Man Up! The Glass Escalator in Sweden’s Local Government Bureaucracy

• In Event: The Causes and Consequences of Women’s Representation

Abstract

Women often hold a smaller proportion of higher compared to lower positions in public administration, including when they make up the majority of the workforce in those organizations. While previous research has documented this situation, we know much less about why it exists. A recurring limitation of existing research on gender inequalities in public administration is the lack of access to individual-level panel data. This restriction has made it difficult to discern whether the declining proportion of women on higher positions is produced specifically by gender inequalities in internal promotions. My paper addresses this question by studying whether the gender of bureaucrats affects their promotion chances to leadership positions in the local government bureaucracy in Sweden. I undertake my analysis in detailed administrative data that covers the full universe of Swedish local government bureaucrats in 290 municipalities between 2008 and 2019. This is an example of a context with a declining proportion of women on higher levels even though women make up a clear majority of the bureaucratic workforce overall. To understand promotion patterns in this context, I apply the concept of a glass escalator. This metaphor symbolizes how an invisible force aids men’s transitions to higher levels of power in female-dominated organizations. The results show that men face an advantage relative to equally qualified women while climbing in the bureaucratic hierarchy, a pattern that is consistent with the phenomena of a glass escalator. The paper provides evidence that there is gender inequality in promotions in the government sector in one of the most gender-equal countries in the world. It also lends support to the idea that these results stem from discriminatory promotions that favor men as the gender minority.

Author

• Nora Anter, Uppsala University