Latest in academia 📚
In “Parenthood and the Career Ladder: Evidence from Academia,” the authors examine how parenthood shapes academic careers.
Their key finding: parenthood marks a sharp turning point with around 1 in 3 women leaving academia.
#womenineconomics #academia #genderequality
Wauw, early bird, Laura :) Thanks a lot!!
Link to the paper - joint with @cairosofie.bsky.social, @riaivandic.bsky.social and @valentinatartari.bsky.social - here:
This morning, our study made it to French radio 🥐
Listen - in French - to the conversation with @alexandradelbot.bsky.social about the gender gaps in academia and what children have to do with it
+ a bit about the benefits of admin data (I cannot help it 🫶) for answering these types of questions
Grateful to be one of the recipients of the Early Career Research Award
Together with Valeria Zurla and @jonasjessen.bsky.social, we study when and why parental leave policies help mothers and reduce the gender gap
We start with Denmark, Germany, and Italy, and will add more countries. Exciting ✨
A third of women no longer work in academia eight years after having a child, according to new research that suggests extra childcare responsibilities are hindering women’s abilities to climb the career ladder. Juliette Rowsell reports #EduSky #leakypipeline
https://ow.ly/nhXa50Yzicp
A new Copenhagen Business School article highlights evidence that Denmark’s 2022 paternity leave reform changed leave-taking patterns, social attitudes & gender earnings gaps. Featuring research by Camille Landais & co-authors. via.ritzau.dk/pressemeddel...
On the bright side, departments matter 👇
Women who do their phd in departments with senior women face smaller penalties
Competitive, highly productive department increases the size of the penalty
This and more details in our CEP WP cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/downloa...
Reducing optionality in leave division reduces satisfaction with the leave scheme
BUT
Paternity leave also leads to more support towards fathers’ involvement and less gender inequality
➡️ An inherent trade-off
More about our paper below 👇 @jakobsogaard.bsky.social @philrose88.bsky.social
Really very happy to see our paper covered in Nature Magazine
Full paper here cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publica...
Next week, @riaivandic.bsky.social will present our paper at the WE_ARE @cepr.org seminar series
More info and register here 👉 cepr.org/events/event...
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.
INSIGHTS pieces Parenthood and the Academic Career Ladder by Sofie Cairo, Ria Ivandić, Anne Sophie Lassen, and Valentina Tartari
💼 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
