Sweden is often lauded for its gender equality. The gender gap in unpaid (house)work is narrow. Wide access to affordable, state-subsidised daycare, together with the right for parents of young children to work part time, means that women’s participation in the labour market is relatively high. And parental leave policies are generous.
At the same time, among the 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the employment gap between people born in Sweden and immigrants is among the widest. This impacts a large proportion of the Swedish population. One in five people in Sweden were born abroad and an even larger share of Swedes have at least one foreign-born parent.
To understand this dichotomy, my colleagues and I looked at how discrimination in the Swedish labour market varies by gender, ethnicity and parenthood. I found that having a name deemed to sound foreign results in applicants receiving far fewer responses than people with typically Swedish-sounding names.
