Only one in four professors is a woman. We show that motherhood is a key driver of the leaky pipeline, particularly at early career stages. More details in the summary and working paper below👇
Sign up to hear my presentation of the research in the CEPR Applied Economics Seminar on 23 March.
💼 Parenthood can be a turning point in #academic careers.
💡 A new INSIGHTS piece revisits the study on parenthood and the academic career ladder and what it reveals about motherhood, fatherhood, and career paths in academia and beyond.
berlinschoolofeconomics.de/insight/pare...
#genderinequality
Read the full paper here: opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/f...
Comments are most welcome!!
In sum: parenthood leads to highly educated, ambitious women to leave their preferred occupation. The magnitude is large
In research, women’s underrepresentation affects both quality and direction of science
But the mechanism might be present in other demanding jobs: law, consultancy, finance
Which brings us to departments (workplaces, by field) in the admin data
Whether lab work and physical presence is required has no effect
Presence of senior women can mitigate the negative impact
Women who did their PhDs in highly productive, competitive department face a large penalty
Family environments doesn’t matter for the impact on women’s career
Parity in parental leave division is unheard of in this setting and extended family care is rare in Denmark
However, fathers who take paternity leave also face negative career consequences. Fathers who don’t get a premium
While respondents - academics in Denmark 🇩🇰 - say that childcare *should* be shared equally; this is not what occur in most families
Gender gaps are particularly large in “constraining childcare” such as doctor’s visits, night-time care, and sick days
Only dropping off in daycare is split equally 🙃
Women face large and persistent child penalties as they leave academia following motherhood
We decompose the penalty on tenure into 1) survival 2) labor supply 3) research output and show that 1) matters the most
However, the “unexplained component” increases over time
We use admin data to observe the early pipeline: phd students
We combine this with info on their family and their workplace
To answer:
👨🏻🍼Does family support mitigate the penalty?
👩🏼🏫 What can departments do?
We add info on productivity and surveys on academic ambitions and division of childcare
Yesterday, it was Women’s Day
Today, you can read our paper on parenthood and women’s under-representation in academia
Parenthood leads to women leaving academia - not just career slowdown
👇👇👇
Joint work with @cairosofie.bsky.social, @riaivandic.bsky.social and @valentinatartari.bsky.social
At the same time, leave satisfaction declines sharply, highlighting a welfare trade-off
Paternity leave can shift norms and reduce gender inequality, but such policies comes at a cost
The broader question - beyond the scope of our paper - is how to weigh these objectives
We also find labor market effects beyond the leave period
In the second year after the child is born (i.e. after leave has been exhaused), we find
- Gender earnings gap declines by 2.8pp
- Gender hours gap declines by 1.4pp
This corresponds to ~14% of Denmark’s child penalty
Effects are larger for first-time parents and for parents who change their behavior due to the reform.
We provide evidence that larger reforms - such as policies that ensures equal parental leave - have the potential to shift norms out of the conservative domain
The reform shifts gendered beliefs in a more progressive direction
Parents become less supportive of statements like:
- Pre-school children suffer if their mothers work full-time
- Mothers should take most leave
- Mothers are better caregivers of small children
First, we document a large first-stage. The reform reallocated roughly one month of leave from mothers to fathers
After the reform, fathers take more than 20 % of all parental leave
We study an expansion of earmarked paternity leave and link administrative data to a new survey of ~40,000 parents, interviewed twice, around the reform implementation
This allows us to provide causal evidence on leave behavior and earnings, but also on gender beliefs and norms
Can family policies shift gendered beliefs, social norms, and ultimately gender gaps in the labor market?
Yes!
Read our new WP for all the details
Happy to finally see our new working paper on the effect of earmarked paternity leave out.
Joint work with: Henrik Kleven, Camillie Landais, @ansolassen.bsky.social, Philip Rosenbaum and Herdis Steingrimsdottir.
Using data from the US & 10 European countries, the OECD LinkEED 2.0 Team analysed the role of firms in the gender wage gap. They find firms account for 10-30% of the gap, mainly reflecting women being more likely to work at firms that pay less to all employees.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
The gender wage gap and what firms have to do with it 👀
Read the column, covering our paper
We use harmonized data across 11 countries, producing truly comparable results
Working on the gender wage gap? We have a new call for papers for a Special Issue of IR Berkeley. Check it out here: irle.berkeley.edu/publications... @ucberkeleyirle.bsky.social @sriucl.bsky.social
Join us for the workshop "Gender Gaps and Social Norms"
📅 December 4 📍 @upf.edu (Barcelona)
Organized with @libertadgonzalez.bsky.social as part of #MSCA project #Leave4NextGen
Full program with lineup of leading researchers: tinyurl.com/yh62scdj
📧 Register by email: sebastien.fontenay@upf.edu
📚 📣 Are you in the Stockholm area on September 22nd? Come discuss new research about gender gaps in academia at Stockholm University! Email me to sign up. Program below!
Join us at Copenhagen Business School on Sept 29, 2025 for a full-day workshop on Gender Norms, Family Dynamics, and Labor Market Outcomes
🔗 Registration: cbs.nemtilmeld.dk/1289/
Featuring: @libertadgonzalez.bsky.social, @esmeezwiers.bsky.social, @jakobsogaard.bsky.social and more 👇👀
Attention Berlin-based PhDs & early-career researchers!
On 18–19 September, join the RFBerlin Masterclass with Barbara Petrongolo and get the chance to deepen your understanding of The Evolution of Gender in the Labor Market.
Apply by 15 August: www.rfberlin.com/event/rfberl...
Really very happy to attend the NBER SI, and for our paper on the role of firms in explaining the gender wage gap - with harmonized data from 11 countries - to be included in the joint Gender & Labor session this morning!
Come say hi and enjoy @marcogpalladino.bsky.social's presentation!
Such a cool paper!
When I think about interruption at work (and mental load on which we know even less), this is my first reference!
📆 Join us on June 11 at our economics research seminar with Anne Sophie Lassen (@ansolassen.bsky.social), who will present "Earmarking Parental Leave to Fathers: Effects on Beliefs, Norms, and Childcare."
More info and abstract:
www.jku.at/en/departmen...
#EconSky
I really liked Undine (movie, partly set in Berlin) and Madonna in a fur coat (book, set in 1920s Berlin and Ankara)
🚉 —> NBER Spring Meeting on Investments in Early Career Scientists
Looking forward to see some cool projects (www.nber.org/conferences/...) and get feedback on our project ‘Parenthood and the Academic Ladder’ (with @cairosofie.bsky.social @riaivandic.bsky.social @valentinatartari.bsky.social)
