Careers of Doctorate Holders: A Study of the Gendered Context of Family Dynamics and Earnings

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.