Sofie Cairo (Copenhagen Business School)

Parenthood And The Academic Ladder In Science

Abstract: Women continue to be underrepresented among senior scientists and professors, especially among permanent faculty in academia. Using Danish population administrative data and publication data, we study the impact of children on the career trajectories of researchers in academia. While men and women follow similar career trends before having a child, after becoming parents, their career paths in academia diverge. We find that mothers are 15 percentage points less likely than fathers to remain employed as faculty at universities. The motherhood penalty is particularly stark when we examine the likelihood of tenured employment after childbirth—while men’s employment in tenured positions is unaffected by the arrival of a child, women, on average, experience a 20 percentage point drop in their rate of tenured employment, and an even greater 30 percentage point drop when considering only full-time positions. This decline persists even eight years after birth. We observe that the first childbirth is also followed by a drop in research output, as measured by annual publications relative to productivity before birth. We investigate how differences in the field of research, stage of career at first birth, and couple gender norms affect these penalties.