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The motherhood penalty and theprofessional credential: inequality incareer development for those withprofessional degreesCaroline Berggrena & Nathanael Lausterb

a Department of Education and Special Education, University ofGothenburg, Göteborg, Swedenb Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia,Vancouver, CanadaPublished online: 28 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Caroline Berggren & Nathanael Lauster (2014) The motherhood penalty andthe professional credential: inequality in career development for those with professional degrees,International Studies in Sociology of Education, 24:1, 44-64, DOI: 10.1080/09620214.2014.895135

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The motherhood penalty and the professional credential:inequality in career development for those with professionaldegrees

Caroline Berggrena* and Nathanael Lausterb

aDepartment of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg,Göteborg, Sweden; bDepartment of Sociology, University of British Columbia,Vancouver, Canada

(Received 26 August 2013; final version received 13 February 2014)

Transitions from education to work constitute a distinct set of situationswhere discrimination is likely to occur. Gender beliefs generally disad-vantage women, and when coupled with beliefs regarding parentalresponsibility, tend to heavily disadvantage mothers. Yet we suggest thatprofessional credentials create a divided labour market, with ameliora-tive effects. Credentials tend to match specifically to jobs and replaceother means of determining the performance expectations of various jobcandidates. This should be especially true in the public sector, wherehiring procedures are more transparent. As a result, we hypothesise thatmothers with professional credentials will be less disadvantaged withinthe occupational market matched to their credentials, especially in thepublic sector. Data from Sweden, following 43,646 graduates with pro-fessional degrees into the labour market, generally support this interpre-tation, though substantial motherhood penalties remain in manyprofessions. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings.

Keywords: motherhood penalty; academic professions; career;discrimination

Introduction

The transition from education to work is a critical situation where inequalityof opportunity becomes manifest in the occupational structure. Here, weoffer new observations of the more specific paths, by which graduates arematched to jobs for those with professional credentials. In processes thatdetermine occupational placement, credentials gained in the education sys-tem intersect with other key status characteristics (Dæhlen, 2007; Gorman,2005). In this way, ascribed status characteristics, including gender(Ridgeway, 2006a) and motherhood (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004), may

*Corresponding author. Email: caroline.berggren@ped.gu.se

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2014Vol. 24, No. 1, 44–64, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2014.895135

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complement or overwhelm credentials as determinants of job placement.Alternatively, credentials may crowd out other status characteristics,reducing discrimination, depending upon what is deemed salient by employ-ers. Here, we theorise and test conditions under which this crowding effectis likely to take place for those with credentials.

Ridgeway and Correll (Ridgeway, 1997, 2006a, 2006b; Ridgeway &Correll, 2006) offer and test a theory of gender-bias based on expectationstates and status beliefs that predicts significant discrimination in the jobmarket (and elsewhere). In diverse experimental situations where genderbecomes salient, gender serves as a guide to expectations about perfor-mance, creating the conditions whereby dominant gender beliefs lead to dis-crimination. Because dominant gender beliefs devalue the performances ofwomen, they are typically believed less capable than men; hence, they facegreater discrimination in the job market. Moreover, because genderpermeates and shapes all social situations, which makes is almost alwayssalient, the gender system is highly resilient and difficult to challenge(e.g. Hirdman, 2003; Ridgeway & Correll, 2006).

Ridgeway and Correll (2004) treat gender-bias in performance expecta-tions as distinct from, but related to more specific bias against mothers.Using laboratory experiments, and audits of employers in the USA, Correll,Benard, and Paik (2007) find evidence that a motherhood penalty hindersthe evaluations of mothers, as imagined employees, relative to both womenwithout children, and to men, both fathers and childless men. They find thatmotherhood accounts for a great portion of general discrimination againstwomen, while fatherhood does little to hinder and may actually assist theevaluation of men as employees.

Nevertheless, salience of gender and motherhood varies depending on thesituation. According to status construction theory (Ridgeway, 1997, 2006b,2009; Ridgeway & Berger, 1986; Webster & Foschi, 1988), we may differen-tiate between diffuse status characteristics and specific status characteristics.Gender is a diffuse status characteristic (Ridgeway, 1997, 2006b) insofar as itis linked by gender beliefs to a general set of performance expectations aswell as a variety of specific performance expectations. A common genderbelief is that men are more rational and more competent than women, influ-encing a wide variety of situations. As a result, in any given situation, genderis quite likely to be salient and relevant. But Ridgeway and Correll (2004)suggest that motherhood will tend to be deemed even more salient andrelevant for many jobs since it suggests an opposition between the assumedprimacy caregiving duties and devotion to work.

Specific status characteristics, by contrast, are more narrowly definedwith respect to performance expectations. In this sense, professional creden-tials are often quite narrowly keyed to attaching specific task performanceexpectations to job applications. By their specificity, relevance and salience,they may crowd out more diffuse status characteristics as determinants of

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hiring processes. An employer need not imagine how various diverse statuscharacteristics may relate to carrying out a job if a more directly relevantcredential offers specific guidance in this matter.

