A successful academic career often advances cumulatively giving rise to a snowball effect stemming from research conducted early in the career; that is, at the time when most people choose to have children. A productive start of a career affects the number of published works and a researcher’s number of citations, thereby also his or her chances of attracting external research funding enabling further research.
Do the career opportunities for male and female academics differ in terms of having children? In this report, Olof Ejermo, professor of economic history at Lund University, analyzes how the first child affects academic productivity, earnings growth and the extent to which women and men, respectively, leave academia. The report concludes by presenting a number of recommendations on how to improve the conditions for academics to return to work after parental leave.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE REPORT
- The report presents clear differences in terms of publication rate after academics become parents in which women are at a disadvantage. A so-called publication gap emerges; in other words, a gap in the average publication rate between women and men after having children. This gap continues to grow each year, and it is at 40 percent already after two years for those who remain in the academy. After nine years, it has gone up to 80 percent.
- The results show that the gender gap is entirely due to fathers increasing their publication rate while that of the mothers tends to stagnate. The publication rate of mothers does not differ significantly from one year before the birth of the child, while the publication rate of fathers increases almost every year
- There is a definite short-term loss of income for women relative to men in the year that the child is born and the year after, after which wages go up again. However, the loss of income is greater for women compared to men, and it permanently drops below the earnings growth of men.
- Clear gender gaps emerge in every academic area studied in this report (humanities/social sciences, medicine, natural sciences and engineering). Somewhat surprisingly, the clearest long-term differences are found in the humanities and social sciences.
- The gender gap arises for academics who are either PhD students or have a career-development position. For the group of senior lecturers, which is quite small, there are no differences in productivity growth between men and women after having their first child.
- The report also shows that the use of parental leave measured as gross days has become more even over time. If this factor had been decisive with regard to publication rate, one would expect a smaller gender gap over time. However, this is not the case and there are actually signs indicating the opposite.
RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE REPORT
- A policy aimed at improving the conditions for individuals returning to a position after parental leave would probably reduce the gender gap. For instance, this may involve increasing the share of allocated time for research in the position.
- Increase the capacity and stakes with regard to collaboration while not simply increasing the competition for research funding. Such initiatives involve good leadership, such as through research applications involving larger groups and which, as is often the case today, are not decentralized down to the individual level.
AUTHOR
Olof Ejermo, professor of economic history at Lund University.