Women living in the Brussels-Capital Region have more difficulty maintaining employment when they have children, and even more so when they are single, according to a study published by Actiris.
Although they represent the vast majority of single-parent families, these heads of household are particularly affected by unemployment.
In Brussels, one in three households with children (33.7%) are single-parent families. Of these 67,139 single-parent families in Brussels, 57,721 (86.0%) are headed by a single mother.
These single mothers remain underrepresented in the labour market: their employment rate is 53.6%, seven percentage points behind those in couples (60.5%) and even further behind those without children (77.3%), according to the study, which focuses on the 25-49 age group.
This phenomenon intensifies with the increasing number of children: the employment rate for single mothers drops to 29.1% with three or more children, and peaks at 42.5% when the youngest child is under three.
Single mothers with children are more frequently unemployed, with a rate of 15.2%. Half of these women (51.2%) are long-term unemployed, meaning they have been out of work for more than two years.
Single mothers who are inactive are most often involuntarily so, due to illness or inability to work (51.5%). This proportion drops to 16% for mothers living with a partner, who more often choose inactivity to take on family responsibilities (32.7%). However, the majority of these women (51.3%) cite other reasons, which are not specified in the study.
Women without children who are not employed, on the other hand, cite caring for other family members (11.3%), inability to work (39%), or other unspecified reasons (49.7%).
