Study finds parenthood drives gender gap in academia
One in three women exit academia after having a child, claims a paper from researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Women and men follow similar trajectories prior to having children, but diverge post-parenthood, according to the discussion paper. While men also experience a decline in academic employment following fatherhood, the effects are said to be substantially smaller.
The study was led by Assistant Professor Sofie Cairo from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, at the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE.
The research on Parenthood and the career ladder: evidence from academia analysed population-wide administrative and survey data linked to productivity and promotion records, spanning the academic pipeline from PhD enrolment onward.
Childcare and mobility constraints, including doctors’ visits, night-time childcare and sick days, are likely to have an effect. The study finds large gender differences in the impact of these constraints on academic careers.
It finds that the gender gap is not influenced as heavily by differences in career aspirations and labour supply. However, child penalties are said to be exacerbated in highly competitive environments and environments without senior female role models.
Mothers are found to be 15% less likely to be employed at universities than fathers, and, while tenured employment of men is unaffected by parenthood, women experience a 23% decrease in their rate of tenured employment after having a child.
This is mitigated among researchers who postpone parenthood until they have secured university employment, so efforts to reduce the gender gap in academia should be focused on early career stages.
While increased paternal involvement in recent decades has been shown to be meaningful, it does not significantly reduce the impact of parenthood on women’s career progression. Parental leave is found to increase the likelihood of fathers leaving academia compared with fathers who spend little time on childcare.
