Maaike van der Vleuten, PhD, works as a researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and as associate professor in sociology (Docent) at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) at Stockholm University She studies the work and family life of parents in queer and adoptive families (PI of project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfonds) and life course trajectories of male and female same-sex couples in Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands . (funded by a VENI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) .
Na de geboorte van een kind nemen vrouwen doorgaans het leeuwendeel van de zorg op zich, zelfs in Zweden, een land dat bekend staat om zijn gelijke taakverdeling. Dit draagt bij aan genderongelijkheid en heeft negatieve gevolgen voor de loopbanen van vrouwen. Samen met Ylva Moberg heb ik de oorzaken van deze ongelijke taakverdeling onderzocht, nu te lezen in de Demos.
Together with dr Laia Sánchez Guerrero and prof. dr. Pia Schober, we studied how adolescents adapt their gender attitudes to their friends, classmates and/or parents.
Do parents divide their parental leave more equally if the mother did not give birth? No! Ylva Moberg and I show a striking resemblance in how Swedish adoptive & biological parents divide the leave.
Kan speelgoed je studiekeuze kan beïnvloeden? In mijn optiek kan het kan een druppel zijn in een emmer van genderrolbevestigende gedragingen die kinderen meekrijgen, en die uiteindelijk hun studiekeuze beïnvloeden Meer weten? Lees het artikel "Spelend(er)wijs. De invloed van wetenschappelijk speelgoed" op de website van NEMO Kennislink. Interview door Judith Robbe.
Together with dr. Ylva Moberg I obtained a grant (Riksbankens Jubileumsfonds; 4,949,000.00 SEK/€481.912 ) to study the division of labour in contemporary families after parenthood
In school, girls in general outperform boys in math-related fields. But even when girls have a relatively higher ability in math, they more often choose other education trajectories. My study from puts a piece to the puzzle on why girls don’t seem to aim for the science and technology fields in their education and work careers.
I was interviewed by Kim van der Meulen for the magazine &C (the magazine Chantal Janzen) about the use(lessness) of gender reveal parties.
Absolute ability/achievement does not explain gender differences in educational tracks, but the role of comparative advantage (i.e., being better in one subject compared to another) might. I studied the influence of having a comparative advantage for educational track choices using longitudinal data collected among 1,352 individuals (age 15-16) in upper secondary education in the Netherlands. I found large gender differences in track choices. Compared to girls, boys are on average 15% more likely to enter the most male-typical track (with a focus on science) and 16% less likely to enter the most female-typical track (with a focus on languages). I additionally found that having a comparative advantage in one field over another is important for which track adolescents choose, but it does not explain why boys and girls choose different track choices at such a young age.
Together with my colleague Ylva Moberg, I was interviewed for the BBC about why same-sex couples divide their tasks more equal than different sex couples across a diverse range of countries.
This paper studies how male and female same-sex couples across countries organize their paid and household labor. Using unique data compiled from multiple national surveys in 7 western countries (N = 723), we examined same-sex couples’ paid and household task allocation and evaluate descriptively how this is associated with countries’ gender egalitarianism. For paid labor, results indicate that female same-sex couples spend less time in total on paid employment than male same-sex couples, but both male and female same-sex couples divide their hours of paid employment equally. For household labor, we find that female couples divide their household tasks more equally than male couples. Moreover, more gender egalitarian countries appear to be correlated to increasing differences between male and female same-sex couples’ total time spent on the labor market and to decreasing differences in how equal they divide their household labor. These findings suggest that larger, society-wide, gender regimes might be an important avenue for future research when studying same-sex couples paid and unpaid labor.
Based on their abilities, more girls could choose careers in science. But they don't, even though failing to do so means missing out on lucrative and prestigious careers with a high level of job security. So why do these talented girls still not go for those study programmes and what can we do about it?
The mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema receives criticism because her 15-year-old son was arrested for burglary last July. In an article on Linda.nl they asked me whether this news would be received differently if she was a man.