Assistant Professor Pamela Campa (photo: Mats Andersson, vfxsouth), Professor Johanna Wallenius and Associate Professor Martina Björkman Nyqvist. 

Closing gender gaps and giving women equal opportunities for participation and decision-making are vital to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to UN Women. For instance, if the rest of the OECD countries could raise their female employment rate to match that of Sweden, UN Women states, the GDP could be boosted by over USD 6 trillion. 

Leading the way towards equality

While Sweden’s women might be leading the way in terms of women in the work force, there are still many obstacles to overcome, at home and internationally. Women as a group are paid less than men, and in many parts of the world, girls have less access to education than boys. Women are under-represented in board rooms, politics and the media all over the world. The Stockholm School of Economics strives to be part of removing those obstacles, both in terms of education and research. 

On International Women’s Day we want to highlight some of the important research that our accomplished colleagues are carrying out. Research that can help us move forward as a society. 

Women and part-time work

Combining work and family can be challenging. Sweden and the other Nordic countries provide substantial government support aimed at reconciling work and family life. Policies include generous parental leave, heavily subsidized daycare and the facilitation of part-time work for parents with young children. While female employment is high in Sweden, there is a notable gender gap in both earnings and wages, which widens substantially after women have children.

Professor Johanna Wallenius studies macroeconomics, labor economics and household economics. In the study Having It All? Employment, Earnings and Children Wallenius and her colleague find that Swedish family policy boosts women’s participation in the work force after becoming mothers. Even though part-time work widens the gap in wages and earnings, restricting part-time work options would lower maternal employment and widen the gender gap even further. Interestingly, having a partner and children are positively associated with being in top income groups for men, but negatively associated for women, other research shows. 

“In the future, it would be interesting to study how various family policies aimed at promoting gender equity affect not just parents but also children, for example through parental investments in children,” she says. 

Girls’ education suffers

Speaking of parental investments in children, Martina Björkman Nyqvist, an associate professor in the field of development economics, health economics and education, has studied gender gaps in education in Uganda. Her research shows that when rainfall decreases and income and food become scarcer, this negatively effects girls’ enrollment in primary school – especially older girls. Academic results also suffer for girls in these cases, while the same adverse effects are not noted for boys. The results imply that households respond to income shocks by varying the enrollment and resources provided to girls, while boys are to a large extent sheltered from the effects. 

“More research is needed in the future to better understand how we decrease the gender gap in education, health, and labor market in the regions where girls are lagging behind the most – developing countries. This is not only a moral obligation, it also crucial for achieving the global sustainable development goals.”

Women in politics

In spite of the progress that has been made in the last decades in terms of female labor force participation and educational attainment, women are still largely underrepresented in political institutions. Among EU countries, women account for only 27% of MPs and 12% of prime ministers. Several countries in the EU have adopted gender quotas that regulate the composition of electoral lists in an attempt to address the underrepresentation of women in political institutions. Furthermore, in 13 other EU countries, gender quotas have been adopted voluntarily by some of the main political parties.

Pamela Campa is an assistant professor specializing in gender economics. Her research on women in Spanish politics shows that while the quotas have increased the number of women elected, they have not significantly increased the probability of women reaching leadership positions, or the type of policies that are implemented. At the same time, fears that quotas would decrease the quality of politicians have not been realized.

“In the future I would like to see more and more research on different quota applications in various contexts, to understand better under what conditions quotas work," she says. "Moreover, I think it is time to start systematically studying other policies that can potentially improve women’s representation in politics. What is the effect, for instance, of mentoring groups within parties, training opportunities for young women, or policies aimed at changing gender norms in a society?”