Fighting gender inequality in Sweden

Christophe André and Hugo Bourrousse
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Hugo Bourrousse: OECD

No 1395, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Sweden ranks among the best OECD countries in terms of gender equality. Women have a high employment rate, outperform men in education and are well represented in government and parliament. Nevertheless, without further policy measures, achieving parity is still a distant prospect in several areas. Wage differences between genders persist; women are under-represented on private company boards, in senior management positions, in many well-paid and influential professions and among entrepreneurs. Hence, there is scope to make further progress on gender equality. The share of the parental leave reserved for each parent should be increased further, as inequality in leave-taking and long parental leaves harm women’s career prospects. Fighting stereotypes in education is necessary to improve women’s access to professions where they are under-represented. Government programmes need to promote women’s entrepreneurship further. Special attention should also be paid to the integration of foreign-born women, whose employment rate is much lower than for their male counterparts.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Discrimination; Economics of Gender; Education; Gender equality; Immigration; Parental leave; Public policy; Sociology of Economics; Welfare Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 D63 G30 I24 J15 J16 J78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1395-en

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