A study in Denmark has found that despite progress in parental leave policies and changing attitudes towards shared responsibilities, the impact of childbirth on career paths remains significantly greater for women. Researchers point out that women take on average up to five times more parental responsibilities than men.
This is not the first time studies have documented this “parental penalty” on academic careers, especially for women. However, some of these studies are more than a decade old, and attitudes have had time to evolve. Moreover, Denmark is known for its enviable social programs compared to other Western countries.
“Behaviors change much more slowly than attitudes,” comments economist Sofie Cairo from the Copenhagen Business School, co-author of the study published by the Center for Economic Performance affiliated with the London School of Economics.
The main finding reveals that while career trajectories for men and women were similar before childbirth, they diverged significantly afterward. Both curves show a decrease in employability, but it is much more pronounced for women in the first four years. After eight years, the study found that women were 29% less likely to be employed at a university compared to other women, while the decrease for men was 14%. Women were also less likely to be employed in research positions in general, outside of universities.
For those who remained in academia, the likelihood of losing their tenured position decreased by 35% after four years and 23% after eight years, with no measurable difference for fathers with or without children.
Sofie Cairo and her team used various Danish databases to gather information on 13,347 parents who enrolled in a doctoral program at a Danish university between 1996 and 2017 and had their first child after at least a year of doctoral studies.
