The Nordic welfare states are considered advanced in terms of gender equality, but even in these countries women still take longer family leave and have lower earnings than men. This study provides new insights by assessing the differences in accumulated midlife earnings associated with childbearing between women and men in Finland and Sweden. We pay particular attention to the size of the gender gap in accumulated earnings across groups. We hypothesize that the gender gap will be larger among those with a larger number of children, among those with a lower level of education, and overall in Finland. The study is based on complete population register data, with highly accurate measures of earnings over decades. Our results show that by the age of 44, women born in 1974–1975 in Finland and Sweden had earned on average 32% and 29% less than men, respectively. Childbearing strongly modifies the gender gap, especially in Finland, and the highly educated have moderately smaller gaps in both countries. Our results show that, even the Nordic welfare states, despite their strong policy emphasis on gender equality and their success in achieving high levels of female labor force participation, are far from closing the gender gap in earnings accumulated over the first half of the life course. Our results also suggest that governments seeking to achieve gender equality should be cautious about providing long family-related leave with flat-rate compensation.

The aim of this article is to explore the circumstances leading employers to discriminate by gender and parenthood, contributing to the broader aim at increasing our understanding about the mechanisms underlying gender inequality in the labor market. Previous Swedish (and many international) studies show that employers are about equally likely to hire men and women. These results tend to refer, however, to data based on aggregates of branches, occupations and sectors. Statistical power is commonly low when results are broken down by segments. Studies showing no employer discrimination at the aggregate level may thus hide discrimination in certain segments. There are reasons to expect discrimination by gender and parenthood to vary depending on context and we explore this by relating variation in employer behavior to variation in demographic (gender) composition and qualification level in the occupation applied for. In this study, a large-scale experimental correspondence test design is employed, and non-authentic applications—with gender and parenthood randomly assigned to job applications—are sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, including information on a total of 6,755 job applications in 15 occupations. The results show no indication of discrimination based on gender or parenthood in this early step of the recruitment process, and this is regardless of whether the occupation is dominated by either gender or is gender balanced.

Relying on data from a large-scale field experiment in Sweden, this article studies discrimination in recruitment on the basis of gender and ethnicity combined with recruiter gender. The study includes 5641 job applications sent in response to advertised vacancies, and the employer callbacks to these. Gender and either a Swedish or a foreign-sounding name were randomly assigned to the applications, and recruiter gender was documented whenever available. Based on the callback rates, there is evidence of ethnic discrimination against foreign-named job applicants by both male and female recruiters. Also, male applicants with foreign-sounding names are discriminated more than female applicants with foreign-sounding names. Thus, the results show gendered ethnic discrimination in the Swedish labor market, and this does not appear to depend on recruiter gender in general. However, the patterns for gendered ethnic discrimination by recruiter gender vary across occupational categories.

Biased practices by employers have been suggested as one possible cause for the observed gender disparities in labor market outcomes. While US-based laboratory experiments show a clear motherhood penalty in recruitment, European laboratory experiments on the topic are to our knowledge lacking. We conducted a laboratory experiment with 228 university students to study a potential gender bias in the evaluation of (fictitious) job candidates for an accounting manager position, and how recruitment decisions are made. We explore two dimensions of decision-making, that is, evaluators’ individual ratings and collectively made ratings. The results show a statistically significant gender bias in job applicant ratings in favor of female applicants. Thus, female job applicants are more often than male applicants rated as the top candidates, regardless of their parental status. Also, we find no motherhood penalty in the applicant ratings. Moreover, there is a statistically significant pro-female bias in applicant ratings made by female evaluators individually and by all-female evaluation groups.

This dissertation uses experimental methods to study hiring discrimination based on gender, parenthood and ethnicity in the Swedish labor market. Also, the role of recruiter gender for gender and ethnic discrimination is studied. Three of the four empirical studies (Study I, Study II and Study IV), are based on field experiment data using a correspondence testing method. This involves fictitious job applications sent to announced jobs, and the employer responses to these. Signals of applicant characteristics such as gender, parenthood status, and ethnicity are randomly assigned to the job applications whereas qualifications are held constant (within occupations). Study III is based on a laboratory experiment in which (fictious) job candidates are evaluated.Study I does not show any evidence of discrimination based on gender or parenthood, or any combination of these, in the first step of the hiring process, neither in highly nor less qualified occupations. Study II shows that male job applicants are favored by male recruiters, especially in gender-balanced occupations.Study III shows a statistically significant gender bias in job applicant ratings in favor of female applicants in a laboratory setting. This is particularly the case for female evaluators. Moreover, Study III shows no motherhood penalty in the applicant ratings.Study IV presents evidence of ethnic discrimination against foreign-named job applicants by both male and female recruiters. Further, there is evidence of gendered ethnic discrimination, i.e., male applicants with foreign-sounding names receive considerably fewer positive responses than female applicants with foreign-sounding names. While female recruiters favor foreign-named female applicants over foreign-named male applicants, particularly in highly qualified occupations, male recruiters appear to prefer foreign-named females over foreign-named males in male-dominated occupations.To summarize, the findings from this dissertation provide little support for the notion of discrimination in recruitment as an important mechanism behind gender inequalities in the Swedish labor market. However, the results indicate that discrimination in the recruitment process contributes to the labor market inequality of ethnic minorities, and of ethnic minority men in particular. Moreover, the findings suggest that recruiter gender matters for the success of male and female job candidates, and in particular for foreign-named men and women, at least in some occupational contexts.