ABSTRACT This paper investigates to what extent variation in the distribution across occupational categories in the labour market affects women's demographic behaviour. It specifically explores which occupational categories are more beneficial for women in the transition to first, second and third birth in Spain. Event-history analyses are applied to retrospective data from the Spanish Fertility and Family Survey (1995). The results show that there are differences in women's fertility according to their occupational choice and demonstrate that health and teaching professionals show an advantage in harmonizing work and motherhood in Spain. This finding is consistent with the idea that not only the impact of occupational sex-segregation on women's fertility is explicable by each woman's specific attitudes towards motherhood and career but also by her employment conditions at the workplace. This effect is particularly strong in Spain due to the specific national context of combining family responsibilities and labour force participation.