Simply because an employer need not refer to diverse status characteris-tics, including gender and motherhood, in evaluating a candidate’s expectedperformance may not be sufficient to halt hiring discrimination. In otherwords, having the same credential may not be enough to insure equal treat-ment. But we suggest a credential-related crowding out effect is more likelyto be at work when (1) the credential is carefully tailored to providing per-formance expectations for the tasks of the job and (2) the hiring process ismade especially transparent and tied to possession of the credential.

In this sense, the job market for those with professional credentials islikely to look somewhat different than for others in terms of how candidatesare likely to be treated. When applied to non-credentialed occupations, acredential is unlikely to operate as a particularly specific or closely tailoredguide to expectations, but it may still operate as other diffuse status charac-teristics do, indicating, for instance, some degree of overall competence.Here, women and especially mothers may expect their gender and parentalstatus to be considered in conjunction with their credential, and expectationsbased upon the former may indeed overwhelm the latter.

In general, we suggest that the less defined standards for performanceexpectations in non-credentialed occupations are likely to offer more advan-tages to those already advantaged by their status characteristics (Bourdieu &Passeron, 1979; Ridgeway, Li, Erickson, Backor, & Tinkler, 2009). Butwithin the ‘matched’ job market, where professional credentials are carefullytailored to the tasks of professional jobs, credentials may crowd out genderand motherhood in defining expectations of potential employers. The morethe hiring process is made transparent and tied to the holding of relevantcredentials, the less relevant more diffuse status characteristics are likely tobecome within the hiring process.

The Swedish case

The Swedish case offers an interesting place to explore the relevance of pro-fessional credentials to broader processes associated with discriminatorytreatment. Sweden is generally perceived as a country characterised byequality of opportunity, with broad participation in the work force by womenand low overall levels of inequality. Nevertheless, the Swedish educationalsector and labour market is divided along gender lines horizontally, verticallyand internally. That is, men and women study and work within differentfields and are employed by different organisations (a majority of men are,for example, employed within the private sector) (SOU, 2004). Further, menmore often reach the highest positions, particularly so within the privateenterprises, where 95% of managing directors are men (SCB, 2012). In

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addition, when men and women have the same profession, they are dividedinto different fields of specialisation, either by the employer or as a result oftheir own ‘choice’ (SOU, 2004).

Sweden also has a well-developed welfare state, with generous familywork policies and wide, state-sponsored availability of childcare. Indeed,compared to several other industrial countries, Sweden seems to be a familyfriendly nation. This may be reflected in childbearing comparisons. Therecent fertility rate among Scandinavian women was 1.7, only passed byUS and Great Britain (SCB & Oláh, 2005). Of note, childbearing tends tooccur in prime career years. In 2009, the average age for the first child was29 years for women and 31 years for men (SCB, 2010). Moreover, womenwith a graduate degree were generally two to three years older, when theyhad their first child, than their women counterpart who had only completedupper secondary school (SCB, 2002).

The extensive, reliable and affordable child care in Sweden is a likelyexplanation for the relatively high fertility rate (Kremer, 2007; Leira, 2000;Skolverket, 2000) and women’s high labour market participation (d’Addio &d’Ercole, 2005; SCB, 2012; SCB & Oláh, 2007). Further, shared familyresponsibilities have been strengthened over the years. For example, the taxsystem facilitates women’s participation in work and education. Men andwomen are considered as independent tax payers, even when they aremarried. There is no ‘male bread winner bonus’ in the sense that the primaryearner does not receive any extra income if his spouse is a homemaker.Recently, a gender equality bonus has been introduced. This means thatthose parents who share parental leave evenly between them will be econom-ically rewarded (SFS, 2008). Moreover, a tax deduction for householdservices has been introduced, which could be expected to at least increasegender equality in upper middle class families. All of this potentially makesSweden a hard case for finding differential treatment within the labour mar-ket by gender and motherhood status. Nevertheless, it is important to pointout that the gender neutral reputation of Sweden is also disputed. Forinstance, though shifts in family policies related to the organisation of workhave been made, the unpaid work of reproduction and childcare still seemsdominated by women (Holth, Jordansson, & Gonäs, 2012).

In terms of how those with professional credentials become sorted in thejob market, two characteristics of Sweden are of further relevance. First,Sweden has a relatively well-developed system of professions related toeducational credentials. Since 1977, higher education has been assigned theresponsibility of credentialing many professions, including nurses andteachers, but also fields in advanced technology (e.g. engineers), in additionto the more traditional academic professions, such as physicians and law-yers. Women have increased in higher education over all, and they make upthe large majority of students within health care and teaching programmes(Berggren, 2011; Silander, 2010).

