In 2014, I received a grant (SAB14-1514: 1) covering salary and expenses associated with my sabbatical at Cornell University, USA. To get a full year for my own work, staying in an academically more agile environment was very rewarding for me. The stay also worked very well regarding my accompanying family, which helped me focus on work and take up on opportunities such as seminars, conferences and presenting my work across the US. I have completed an RJ survey and provided detailed information about my experiences; how the grant worked in relation to needs and how a sabbatical year places itself in Swedish academia. Your contribution allowed me to engage in research, read in order to cover a new area of research and connect to prominent US scholars in economics, sociology, and demography. Thus, for me the sabbatical was a success and productive, although you always think you will be able to do more than what you actually can.

The project's three main results
1) I finished the project “Gender, skills and career” (funded by Forte) in which I worked with both economists and sociologists. One paper addresses the impact of education and partner choice on women's labor force participation and family income (w Mieke Eeckhaut, Delaware, former UCLA). The perspective is pan-European, and shows significant differences between groups of countries that correspond to social policy, labor market regimes and support to dual earner families. The study is currently under review for publication. "Love in the time of recession" (w Jonas Helgertz) studied the role of education as an insulating factor in relation to economic crisis at different levels (individual, regional, national) among Swedish men and women. It provides a new perspective on the links between education, economic risk and family and puts theoretical assumptions and empirical results in a new light. “Two for the price of one? Twin births and women's earnings” (w Paul Nystedt, JIBS) rounds off this project through to a new way of estimating career costs for women associated with having children. We also study men in order to assess whether there are any career costs emerging over time. The study uses a novel method to get at causal relationships and shows how important it is to minimize the time spent outside the labor market, especially for highly educated women. It also shows that there has gradually been an adaptation across cohorts, indicating that women behave in an economically rational given human capital investments. The study was presented at the Work, Family Research Network Conference in Washington DC in 2016 and is currently under revision.

2) The project “It's about time” deals with gender, parenthood and time allocation. I conducted a study addressing the issue whether men and women in contemporary dual earner households choose time along over time together. I focused on how Swedish couples spend their time, and whether time together has increased or decreased since 1990. According to existing theories, the anticipation has been that couples where both partners work should spend less time together, which is destabilizing to marriage, but that is not the case. The results indicate more time together, particularly as a family and with children, between 1990 and 2010. The study was presented at a conference at Cornell and at the Dept. of Sociology in Boulder, CO. The paper is now accepted publication in Journal of Marriage and Family. In collaboration with French colleagues at INED in Paris, I have also done a comparative international study on parenting and the gendered development of unpaid work in Sweden, UK, NL, FR and the US. This paper is now under revision after having been presented at the Population Association of America's Annual Meeting. I also completed a paper with Frances Goldscheider (University of Maryland) which is a comprehensive analysis and an overview of the gender revolution that has taken place (and still is ongoing) regarding paid and unpaid work, the ways it has affected the family as an institution and its function in Sweden and the USA in the past 150 years. The paper is published in the Demographic Research and directly linked to the aims of my sabbatical project.

3) I also did three studies relating to an ongoing historical project with Joyce Burnette (Wabash College) and Tobias Karlsson (LU). The study by Karlsson debunks myths of gender differences regarding unionization and collective action and shows that women were not at all as difficult to organize as previously stated. The study was presented at seminars at Dept of Economics in Binghamton and at the ILR at Cornell. It is accepted for publication in Feminist Economics. With Burnette I wrote up/revised two papers: one highlighting the importance of who you are working with for individual productivity and wages. The interesting findings from this study is that they show that experienced female coworkers play a positive role for women during their early career yet not at all for men. Working with more experienced men is no good for neither men nor women. The results resonate with contemporary studies of social interaction effects and provide a unique contribution to the literature. The study was presented at the Clio conference in Pittsburgh and is being revised. Another paper studied the gender pay gap associated with the emergence of the modern labor market and reinterprets the role of internal labor markets. The study was presented at the Social Science History Association in Baltimore. It is now under revision to be submitted to a journal soon.

New research questions generated by the project
In connection with the above-mentioned time-allocation studies, I have shifted focus to include dependent care among individuals 50+ and time allocation among the elderly that also includes caring for grandchildren. An international comparative study of Sweden, UK and Canada was presented at the Population Association of America's Annual Meeting in Washington DC, March 2016. In line with this research, I applied for research funds (i.e. a new project), which was granted by Forte in September 2016.

In line with the historical studies on gender differences in labor market outcomes and how work and family interacted around the turn of the last century, I started a new project: Manufacturing gender inequality (financed by Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser). This project studies the role of the firm for gender disparities in salaries and careers, but also the importance of trade unions and other forms of collective action, and the role of coworkers and social interaction.

International aspects of the project
The project implied a sabbatical year in the US and is by definition international. It meant close contact with an outstanding research environment, a number of presentations at various universities across the US, new contacts and to some extent new partnerships (both regarding data and people).

Information activities outside the scientific community
Because I was abroad for the full year, I spent less time than I usually do on dissemination of research results outside the scientific community. However, a report on the unpaid care and household work that I wrote for the public Equality investigation (Jämställdhetsutredningen) prompted some interest. Furthermore did Forte make a presentation of me and my current projects in their magazine and on the web (see 2 above).

The project's two main publications
I believe these two publications to be most important for the project: "The Forest and the Trees: Industrialization, Demographic Change, and the Ongoing Gender Revolution in Sweden and the United States, 1870-2010 ' (w Goldscheider) and "Time Alone or Together? Trends and Tradeoffs among Dual-earner Couples in Sweden 1990-2010" (w Neilson) as they landed well publicationwise and for the reasons described above the second point above.

The project's publication strategy
The strategy is not unique to this project, but part of my regular work agenda. Papers are written and revised in order to be presented at seminars and international conferences and then they are published at the respective websites. After further revisions the studies are published as Working Papers available to all. These are usually more extensive and longer than the manuscripts submitted to journal for publication.

In connection to the sabbatical project I have also been working on a book on the Swedish family and parenthood since 1990 (for publication with SNS). I gave priority to all studies published in different Open Access forms and scientific journals before starting the book manuscript. The manuscript will be available in the summer of 2017. The book starts with the fact that Sweden is one of the world's most gender equal countries since the late 1960s when women's labor force participation increased to higher levels than in other countries. In theory this development puts pressure on the family, but in Sweden today we observe that this is not so. Those who should be the least involved in family are actually the most family-oriented. Families in which both partners are highly educated with professional careers are both most likely to have more children, and least likely to separate. Thus, the end of the family because of women's economic emancipation is not a threat. One hypothesis is that gender equality supports the family when a country reaches a new level of equilibrium where men's and women's economic roles are similar. The book explains, based on thematic studies, why Sweden became one of the most gender equal countries in the world by changes in men's and women's labor, division of labor in the home, and new family dynamics - both long-term trends as well as what appears to be a new paradox.