In spite of increased labour market participation in recent decades, women in Norway still have high part-time rates and seldom work more than their partners. Given that an aging population implies a projected large labour demand in many Western countries, it is important to explore potential...

Previous research shows a paradoxical simultaneity of egalitarian gender values and inegalitarian practices in Europe. The Socio-democratic welfare states stand out with the most coherent egalitarian value-practice configurations. With this as a point of departure we examine the coherencies and...

Universal parental leaves with job protection and earnings compensation increase women’s attachment to the labour market, but very long leaves may have negative consequences both at the individual and the societal level. Some scholars have therefore argued that generous family-friendly...

This study investigates the relationship between the division of housework in couples and the local gender equality context. We use data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender survey 2007 combined with a range of macrolevel measures on gender equality in the municipality where the respondents...

The underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship is consistent over cultures and countries, and is even higher in Norway than in most other industrialised societies. In spite of a growing literature, the reasons for this pattern are still not well understood. In this paper I explore an area...

In this paper we use a parental leave reform directed towards fathers to identify the causal effects of paternity leave on children's and parents' outcomes. We document that paternity leave causes fathers to become more important for children's cognitive skills. School performance at age 16...

In spite of extended parental leaves, tremendous improvement in day-care availability, and a cultural climate that is supportive of women's full-time work, Norwegian women still have one of the highest female part-time rates in Europe. Longer working hours among women would clearly alleviate the...

An important aim of Norwegian work-family policies is to promote a dual-earner, equal-sharing family model, but we do not really know how common this family type is. By means of a multinomial latent-class model we develop a typology of dual-earner couples with children based on the way the...