Even in Family-Friendly Scandinavia, Mothers Are Paid Less
Motherhood is the biggest cause of the gender pay gap, even in Scandinavia. It might take fathers to change that
New York Times
Photo: A family during a picnic in Stockholm. Researchers say that if men took on more child care responsibilities, it could help shrink the gender pay gap. Credit: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor, via Associated Press
Scandinavia is supposed to be a family-friendly paradise. We imagine fathersand mothers spending their children’s early months together at home. Then they enroll them in high-quality, government-subsidized child care, from which they pick them up at the end of the world’s shortest workdays.
But it is not as egalitarian as the fantasy suggests. Despite generous social policies, women who work full-time there are still paid 15 percent to 20 percent less than men, new research shows — a gender pay gap similar to that in the United States.
The main reason for this pay gap seems to be the same in both places: Children hurt mothers’ careers. This is, in large part, because women spend more time on child rearing than men do, whether by choice or not. Mothers are paid less.
A series of recent studies shows that in both the United States and Europe, the gender pay gap is much smaller until the first child arrives. Then women’s earnings plummet and their career trajectories slow. Women who do not have children, by and large, continue to grow their earnings at a similar rate to men. There are still differences because of discrimination and other factors, but researchers say that motherhood explains a large amount of the gap.