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Second, Sweden has a comparatively large public sector, though it maybe diminishing as more public organisations are converted into private com-panies (e.g. Swedish Telecom). In 2004, about one-third of all employeeswere employed within the public sector. About as many women workwithin the private as within the public sector, while a majority of men(82%) work within the private sector (SCB, 2006). In general, work benefitsand conditions (e.g. job security, vacation time, flexible hours, pay, etc.) aresimilar between public and private sectors. But there are some differences.In particular, the public sector is especially closely articulated with the cre-dential system and is forced to apply more transparent appointments proce-dures due to the principle of public access to official documents (e.g. accessto other applicants CV). This provides a relatively easy means of distin-guishing between prospective employers private/public on the basis of thedegree to which credentials are expected to crowd out more diffuse statuscharacteristics in hiring processes. We expect work applicants with creden-tials to face a job market in Sweden where discrimination continues tooccur. Overall, women and especially mothers will end up in lower-payingwork than men (both fathers and childless men). But the effect will bediminished within matched jobs, where credentials become most salient toemployer expectations. Within matched jobs, there will be a further differen-tiation between the public sector, and the private sector, since in the publicsector matching is most closely articulated and procedures most transparent.Those with lower status characteristics (women and mothers) will not be asdisadvantaged in the public sector as in the private sector, or in the matched(credentialed) sector as in the labour market at large.

It is important to point out here that both professional jobs and non-pro-fessional jobs vary in the status and rewards they bestow. As a result ofstratification/labour market organisation both between professions andbetween non-professional jobs, staying within a profession is not always thebest option, even if an individual achieves the proper credentials to do so.In particular, for professional occupations providing only middling levels ofstatus and rewards (like nursing), there are likely alternative occupations inthe non-professional job market where the credentialed could expect to dobetter. Yet for professional occupations providing higher levels of status andrewards (like doctors), there are few alternative jobs where anyone couldexpect to do better (see Table A in the Appendix 1).

This leads us to four alternative outcomes in the job market where thosewith professional credentials could end up:

(1) The public sector; employment that matches the credential.(2) The private sector; employment that matches the credential.(3) No match in either sector; the applicant has not obtained employ-

ment that corresponds to her/his education, but has obtained employ-ment that offers higher pay compared to what she/he would have

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got if the employment had matched (e.g. a pre-school teacher worksas a computer salesperson).

(4) No match in either sector; the applicant has not obtained employ-ment that corresponds to her/his education; in addition, this job islower in pay, compared to what matching employment would haveoffered (e.g. a nurse works as home help).

In the hypotheses below and in our empirical data, we focus upon themotherhood penalty, expected by previous work to be stronger and moredirectly relevant to the hiring process than gender more broadly (Ridgeway& Correll, 2004). Nevertheless, results may also be considered in light ofmore general gender disadvantage. We suggest the alternative employmentoutcomes described above provide a means of evaluating a set of hypothe-ses about when credentials should ameliorate the motherhood penalty in hir-ing.HYPOTHESIS 1: As suggested by Ridgeway and Correll (2004) and testedvia experiment and audit (Correll et al., 2007), motherhood is a status char-acteristic that downwardly biases performance expectations. We expect thiseffect to be strongest outside of credentialed occupations. As a result, moth-ers with credentials will be more likely to end up in outcome #4 (non-matching job with lower pay) relative to outcome #3 (non-matching jobwith higher pay), compared with credentialed women without children aswell as credentialed men, both fathers and childless men.HYPOTHESIS 2: The job market is differentiated for those holding creden-tials, such that the motherhood penalty is decreased with respect to match-ing into credentialed jobs in the private sector, where credentials provide asalient means of forming expectations. Nevertheless, while credentials pro-vide a guide, employers may ignore the guide. As a result, mothers withcredentials will face a mix of more equal treatment and discrimination inmatching credentials in the private sector (outcome #2) relative to non-matching with lower pay (outcome #4), compared with credentialed womenwithout children, as well as credentialed men, both fathers and childlessmen.HYPOTHESIS 3: The job market is differentiated for those holding creden-tials, such that the motherhood penalty is decreased with respect to match-ing into credentialed jobs in the public sector, where credentials provide asalient means of forming expectations, and employers are held to a transpar-ent hiring process where credentials are expected to hold sway. As a result,mothers with credentials will face relatively little discrimination in matchingcredentials in the public sector (outcome #1) relative to non-matching withlower pay (outcome #4), compared with credentialed women without chil-dren, as well as credentialed men, both fathers and childless men.

In the sections below, we follow those obtaining professional credentialsin Sweden to see where they go, and how this might influence larger

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patterns of inequality. While we focus upon gender and more specificallymotherhood, we also consider status privilege more broadly as a factorcontributing to inequality, including measures of cultural and social capital(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979, 1990; Collins, 1979).

