Evertsson's research focus on gender inequalities in the home and in the labor market. She studies the gendered division of paid and unpaid work and the degree to which family policies influence women's and men's labor market prospects.
Abstract
Largely missing in research on the transition to parenthood so far are same-sex couples. In this talk, I discuss and analyse identity formation and the relative importance of gender for the division of care and career outcomes among birth mothers, social mothers and fathers. Focusing on married, female, same-sex couples in Sweden, we study which couples become parents and who, of the two partners in these couples, becomes the birth-mother. Focusing on the division of parental leave, our research show that female same-sex couples share the parental leave more equally, are less likely to specialize and experience a much smaller within-couple income gap before as well as after the birth than different-sex couples do. Next steps include expanding the scope to an international context (i.e. the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and the US) and complement the quantitative studies with in-depth interviews with couples transitioning to parenthood in Sweden and the Netherlands.