Stories
Daughter's Birth Changes Male Bosses' Treatment of Women at Work, Study Finds
- •A new study based on Danish employment records from 1992-2017 reveals that male managers who become fathers to a daughter increase women's employment in their firms by 2.9% and women's relative earnings by 4.4%.
- •The effect is primarily driven by changes in hiring practices, with managers becoming more likely to recruit women with higher education for full-time, higher-earning positions.
- •Researchers suggest that having a daughter may make gender inequality more personally relevant to fathers, subtly influencing their workplace decisions and attitudes towards women's careers.
- •The study found no significant deterioration in firm performance following the increase in female employment, challenging the idea that reducing gender inequality necessarily involves a trade-off with business performance.
- •While the study provides evidence of a behavioral effect, the precise psychological mechanism remains difficult to establish, and its findings may not directly translate to other labor markets like India due to cultural differences.
Key Questions Answered
After male managers had a firstborn daughter, women's employment in their firms increased by 2.9%, and women's relative earnings rose by 4.4%. This change was primarily driven by managers replacing male hires with equally qualified female candidates for full-time, higher-education, and higher-paying jobs.
The researchers found no significant deterioration in firm performance following the increase in female employment. This suggests that changing hiring practices did not come with an obvious financial cost to the businesses studied.
A 2026 KPMG-AIMA survey revealed that work-life pressures and burnout were cited as a critical barrier by about 48% of respondents, while family and caregiving responsibilities accounted for 38%, and gender bias and stereotypes represented 24%. Additionally, women in India face gaps in high-exposure revenue-generating roles like sales and P&L responsibility compared to men.