Method

Data

In this study, a selection of educational registers and labour market registerswas merged with registers, including background variables, such as gender,parents’ education and national background. Register data are informationabout the individual collected by different institutions, such as school,hospital, employer, landlord or police. Register data are stored by StatisticsSweden and are accessible for research purposes and planning. Sweden hasa system of personal identification numbers that are systematically used innearly all aspects of people’s lives; this makes it possible to linkinformation, at individual level, from several different sources and to studyindividual paths. Users of register data do not have access to the real idnumber for reasons of confidentiality.

This study is based on Swedish register data (GOLD1), including infor-mation on education history, work history, income and a variety of back-ground variables (gender, parental education, national origin, etc.). Amongthose born in 1974, 1975 and 1976, who had completed a professionaldegree (as defined below for credentials achieved by a minimum of 700 indi-viduals). Individuals were also dropped if they were not active in the labourmarket (n = 2380) and if data were missing on their grade point average(n = 1219). This provided a sample of 43,646 individuals. The backgroundcharacteristics and employment situation was studied on data for 2006; thatis, for graduates who were 30–32 years old and who had obtained theirdegree not later than 2003. The homogenous age of the studied populationgives less room for other influences, such as work experience.

Table 1. The selected population for this study.

Gender and parentseducation

TotalPop.

Prof.degree n

Prof.degree %

Degreematch n

Degreematch %

Men academic 54,693 9139 16.7 3832 41.9Men non-academic/unknown

110,063 7644 6.9 3306 43.2

Total men 164,756 16,783 10.2 7138 42.5Women academic 52,662 12,065 22.9 8201 68.0Women non-academic/un

104,194 14,798 14.2 11,091 74.9

Total women 156,856 26,863 17.1 19,292 71.8Total men & women 321,612 43,646 13.6 26,430 60.6

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Dependent variable

The dependent variable ‘matching’

It is a categorical variable with four different values, including two dimen-sions. The first dimension, measures matching whether or not the profes-sional credential received, matches the occupational employment in 2006,differentiated upon sector. We differentiate between private and publicsector, and other employers (such as organisations and the unknown. Thecategory ‘other employers’ is not shown in the regression tables). Matchingof occupation to professional credential was determined by comparingeducational registers and labour market registers; more precisely, the exactmatching between the latest degree registered and the occupational coderegistered (Berggren, 2011). Employment or self-employment is categorisedaccording to the Swedish Standard Classification of Occupation, a nationalversion of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (SCB,2005). Three-digit coding was used.

Table 2. Matching credentials with occupational categories.

CredentialsMatching occupationalcategory

SSYK(SwedishISCO-88)

University Medical Degree Health care specialists 222Bachelor of Science in Nursing Nurses and nursing specialists 323 and

223Bachelor of Science in OccupationalTherapy

Health care therapists,environment specialists, foodcontroller etc

322

Bachelor of Science inPhysiotherapy

Bachelor of Education, specialisationtowards primary school

Pre-school teacher,recreational pedagogue etc

331

Bachelor of Education, specialisationtowards compulsory school

Compulsory school teacher 233

Bachelor or Master of Education,specialisation towards uppersecondary school

Upper secondary schoolteacher, folk high schoolteacher

232

Bachelor of Science in Social Work Social and psychologicaltherapists

249

Master of Laws Lawyers, jurists 242University Diploma in Engineeringor Bachelor of Science inEngineering

Technical engineers,technicians

311

Master of Science in Engineering Professional engineers,architects etc

214

Bachelor or Master of BusinessAdministration

Business economist, stafforganiser etc

241

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The second dimension is a differentiation of those graduates who hadnot obtained a matching employment, it measures whether or not they hadreceived an employment that provided them with a lower or higher monthlysalary than what they would have received by matching. The monthlyincome is in Swedish crowns, and it is the total income from either employ-ment or self-employment.

Independent variables

Gender in combination with parental obligation

The independent variable consists of four values; they are, men withoutchildren, women without children, men with children and women with chil-dren. Women with children make the reference. The dimension parentalobligation measures whether or not there is/are child(ren) in the household.The child(ren) need not be biological; they can also be the child(ren) of thegraduate’s partner.

Credentials

The credentials that corresponded to the requirements listed above resultedin twelve different degrees. However, there turned out to be too few fatherswithin occupational and physiotherapy to analyse, so these two credentialswere merged, making it in total eleven different degrees. The graduate musthave obtained the degree during 2003 at the latest to provide enough timeto obtain a matching occupation. Credentials within different sectors aremore or less likely to match; for example, degrees within health and educa-tion are both particularly specialised, and particularly penetrated by the cre-dentialing process (Allsop & Saks, 2003; Popkewitz, 1994), while degreesin engineering and business seem to be useful in several sectors.

For more detailed description of the variables in focus see Table B inthe Appendix 1.

Control variables

Thanks to the extensive dataset, we have been able to control for manyaspects of the graduates assets.

