Research

Gender gaps in caregiving persist even where policy incentives for equal parenting are strong. This paper asks whether gender norms shape how couples divide paid work and care after a birth, and whether their effect operates independently of economic incentives. Using Norwegian administrative data, I measure a woman's exposure to gender norms by the share of her high-school peers whose mothers worked full time, and identify its effect from within-school, across-cohort variation. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure raises women's full-time work after childbirth, raises their partners' take-up of the full paternity quota, and lowers the share of fathers who concentrate leave in summers and holidays, a pattern that minimizes career costs while providing little additional care. The transmission is asymmetric: men's own peer exposure has no effect on their leave or on their partners' outcomes. More-exposed women could shift their partners' behavior through greater bargaining power or through whom they partner with. The effect on fathers' leave holds at every level of the woman's share of household income, a proxy for her bargaining power, so it is not explained by economic incentives alone. Instead, more-exposed women partner with men who are more educated, from higher-SES families, and more likely to have had a working mother themselves.

We study which characteristics differentiate the group of women who reach the top of the earnings distribution by their mid-30s. Using Norwegian administrative registers for the 1983–1988 cohorts, we define “elite women” as those in the top decile of the economy-wide annual earnings distribution at age 35. We track earnings trajectories from ages 20 to 35 and decompose the gap between elite women and other women using a sequential matching design that equalizes family background, academic performance, educational attainment and field, early occupational placement, fertility, and job mobility. We show that earnings gaps emerge immediately after labor market entry and widen rapidly through the early career. About 45 percent of the gap between elite women and other women is explained by observable characteristics. Family background and high-school achievement account for a large share, and early occupational sorting further amplifies these differences. Fertility instead explains only a limited share of within-gender earnings inequality. Roughly 55 percent of the gap remains unexplained by observables. Our findings shift the focus from gender gaps per se to within-gender inequality at the top of the earnings distribution. They highlight the central role of early-life conditions, educational specialization, and initial career sorting in shaping women’s success at the top.