The impact of women’s and men’s careers on the family and children

Despite significant progress in the last decades, substantial gender gaps in the labor market remain, with women being underrepresented in high ranked professional positions and among top income earners. Recent research suggests that the greater time demands imposed by household and childcare work on women compared to men are a key reason behind the persistent disparities.

The goal of this project is to shed new light on the constraints faced by women with children when moving up the professional ladder. We will investigate the differential impact of positive labor market shocks to men’s and women’s careers on family wellbeing. We will provide the first causal evidence on how job promotions affect time allocation within the household, the labor responses of the spouse, marital stability, fertility decisions, the wellbeing of parents and children, as well as child development.

Of particular interest will be to understand if and how such effects differ for maternal and paternal job promotions. To do so, we will combine high-quality Swedish administrative registers with quasi-experimental quantitative methods.

The results from this project will improve our understanding of the choices and constraints faced by families with children, and of how gender norms might mediate families’ responses to changes in their work situation. These results will further expand our knowledge about the remaining barriers for the closing of gender gaps in labor markets.