The graduates’ cultural capital is measured as parents’ education, adichotomous variable differentiating between graduates’ parents who hadreceived higher (academic) education, and those who had not. The informa-tion is based on the parent of the graduate who received the highest educa-tion. As a control for social networks, which might influence occupationalassortment, we measure generational match as the correspondence betweenmothers’ or fathers’ occupations and the graduates’ professional credential.The matching procedure here applies the same principle as the one used for

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the dependent matching variable. A match means the graduate has chosenthe same education as either her/his mother’s or father’s profession. Thisvariable provides an indicator of social capital or access to professional net-works, a variable considered important by several authors (Collins, 1979;Erikson & Jonsson, 1998; Kivinen, Hedman, & Kaipainen, 2007).

We also control for national background, which is based on the gradu-ates’ and their parents’ countries of birth. It is a dichotomous variable.Graduates that were born in Sweden and had at least one Swedish parentwere categorised as Swedish. Graduates who were adopted by Swedish par-ents were also considered Swedish.

We control for a number of educational characteristics, including num-ber of degrees received to minimise the influence of additional competences.Graduates with more than one degree compared to those who had received‘only’ one. The graduates have graduated between three to thirteen yearsago; this difference is controlled for by the variable years since degree. Wealso consider whether or not an individual has continued HE studies duringthe period 2004–2006. HE studies is a dichotomous variable differentiatingbetween those who obtained credit points corresponding to half time andmore compared to those who studied less than half time or not at all. Weconsider Grade Point Average, GPA, from upper secondary school in orderto capture some aspect of educational performance (Smetherham, 2006).The GPA was based on norm-referenced grades on a scale from 1 to 5,where 5 was the highest. Higher education is lacking a uniform grading sys-tem. Some programs differentiate into ‘Failed’ or ‘Passed’ in their finaldegrees, while others have a five-grade differentiation. Therefore, this mea-sure of previous performance was used instead.

For more detailed description of the control variables see Table C in theAppendix 1.

Results

The three tables below show the odds for graduates with different privatestanding and with different degrees and how well they have managed tobecome established on the labour market. The odds are calculated in rela-tion to mothers and to those who did not match into their credentialedemployment, and had to accept a job with lower income. The tables areprovided separately in order to facilitate comparison, but are derived fromthe same model and hence estimated simultaneously (Tables 3, 4 and 5).

Overall findings support the broad hypotheses offered. As in hypothesisone, Table 3, demonstrates that outside of the credentialed job market,mothers are far more likely to end up in lower-paying employment than allother categories, who tend to end up in higher paying jobs overall. This istrue for those obtaining every type of professional credential save for

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physicians, where we are unable to model transitions to higher payingnon-matching jobs. As in hypothesis two, Table 4, demonstrates that themotherhood penalty persists in most occupations when matching credentialsto profession within the private sector, but the odds ratios suggest thedisparities are not as great as exist outside of the credentialed market.Furthermore, the motherhood penalty largely disappears for at least somecredentials and comparisons (i.e. physician, pre-school teachers relative to

Table 3. Multinomial logistic regression multivariate models showing the odds fornon-matching but higher income. (Reference: No match, lower income and Moth-ers; control variables omitted).

Variables Childless men Childless women Fathers

CredentialsPhysician – – –Nurse 17.7*** 6.44*** 6.63***

Occup- & Physiotherapist 5.63*** 7.11*** 9.27***

Pre-school teacher 9.22*** 4.07*** 4.94***

Comp school teacher 17.6*** 9.05*** 11.9***

Upper sec school teacher 9.78*** 11.4*** 6.08***

Social worker 31.0*** 12.4*** 7.81***

Lawyer 12.7*** 9.47*** 14.5***

Bachelor of Engineering 15.8*** 8.47*** 8.86***

Master of Engineering 13.0*** 8.24*** 7.58***

Business Administrator 14.8*** 8.69*** 12.9***

***p ≤ .001.

Table 4. Multinomial logistic regression multivariate models showing the odds formatching in the private sector. (Reference: No match, lower income and Mothers;control variables omitted).

Variables Childless men Childless women Fathers

CredentialsPhysician .65 1.07 .83Nurse 4.00* 2.67*** 2.59+

Occup- & Physiotherapist 4.07** 3.64*** 7.05**

Pre-school teacher 1.51 1.79** .68Comp school teacher 2.22* 2.54*** 3.57***

Upper sec school teacher 3.37*** 3.98*** 2.03*

Social Worker 8.07* 2.81* .99Lawyer 6.18*** 2.86*** 5.56***

Bachelor of Engineering 2.04*** 1.90*** 1.36**

Master of Engineering 2.72*** 2.37*** 2.23***

Business Administrator 3.30*** 2.31*** 2.83***

+p ≤ .10, *p ≤ .05, **p ≤ .01, ***p ≤ .001.

