specifically women are expected to fare better in the formal sector where legal and customary protections may allow them to earn higher wages and sustain them during motherhood finally bo decomposition is complemented by a nonparametric alternative decomposition developed by nopo this allows for a better explanation of motherhood wage differentials since it also shows how much of the gap calculated is accounted for by the outcomes of mothers and nonmothers outside the common support the glass ceiling hypothesis concerns the discrimination that women and minorities in more educated groups often face in trying to move up the hierarchy of an organization especially when they have more children by comparison with men and with childless women the quantile regression qr results vary substantively across the conditional wage distribution the poorest of the informal women sample are the ones who suffer the largest motherhood wage penalties