Research coordinated by SOFI’s Marie Evertsson and the GENPARENT team shows that gender norms and disparities, rather than financial factors, shape how parents divide work and care responsibilities.
Photo: Yuri Arcurs/Mostphotos.
Key Findings from the GENPARENT Project:
Gender norms strongly influence the division of work and care among different-sex couples, with women often facing reduced income development after becoming parents, while men remain more or less unaffected.
Lesbian and gay couples share parental leave more equally than different-sex couples. Male couples divide childcare the most evenly, partly likely due to the absence of physiological factors like breastfeeding.
In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, women in same-sex couples show similar earnings five years after their first child’s birth. In Finland, policies like cash-for-care contribute to significant earnings gaps in both same- and different-sex couples.
Mothers in different-sex couples, whether adoptive or biological, take longer parental leaves, highlighting the influence of gender norms.
The GENPARENT project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), analyzed large-scale population data from the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Interviews with lesbian couples in Sweden and the Netherlands provided additional insights.
SOFI’s gender research group GAINS (Gender Analysis and Interdisciplinary research Network, Stockholm) is a cross-disciplinary research environment that aims to facilitate social science research on issues related to gender. Our focus areas include the labor market, health, education, and family relations.
