

Graph 4 shows the average inactivity rate for each quarter (period 2010-2019) of mothers and fathers aged between 25 and 50, differentiating the two groups according to whether their partners work or not. The data were obtained from the Economically Active Population Survey (EPA) conducted by the INE.

As can be seen in the left-hand panel of the graph, in the third quarter mothers register an above-average increase in the transition from employment to inactivity. There is also evidence that there are more mothers in a situation of inactivity if their partners work (on average, 864,247 women with an inactivity rate of 21.85%) than mothers in the same employment situation but whose partners do not work (on average, 185,432 women with an inactivity rate of 21.06%). In this respect, we can deduce that the employment situation of mothers in relation to that of their partners is of a complementary nature.
 

The right-hand panel of Graph 4 presents the data corresponding to fathers, relative to whether their partners work or not. The first statistic of note is that fathers transit to inactivity less than mothers, both in relative terms (inactivity rate) and in absolute figures. Secondly, unlike in the case of mothers, no seasonal component is observed, as the data are spread evenly over all four quarters.

Lastly, it is important to note that more fathers move to inactivity within couples in which the mothers are also without work, contrary to what happens in the left-hand panel, corresponding to the female case. In this respect, the complementary nature seen in mothers with regard to the employment situation of their partners is not observed here; rather, fathers act independently in the household, subordinating any possible family obligations to earning a wage.

This article shows that in the third quarters of recent years women leave the labour market and move to inactivity to a greater extent than men, and that the main reason that brings them to do so is to take on family obligations. This is not an efficient solution from an economic or social viewpoint, as these women have a sounder academic and professional background than the men who take this option.

In addition, mothers, within the general group of women, far outweigh fathers when it comes to moving from employment to inactivity. This is particularly noticeable in the third quarter of each year.

The results reported in this article may have an adverse effect on the careers of women as a whole, and also on their wages and retirement pensions. The need for an effective work-family balance, promoted by the political and economic authorities, and a demonstrable distribution of tasks within the household are two aspects in which Spanish society must advance in order to achieve true equality between men and women.