this pattern shows the impacts that having a child can have on women s labour market participation and earnings and consequently on pension benefits in these and other types of pension systems that link benefits to past employment and earnings benefits tend to reflect womens cumulated disadvantages of a lifetime s involvement in a genderbiased labour market european commission indeed when social protection entitlements are associated to paid employment and no or insufficient mechanisms exist to recognize and reward other kinds of contributions that people make to society such as unpaid work gender inequalities in the labour market are transmitted to the social protection system razavi