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Sweden is often lauded for . The gender gap in unpaid (house)work is . Wide access to affordable, state-subsidized daycare, together with the right for parents of young children to work part time, means that women's participation in the labor market is relatively . And parental leave policies are .

At the same time, among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the employment gap between people born in Sweden and immigrants is among the . This impacts a large proportion of the Swedish population. 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 labor 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.

Correspondence audit of the labor market

To study hiring discrimination, you can ask workers about their personal, and subjective, experiences. However, using only survey or register data to adequately measure discrimination across the labor market is difficult, if not impossible.

An alternative method, adopted by both by sociologists and economists, is what is called a . Nowadays this mostly involves researchers submitting written applications from fictitious candidates to real advertised job openings. The researchers then record the responses received from employers.

For our study, we submitted 5,641 applications in response to job ads on the Swedish Employment Agency's website, between 2013 and 2020. In total, our applications covered up to 20 occupations. These varied in terms of qualification levels required, industry and sector, as well as gender spread and ethnic diversity.

We used common Swedish names to signal the majority ethnicity (white Swedish). And we used common Slavic and Arabic names as foreign-sounding names—these represent some of the largest foreign-born population groups, and visible ethnic minorities, in Sweden.

I found that applicants with foreign names receive substantially to their job applications than those with typically Swedish names. The difference in the callback rates between applicants with Swedish and foreign-sounding names is almost 15 percentage points. In other words, if someone with a Swedish-sounding name sent out 10 applications, someone with a foreign-sounding name would have to send out 15 to expect the same number of callbacks.

What's more, among applicants with foreign names, we found that men are contacted less often by employers than women.

In a smaller study on a subsample of about 2,100 applications, we found of systematic discrimination based on gender or parenthood status.

Discrimination across Europe

These results broadly echo recent research from Europe. While on gender discrimination are somewhat diverse—depending on the country and occupational context—many do show discrimination against women in general. In fact, there is some of hiring discrimination in favor of women.

against job applicants with foreign-sounding names, on the other hand, is . There are also , from the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland), that that men with foreign-sounding names face than women.

The issue is complex. have variously not found ethnic discrimination to differ by gender, or have shown discrimination patterns to vary—depending on the of the occupation and the (ethnic or racial) of the applicants.

We focused on the early stage of the formal hiring process, but not final hiring decisions. Discrimination can, of course, also take place at every other phase, be that in terms of who gets promotions, training opportunities; who is paid what wages and who is let go.

These findings imply that discrimination against job applicants with foreign-sounding names contributes to ethnic inequality in Sweden, particularly for men. If men with names deemed to be foreign receive fewer responses to job applications, they are probably less likely than men with names deemed Swedish to end up in an interview and to be hired.

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