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 women's "cumulated disadvantages of a lifetime’s involvement in a gender-biased labour market” (European Commission 2013:21). 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 2011).