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men, social workers relative to fathers) for matching in the private sectorrelative to non-matching with a lower income. Finally, as in hypothesisthree, Table 5, demonstrates that much of the motherhood penaltydisappears when matching credentials to profession within the public sector.Nevertheless, even here, the motherhood penalty persists in law, in businessand upper-level teaching, as well as in social work (except relative tofathers). Overall, obtaining credentials related to many, but not all profes-sions, does seem to have an ameliorative effect on the motherhood penaltyin terms of work outcomes, especially when matching into the public sector.But even here, mothers still face important barriers to getting work in thejobs they were trained for.

What explains the differences between types of professional credentials?Starting with physicians, the first impression is that career developmenttends to be exceptionally meritocratic, with no apparent motherhood penalty.This may relate to the exceptionally close and remunerative relationshipbetween medical practice and the credentialing process. There are too fewbetter paying jobs those with physician credentials can end up in outside oftheir credentialed profession to even analyse those transitions. An alternativeexplanation could be that this is a profession where the graduates have justrecently (maybe only three years before) completed their education; theywere all newcomers on the labour market. The stratification into differentleading positions, such as head of a clinical department, will take additionalyears to reach.

For those with credentials in nursing and occupational/physiotherapy, amore typical pattern fits relatively well with hypothesised relationships

Table 5. Multinomial logistic regression multivariate models showing the odds formatching in the public sector. (Reference: No match, lower income and Mothers;control variables omitted).

Variables Childless men Childless women Fathers

CredentialsPhysician .76 1.01 .91Nurse 2.17 2.24** 1.37Occup- & Physiotherapist 1.76 2.03** 2.61Pre-school teacher .93 1.23 .60+

Comp school teacher 1.72* 2.11*** 2.26***

Upper sec school teacher 2.84*** 2.61*** 2.00***

Social Worker 3.97* 2.96*** 1.46Lawyer 2.38*** 1.86*** 1.80*

Bachelor of Engineering .72 1.16 .85Master of Engineering .87 1.38 .67+

Business Administrator 1.49* 1.60** 2.10***

+p ≤ .10, *p ≤ .05, **p ≤ .01, ***p ≤ .001.

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between credentials and status characteristics. Childless men, childlesswomen and fathers all do better than mothers outside of the credentialed jobmarket, where they are far more likely to end up in higher paying alterna-tives to the jobs they were trained for. They are also more likely to matchinto the private sector than mothers, but the differences diminish here, ascredentials take on increased relevance. Within the public sector, matchingis as likely for mothers as for childless men and fathers, though interest-ingly, childless women remain significantly more likely to match. In com-parison with physicians, degrees in nursing, occupational and physiotherapyare no longer than three years, meaning these graduates have had enoughtime to advance; for example, to become head nurse, or labour union repre-sentative (Kauppinen-Toropainen & Lammi, 1993) or out of profession intosomething else, more lucrative. But mothers with nurse credentials usuallystick to an employment as nurses (96%).

Professions within education demonstrate similar trends. Once again,childless women do better outside of the credentialed market than mothers.Within the private credentialed market, the motherhood penalty is dimin-ished, but remains except for pre-school teaching, and only compared tochildless men and fathers. The persistence of the motherhood penalty heremay be related to the known practice of private sector independent schoolsemploying unlicensed teachers (Myrberg & Rosén, 2006). Within the publiccredentialed market, the motherhood penalty is further diminished. Oddsratios for matching relative to non-matching with a lower income decline.Overall, men more easily leak from poorly rewarded and traditional femaleprofessions, like teaching, into jobs that are more lucrative, but when a pro-fession is more attractive, like upper secondary school teacher, men aremore likely to remain and match.

Looking at those with social worker credentials, the motherhood penaltywas most severe outside of the credentialed market, but remained in dimin-ished form within the credentialed job market as well. More unusually andstrikingly for those with social work degrees, there also appeared to be afatherhood penalty. Fathers were about as likely as mothers to findingmatching employment in both the public and private sectors. In each case,childless men and women were far more likely to match relative to endingup in a lower paying and non-matching job.

For those with law credentials, being a man seems to be a particularlyfavourable status characteristic. If anything being a father may help. Fathersdid the best outside of the credentialed job market relative to mothers. Theyalso matched comparably to childless men in the private sector. But child-less women caught up to them in the public sector. As predicted, motherswith legal credentials did better as credentials were brought to bear uponthe hiring process, and the hiring process was made more transparent, as inthe public sector.

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The engineering sector has long been dominated by men. Nevertheless,the workings of the motherhood penalty in engineering are similar to how itworks in nursing and pre-school teaching – traditional female professions.Outside of the credentialed market, childless men do best, followed bychildless women and fathers. Within the private credentialed market, themotherhood penalty diminishes, but does not disappear. But within the pub-lic credentialed market, it disappears completely.

