Expanding access to pre-school education and childcare services has been a key policy on the agenda of many governments for over 30 years. Several motivations have been at the heart of these policies. On the one hand, expanding access to quality pre-school education is expected to have positive...

In the last few years a growing number of economists and psychologists have focused on the ways parents care for their younger children. In households where both parents work in particular, the care of children has to be at least partially delegated to the care of other members of the family or...

A large body of empirical evidence documents the gender variation in labour market outcomes. A major factor that contributes to persistent gender gaps in labour market performance is women’s traditional role in the household. Child-related absences from work imply that women accumulate less...

Women are globally under-represented in top-tier jobs, and according to recent data, in 2013 only around 20 percent of board members in OECD countries were female (OECD, 2013). In addition, empirical studies using different research strategies and rich data consistently find that women earn less...

Women’s labour market outcomes have improved substantially in the past decades, both in absolute terms and relative to men, in the United States and Western European countries as well as in several other countries around the world. Specifically, gender gaps have narrowed considerably (and in...

The existence and causes of gender gaps in pay and in occupational choice have been increasingly at the centre of research in economics, sociology, psychology, managerial science, and other fields. The research findings across countries and over time generally suggest that gaps exist and are...