Gender Inequalities in Early Career Trajectories and Parental Leaves: Evidence from a Nordic Welfare State

Kuitto Kuitto,Helmdag Helmdag,Salonen Salonen

doi:10.3390/socsci8090253

Kuitto Kuitto, Helmdag Helmdag + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8090253

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Abstract

Parental leaves are, besides unemployment, the main reason for career breaks in early career. Despite the progress in recent decades towards more equal sharing of childcare between mothers and fathers, the labour market risk due to parenting remains mainly with women. In this article, we analyse how parental leaves relate to early career trajectories of young Finnish men and women. Using longitudinal register data for 2005–2016 from the Finnish Centre for Pensions, we perform a multi-trajectory analysis of the labour market attachment of a cohort born in 1980. Based on working days and earnings, we find five distinct career trajectories for both men and women, with the majority being well attached to the labour market by their mid-30s. While men and women on average have similar employment lengths, the gender gap in earnings is already 30 per cent in this early career phase. One of the causes may be found in the highly unequal division of family-related career breaks; the duration of mothers’ family-related leaves in this cohort was 13 times longer than fathers’ leave spells. Long home care leaves were particularly common among mothers with low education levels and weak attachment to the labour market. Efforts towards a more equal division of parental leaves are needed in order to combat gender inequalities that already emerge in early career and potentially cause life-long disadvantages for women’s careers, earnings and pensions.

Highlights

The early phase of working life plays a decisive role in terms of later attachment to the labour market, career and earnings development, and life chances in general
Efforts towards a more equal division of parental leaves are needed in order to combat gender inequalities that already emerge in early career and potentially cause life-long disadvantages for women’s careers, earnings and pensions
Since earnings-related pensions accrue based on earnings throughout working life, early career labour market attachment is essential for future pension income

Summary

Introduction

The early phase of working life plays a decisive role in terms of later attachment to the labour market, career and earnings development, and life chances in general. Since earnings-related pensions accrue based on earnings throughout working life, early career labour market attachment is essential for future pension income (see, for example, Hofäcker et al 2017). Studying and graduating to a profession affect the timing and success of labour market attachment in the early stages of working life. Another factor that affects the early stages of the working life and, in most countries, leads to gender differentiation, is forming a family (see for example Hynes and Clarkberg 2005; Angelov et al 2016). Despite institutional arrangements supporting fathers’ family leaves and an increasing trend of men taking at least some time off for

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