Business administration credentials are perhaps least specifically matchedto particular jobs and performance expectations within those jobs. But evenhere, there is some evidence of the credentials having an ameliorative effecton the motherhood penalty. Outside of the credentialed job market, childlessmen did the best, followed by fathers, then childless women. All did betterthan mothers. Within the private matched sector, the motherhood penaltywas substantially reduced. Within the public matched sector, it was reducedeven further, but never fully went away, perhaps reflecting the less specifi-cally tailored character of the credentials. More than half of the motherswith business credentials (56%) ended up in a non-matching job with lowerincome. They commonly worked as saleswomen, realtors, accountants oradministrative assistants.

Discussion

Following the work of Ridgeway and Correll, we expect the motherhoodpenalty to relate to hiring and workplace-related discrimination based on theway motherhood operates as a diffuse status characteristic. Nevertheless, itis important to recognise that for any given hiring and employment case,the specific performance expectations of prospective employers may be lessimportant than the expectations of prospective employees about how theiremployers will feel about them and what their work conditions will be like.Employee expectations will determine where job candidates are likely toapply for work, while employer expectations determine where they arelikely to be hired. The relationship between the two evaluation processesspeaks to the recursive ways, in which employees and employers evaluateone another. For instance, a mother may be concerned that they will fail tomeet professional expectations after having a child and therefore accept alower-paying job ill matched to their credentials. Such recursive expecta-tions suggest that the expectations of employers remain a key problem here,even when refracted through the expectations of employees about the workplace. ‘Opting out’ of demanding and inflexible jobs cannot be readily dis-entangled from the discriminatory performance expectations and treatmentmothers face within those jobs.

We have hypothesised that credentialed work should provide women ingeneral, and mothers in particular, some protection from discriminatory per-formance expectations and treatment. When credentials are closely matched

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to particular jobs, they provide specific guides to performance expectationsthat can crowd out more diffuse status characteristics, including gender andmotherhood. We have further suggested that the more transparent hiringprocesses are, as in the public sector, the more likely it is that credentialswill crowd out more diffuse status characteristics. As a result, mothers withcredentials should expect to experience less discrimination when findingwork within their credentialed professions, especially in public sector jobs.

Our findings generally match this expectation, but the particularities varyacross professions. Some, like medicine, seem quite egalitarian. Once oneacquires the credential to become a physician, motherhood does not seem toserve as an impediment to becoming a physician, and there are few occupa-tions that pay better. For every other credential, there is at least some evi-dence that mothers holding the credential fare worse than others in the jobmarket. But they do better when matching, and they tend to do best whenmatching into the public sector.

This research supports the contention that in Sweden as in other coun-tries, and for those with professional credentials as well as those without,most women experience a pronounced motherhood penalty in their careerprogression after having children. Men seldom experience a correspondingfatherhood penalty, reflecting the persistence of unequal expectations aboutchildcare and its relationship to work. Similarly, the motherhood penaltyseems to account for much, though not all, of the discrimination womenface in the workplace. Unlike mothers, childless women often experiencecareer progression similar to childless men and fathers.

Despite the widespread nature of the motherhood penalty, mothers withprofessional credentials are able to find places of refuge in the job marketwhere they are less likely to experience discrimination and related poorworking conditions. By matching their credentials to their employment,mothers are able to at least partially ‘crowd out’ the negative employer per-formance expectations associated with motherhood. By working in the pub-lic sector, or other places providing similar transparency in hiring processes,mothers are further able to undermine discriminatory practices in the workplace. The study demonstrates how dependent Swedish mothers are on thewelfare state – the state takes care of ‘their’ children and the state is theirmost reliably fair employer (at least for the professions analysed in thisstudy).

AcknowledgementsThis study was supported by the Swedish Research Council.

Note1. GOthenburg educational Longitudinal Database.

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Notes on contributorsDr Caroline Berggren is a researcher and senior lecturer at the Department of Edu-cation and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is currentlyworking on a project entitled: ‘Gender and class perspectives on students’ choiceof higher education institutions and graduates choice of job.’ Recently publishedarticles are: ‘The Influence of Gender, Social Class and National Background onEducation and Work Career’ in Nordic Journal of Migration Research and ‘Transi-tion of Higher Education Graduates to the Labour Market’, in Journal of HigherEducation Policy.

Nathanael Lauster is an associate professor of sociology at the University of BritishColumbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research is mostly concerned with life coursetransitions and housing, and in addition to his research articles, he is co-editor (withGraham Allan) of The End of Children? published by UBC Press. He is currentlywriting a book manuscript about peoples’ relationships to houses in Vancouver.

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Appendix 1.

Table A. Actual and expected income among graduates with chosen professionalcredentials, and per cent women within each of these professions in the totalpopulation.

