Marianne Bertrand explaining the "The gender equality paradox"

Marianne Bertrand during a lecture at Stockholm University. Photo: Elin Sahlin

Drawing on insights from economics and psychology, her talk – titled “Gender, Stereotypes and Inequality” – explored how gender stereotypes and societal beliefs continue to shape economic and social outcomes, influencing everything from women’s educational and career choices to labour market participation, inequality, and economic development. The lecture was organised by the Myrdal Committée at the Faculty of Social Sciences.

In her previous research, Marianne Bertrand found a 50 percent gender gap in annual earnings among Master of Business Administration graduates from a top business school in the United States, to women’s disadvantage. The gap, that emerged and widened after graduation, with men earning substantially more than women a decade later – turned out to be largely associated with motherhood. 

”There is a dramatic change when women become mothers while nothing is happening to the fathers. Motherhood penalties around the world account for much of the gender pay gap in advanced economies. Not just in business, but also in law as well as in science,” Bertrand said.  

Since then, there has been little or no progress during the last decade. Women are also underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. 

Self-sterotyping contributes to persisting gender gaps

Drawing on insights from economics, gender theory, psychology and social identity theory, Marianne Bertrand has studied how self-stereotyping – aligning one’s views and behaviour to societal expectations based on one’s sex – contributes to persisting gender gaps when it comes to educational and career choices as well as labour market participation. 

”Choices are further constrained by the fear of punishment and social stigma if women don’t conform to what is prescribed for the group”, said Marianne Bertrand.

One example of such self-sterotyping, is that women in male-dominated environments, like maths, are less likely to raise their hand to answer a question, compared to female-dominated environments, like arts. In her study from 2019, Bertrand et al. found that the marriage rate declined among educated women in East Asian countries. The reason might be that well-educated women’s earning potential increased, compared to that of men – thus challenging existing gender norms. A similar pattern was found in another study made in United States and the United Kingdom.
When it comes to the labour market, Marianne Bertrand and her research colleagues found that women in Uruguay, Brazil, United States and West Germany tend to work part time or stay out of the workforce if their potential earnings exceeded their husband’s. In another study, they found that divorce or separation were more common in couples where gender norms were not conformed to, for example when the wife earned more, thus challening the traditional norm of the male breadwinner.

During her talk, Bertrand highlighted something that she described as a gender equality paradox: it seems that in more gender equal societies, women are less likely to pursue math-related careers or studies, a gap that persists while controlling for math skills. Furthermore, research shows math stereotypes are stronger in countries with more gender equality than in countries with less equality. Bertrand suggested that in more gender equal societies where traditional power structures are weakened, gender sterotypes may be enforced as social groups may still feel the need to continue to distinguish themselves. Thus, in more gender-equal societies where men and women have similar educational opportunities, small differences might become even more exaggerated in group, precribing a certain behaviour grounded in gender essentialism, according to Bertrand. 

How information about what others prescribe change behaviour

But what if beliefs about what is prescribed for women versus men are systematically wrong? In a research project from 2024, she and her research colleagues found that adolescent boys (and girls) in Brazil overestimated the share of peers with traditional masculinity views, for example the idea that a man who cries is weak. However, the actual support among their peers for these views was much lower. Through focus groups with discussions on masculinity, they managed to correct those misperceptions, something that turned out to have a lasting effect.

”These kind of misperceptions that appear around the world could be based in a lack of communication, outdated beliefs transmitted from parents to children or biased or loud voices in social media prescribing a certain behaviour”, Bertrand said.

She found a similar kind of misperception around gender norms when conducting a study in Japan 2025. In spite of a generous paternity leave system in Japan and the great societal support of men taking up paternity leave, the duration of paternity leave in Japan remains low. While men guessed the support for taking paternity leave would only be 40 percent, the actual rate of men who expressed support for a male colleague or subordinate taking a month of paternal leave was in fact around 80 percent. With the aim to change attitudes and behaviour, she and her research colleagues made an intervention consisting of an information package, which included showing a full anime video explaining facts about paternity leave. The result showed that the anime video had a long-lasting effect on attitudes; after the experiment, the average guess of the support for men taking up paternal leave had increased up to a bit above 60 percent. As an outcome, the share of participants who would encourage a male co-worker to take up paternity leave increased as well.