Gender Discrimination following Parental Leave

Helen Eriksson , Stockholm University
Filip Olsson, Stockholm University

Gender inequality in the labor market continues to be strongly shaped by parenthood, with women’s careers and earnings declining sharply after the birth of a child. Although men and women in Sweden express highly egalitarian attitudes, parental leave uptake remains gendered, and the mechanisms sustaining this imbalance are not fully understood. This study examines whether unequal treatment of men and women based on their parental leave choices—termed leave-based gender discrimination—helps explain persistent disparities. Using a nationwide vignette experiment conducted through Sweden’s probability-based Novus panel, we randomly assigned 1,026 respondents to evaluate an employee (male/female) who had taken parental leave of varying lengths (none, two weeks, three months, twelve months, or fifteen months). Participants then recommended a salary increase for the employee. The factorial design allows us to isolate gendered evaluations of identical leave durations. Preliminary analyses show that women who take shorter-than-average leaves receive lower salary recommendations than men taking the same leave, suggesting that women are penalized for behavior that deviates from gender norms of caregiving. Conversely, men who take long leaves (fifteen months) are rated less favorably than comparable women, indicating a penalty for fathers who exceed normative expectations. Regression models confirm a significant negative association between leave length and salary recommendations for men but not for women. These findings demonstrate that both mothers and fathers are subject to gender-specific penalties for non-normative leave choices, highlighting how deeply entrenched norms of caregiving continue to shape workplace evaluations even in an egalitarian context.

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 Presented in Session 108. Fatherhood and Parental Leave