Median incomeamong thegraduates

Mean incomewithin thepopulationa

Per cent womenwithin eachprofession b

CredentialsPhysician 33,400 47,300 46Nurse 17,200 26,700 91Occup &Physiotherapist

16,000 24,100 88

Pre-school teacher 14,100 21,200 92Comp schoolteacher

16,900 23,500 77

Upper sec schoolteacher

20,600 24,900 53

Social Worker 18,200 25,500 84Lawyer 26,700 37,900 50Bachelor ofEngineering

27,800 28,700 18

Master ofEngineering

31,200 35,000 22

BusinessAdministrator

27,200 35,000 53

Notes: Median incomes for the graduates 2006 were chosen because some categories aresmall giving allowing for accidental influences.References:aSCB 2006.bSCB 2007.

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Table

B.

Num

bers

andpercentagesof

graduateswith

indifferentcategories

who

workwith

intheprivaterespectiv

elythepublic

sector,andwho

match

anddo

notmatch.(Variables

infocus,Other

Sectorom

itted

vertically).

Focus

variables

Distributionn%

Private

n%Public

n%Degreematch

n%Degreedoesn’tmatch

n%

Match

Match

26,430

60.6

7318

17,926

26,430

100.0

–Nomatch

17,216

39.4

11,492

4794

–17,216

Employmentsector

Private

18,810

43.1

18,810

100.0

–7318

27.7

11,492

Public

22,720

52,1

–22,720

100.0

17,926

67.8

4794

Other

ormissing

2116

4.8

––

1186

4.5

930

Genderandparental

obl

Childless

men

10,549

24.2

7282

69.0

2836

26.9

4282

40.6

6267

Childless

wom

en10,305

23.6

3788

36.8

5950

57.7

6618

64.2

3687

Fathers

6234

14.3

4037

64.8

2080

33.4

2856

45.8

3378

Mothers

16,558

37.9

3703

22.3

11,854

71.6

12,674

76.5

3884

Credentials

Physician

1390

3.2

795.7

1296

93.2

1369

98.5

21Nurse

5326

12.1

479

9.0

4713

88.5

5056

94.9

270

Occupationaltherapist

687

1.5

7911.5

561

81.7

557

81.1

130

Physiotherapist

908

2.1

236

26.0

627

69.1

773

85.1

135

Pre-schoolteacher

5017

11.2

442

8.8

4014

80.0

4398

87.7

619

Com

pschool

teacher

5768

12.6

469

8.1

4966

86.1

4845

84.0

923

Upper

secschool

teacher

1618

3.6

285

17.6

1223

75.6

903

55.8

715

SocialWorker

1526

3.5

140

9.2

1287

84.3

1076

70.5

450

Law

yer

1943

4.6

925

47.6

918

47.2

1170

60.2

773

Bachelorof

Engineering

4681

10.5

3921

83.8

651

13.9

1465

31.3

3216

Masterof

Engineering

8424

19.8

6674

79.2

1500

17.8

2694

32.0

5730

BusinessAdm

inistrator

6358

15.3

5081

79.9

964

15.2

2124

33.4

4234

Monthly

incomeSE

KIncomemean/SD

22,298/70

29,319/121

17,662/63

19,964/81

25,881/121

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Table

C.

Num

bers

andPercentages

ofGraduates

with

inDifferent

Categorieswho

workwith

intheprivaterespectiv

elythepublic

sector,andwho

match

anddo

notmatch.(Control

variables,Other

SectorOmitted).

Control

variables

Distributionn%

Private

n%Public

n%Degreematch

n%Degreedoesn’t

match

n%

Parentseducation

Academic

21,204

48.6

10,159

47.9

9997

47.1

12,033

56.7

9171

Other/Unknown

22,442

51.4

8651

38.5

12,723

56.7

14,397

64.2

8045

Generationalmatch

Match

3700

8.5

1593

43.1

1966

53.1

2364

63.9

1336

Nomatch/Unknown

39,946

91.5

17,217

43.1

20,754

60.0

24,066

60.2

15,880

Nationalbackground

Swedish

41,676

95.5

17,854

42.8

21,831

52.4

25,357

60.8

16,319

Other

1970

4.5

956

48.5

889

45.1

1073

54.5

897

Num

berdegrees

Multip

ledegrees

7713

17.7

3279

42.5

4122

53.4

4456

57.8

3257

One

degree

35,933

82.3

15,531

43.2

18,598

51.8

21,974

61.2

13,959

Yearssincedegree

Years

mean/SD

6.46/2.20

6.13/0.01

6.71/.0

26.74/.0

16.03/.0

2HEstudies

Current

HEstudies

1769

4.1

460

26.0

1191

67.3

1193

67.4

576

NocurrentHEstudies

41,877

95.9

18,350

43.8

21,529

51.4

25,237

60.3

16,640

Preveduc

perform

GPA

mean/SD

3.79/.0

03.83/.0

03.75/.0

03.76/.0

03.82/.0

0Total

43,646

100.0

18,810

100.0

22,720

100.0

26,430

100.0

17,216

Notes:Distributionpercent

calculated

with

ineach

factor.SectorandMatch

percent

calculated

foreach

category.

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