Oliver Lipps, Daniel Oesch, Roujman Shahbazian
Sociological Science September 28, 2026
10.15195/v13.a44
Abstract
Women have surpassed men in higher education, yet their labor market progress relative to men is widely seen as stalled. We address this apparent contradiction by adopting a cohort perspective—since gender convergence is driven by cohort replacement rather than period effects—and focusing on early careers (ages 25–34), before parenthood widens the gender gap. Drawing on large-scale national data spanning several decades, we analyze single-year birth cohorts from 1960 to 1998 in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States across multiple labor market outcomes. Our results show that gender gaps in employment, working hours, and occupational attainment have narrowed substantially in all countries studied. Most importantly, young women have made up considerable ground in total labor income: the gender gap has more than halved between the 1965 and 1995 birth cohorts. Although young women still lag behind young men, particularly mothers, our findings show steady convergence and challenge the narrative of stalled progress.
Women have surpassed men in higher education, yet their labor market progress relative to men is widely seen as stalled. We address this apparent contradiction by adopting a cohort perspective—since gender convergence is driven by cohort replacement rather than period effects—and focusing on early careers (ages 25–34), before parenthood widens the gender gap. Drawing on large-scale national data spanning several decades, we analyze single-year birth cohorts from 1960 to 1998 in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States across multiple labor market outcomes. Our results show that gender gaps in employment, working hours, and occupational attainment have narrowed substantially in all countries studied. Most importantly, young women have made up considerable ground in total labor income: the gender gap has more than halved between the 1965 and 1995 birth cohorts. Although young women still lag behind young men, particularly mothers, our findings show steady convergence and challenge the narrative of stalled progress.
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Supplemental Materials
Reproducibility Package: The statistical code, documentation, and instructions needed to reproduce all the empirical results reported in this article are publicly available at https://osf.io/ks4qj. As our analyses rely on restricted-access microdata, which we are not legally permitted to redistribute, the package contains the full code and step-by-step documentation of how each dataset can be obtained from the respective statistical agencies and data archives (see the Data availability section).
- Citation: Lipps, Oliver, Daniel Oesch, and Roujman Shahbazian. 2026. “No Stalled Revolution: The Closing Gender Gap in Early Careers in Europe and the United States” Sociological Science 13:1159-1178.
- Received: May 31, 2026
- Accepted: September 1, 2026
- Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Bianca Manago
- DOI: 10.15195/v13.a44
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