Title: | Careers of Doctorate Holders: A Study of the Gendered Context of Family Dynamics and Earnings |
Author: | |
Advisor: | Guðbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir |
Date: | 2021-10-31 |
Language: | English |
University/Institute: | Univercity of Iceland |
School: | School of Social Sciences |
Department: | Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics |
Subject: | Doctorate holders; gender; wage-gap; (in)equality; time, career development, register analysis; longitudinal data; qualitative analysis; Mixed method; |
URI: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/5013 |
Abstract:At the international level, Iceland is faring well on gender assessments
concerning economic status, political position, education, and health. However,
despite the ambitious goal of the Icelandic Government to fully reach gender
equality, the gender pay gap prevails. Education is considered crucial in
mitigating this pay gap. In Iceland, the percentage of female doctorate holders
has been steadily increasing, however, little attention has been given to how
gender may affect the interplay between work–family balance, career making,
and earnings of doctorate holders.
This dissertation is one of the outcomes of the NORDICORE research
collaboration. The objective of the thesis is to obtain a better understanding of
the gendered differences in career making among doctorate holders in Iceland,
using both quantitative and qualitative methods. By utilizing Statistics Iceland’s
longitudinal individual register-based census data of the period between 1997
and 2017, we were able to identify all individuals who obtained a doctorate
degree in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as
well as social sciences and humanities between 1997 and 2013. The year 2017
is set as the baseline, which is the point in time when the identified individuals
held 5- to 20-year-old doctorate degrees (N=814). A special focus was aimed at
investigating possible inequalities in earnings of doctorate holders, with a
particular focus on how gender, field of study, employment within or outside
academia, and family transitions such as childbirths and periods of parental
leave influence career development through period of up to 20 years.
Furthermore, 32 in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals from the
same pool of doctorate holders to understand people’s perceptions on
possibilities and constraints regarding their career-making and examine how
various family elements, such as having children and running a household, were
influencing, or had influenced, their choices and decision-making throughout their careers. The extensive family policies provided by the Icelandic
government, designed to help facilitate equal rights for men and women within
the labor force as well as to provide better opportunities for women to advance
their career, have contributed to Iceland reaching a higher level of gender
equality compared with many other countries. Therefore, Iceland provides an
interesting setting to research gender (in)equality from another starting point
than previous studies.
The findings from the quantitative phase of the study reveal—despite
Iceland’s reputation as a ‘gender-equality-paradise’—a continuous gender pay
gap among Icelandic doctorate holders through a 20-year period. This applies
regardless of field of study or the employment being within or outside
academia. Not only do male doctorate holders earn significantly more than their
female counterparts, but having children positively impacts men’s earnings
whereas for women, children start to have a negative impact 10 years after
graduation. Furthermore, the findings from the qualitative phase reveal that
male doctorate holders generally felt a higher level of agency regarding their
work–family balance and time management compared with female doctorate
holders who more often expressed difficulties in finding a proper balance and
expressed being more stressed about the often-fragmented time they had to
combine their career and family obligations successfully. The findings further
underline that the widely accepted notion of women’s education as a tool for
closing the gender gap and the widely known reputation of Iceland as a
“gender-equality-paradise” in some ways serves as a façade behind which the
more accepted, traditional gendered functions disappear. Although the
traditional male breadwinner model is assumed to be outdated in Icelandic
society, some of its pillar thoughts still persist beneath the surface, also among
doctorate holders. In such an environment, cultural habits, such as the
traditional division of labor at home, are more easily portrayed as individualistic
choices or agreements between partners. Moreover, the gender power divisions
within the home also stay in place, negatively and continuously affecting the careers and finances of women. Therefore, it can be concluded that equality promoting
legislation—despite contributing to changing norms and values to
some extent—is not by itself sufficient to fully improve gender equality within
the organizational environment of workplaces or the gendered power relations
between partners, coupled with traditional gendered identities/gender roles. A
constant discussion on both the organizational and societal levels of deeply
embedded gendered cultural values and ideas is also required.
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