Explaining gender differences in doctoral students’ performance and early career development in Sweden: A longitudinal and comparative study

The purpose of this project is to explain gender differences in doctoral students’ research performance and early career development in Sweden.

Despite increasing female representation in the Swedish higher education system and increasing importance of gender equality in governmental policy, females continue to publish less and have poorer career development than males. Gender differences in research productivity begin already during doctoral studies.

Consequently, females enter their careers with a disadvantage since peer-reviewed publications are important in the competition for funding and employment.

It is therefore important to gain knowledge about how gender differences in productivity arise already during doctoral studies and how they affect the early careers of females.The main explanation for gender differences in academia is that females have more career interruptions than males, e.g., pregnancy, care responsibilities, health problems, and part time work.

These interruptions provide disadvantages for females that cumulate over time and negatively affects their careers. However, this explanation has been difficult to fully test in previous research.

In this project I will examine the effect of career interruptions by constructing an internationally unique dataset based on micro data from Statistics Sweden and publication-based data from Swedish repositories for research publications.

This rich dataset enables a design that is largely missing in previous research: A large-scale quantitative design where it is possible to determine the relative importance of most factors that are known to have an effect on gender differences, and their relationships. Can female doctoral students’ lower productivity be explained by interruptions such as parenthood and parental leave?

To which extent is females early career development conditioned by events during doctoral studies? Do the initial gender differences in research productivity cumulate over time, and if so, why?