From studying in Poland to inspiration in Denmark: Economist explores how parenthood and education shape the career paths of women and men
Studying in Poland gave her an interdisciplinary outlook on the world, experience in the Czech Republic drew her fully into economics, and a stay in Denmark opened up new research perspectives. Today, Barbara Pertold-Gebicka from the Institute of Economic Studies at FSV UK seeks answers to how policies and social norms shape the educational and career paths of women and men. Her research focuses, for example, on the position of mothers in the labor market and on why so few women choose to study science and technology.
Barbara Pertold-Gebicka studied in her native Poland, specifically at Lodz University of Technology, in the Business & Technology program – then a novelty that combined technical, economic, and business subjects. “It was a bit of a mishmash: theoretical economics, marketing projects, plus lab work in physics and materials technology. But it taught me to look at the world from different angles,” she recalls.
She quickly realized, however, that she was most drawn to economics and moved to Prague to study at CERGE-EI. “Economics completely absorbed me. There were very inspiring teachers who could connect theoretical knowledge with mathematics, statistics, and intuition when searching for answers about how the state and economy function,” she explains. She stayed in Prague for her Ph.D. and later pursued an academic career there, partly influenced by her family background. “Both of my parents are scientists. I watched them work, helped with conferences. The academic environment always felt more natural to me than the business world,” she adds.
Her research combines econometric and statistical methods of data analysis with topics related to human capital, education, and the labor market. In her dissertation, she examined the position of university graduates in the labor market, and during her postdoctoral stay in Denmark she shifted her focus to women—especially mothers. “I was interested in how family policy influences employment, income, and parents’ satisfaction,” she explains.
In recent years, she has returned to the economics of education. For instance, she studied how distance learning during the pandemic affected the study paths of university students. The research showed that the pandemic period helped weaker students: thanks to online teaching, they were able to pass courses with high failure rates and then had no problem continuing their studies. By contrast, some stronger students dropped out.
At the same time, she continues to focus on parenthood—aiming to offer a comprehensive view of how it influences the careers of women and men in the Czech Republic and which policies can make a difference. “I find it valuable to use available data to see how the (un)availability of resources and incentives created by policies and social norms influence people’s behavior—especially in areas we don’t typically connect directly with economics, but that are crucial for it. Studying women’s position in the labor market matters because they make up half of our workforce and pass on behavioral patterns to children. And studying education is key because it is the process of building human capital,” she says of her motivation.
Inspiration in Denmark
A significant experience for her professional and teaching development was her postdoctoral stay at Aarhus University in Denmark. There she became deeply engaged with issues of family policy, which functions very differently from the Czech context. “I was inspired by the fact that in Denmark, policymaking is much more rooted in rigorous scientific analysis. I would love to see us reach that point here as well,” notes Pertold-Gebicka. She was also struck by the Danish approach to working with students—who, in her words, are very goal-oriented and strive to gain as many skills as possible during their studies. “Lecturers there are regularly and mandatorily trained. For example, back in 2012 I attended a two-day intensive course on preparing for Generation Z, activating students during teaching, and keeping their attention in an increasingly fast-paced world,” she recalls.
After returning to the Czech Republic, she received support from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) for her research. In the project The Position of Women in the Labor Market – Job-Level Analysis (2014–2016), she focused primarily on mothers. In a series of three papers, she showed that the length of parental leave affects women’s labor market position even when their children reach school age—the longer the break, the harder it is for women to return to comparable positions. Together with colleagues, she also analyzed the Danish labor market and found that for mothers, public sector employment is often more advantageous than private sector jobs—even though wages are lower, public sector jobs offer better career prospects and greater tolerance for part-time work.
In another paper co-authored with economist Vojtěch Bartoš of CERGE-EI, they examined how Czech employers view women after parental leave. “The experiment showed that for skill-intensive positions, mothers with a shorter—two-year—break are preferred, while for less demanding positions, women after a three-year leave are more likely to be favored. We interpret this as employers perceiving a loss of human capital during long parental breaks. At the same time, they also take into account social norms and the (un)availability of preschool care—hence for less demanding jobs they prefer mothers with older children,” she explains.
In another research project—a junior grant titled Family Structure and Quality of Life, again supported by GAČR—she studied quality of life through subjective measures of happiness and satisfaction. Together with PhD student Dominika Špolcová from IES FSV UK, she developed an index that combines several questions about feelings in recent weeks, allowing for a better measure of people’s well-being. They then used this tool to analyze the relationship between well-being, income, and number of children.
“We found that income increases well-being only up to the point where basic needs are covered. Beyond that, the link between income and well-being becomes negligible,” she comments. “We also wanted to examine the pure effect of having an additional child. So, we compared families where the second pregnancy resulted in one child versus twins. Parents with three children experienced a significant drop in subjective well-being during the first five years after birth—mainly fathers. For mothers, the negative effect of the third child lasts roughly until the child reaches adolescence, but once that point is reached, mothers of three report much higher well-being than mothers of two,” she adds.
Society and Children
And how did she herself manage the role of both mother and academic? She had her first child at the end of her time in Denmark, where she was greatly inspired by local female colleagues. “I also had the support of my husband, who took on part of the childcare. And after returning to the Czech Republic, IES accommodated me with a part-time contract,” she recalls. “Still, it wasn’t easy—quality nurseries were very expensive. The entire parental allowance would be consumed by them, making one question whether it was financially worthwhile. And Czech society wasn’t very accustomed to working mothers. Most parent–child activities were held in the mornings, and people kept asking me why I had to work. In Poland, where I come from, most mothers return to work after their child’s first birthday,” she emphasizes.
Currently, she is involved in two research projects in the economics of education. Together with researchers Alena Bičáková and Miroslava Federičová from CERGE-EI, she is studying why women rarely choose STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The second project looks at the relationship between university majors and occupational placement. The aim is to find out whether graduates earn higher wages if they work in their field of study, and also to propose a data-based approach to defining the very concept of “job match.”
Looking ahead, she wants to build on her research on parental leave and investigate how the so-called “motherhood penalty”—the earnings loss due to having a child—has evolved in the Czech Republic over the past twenty years. “I’m curious whether reforms in parental allowances or the growing availability of part-time jobs have changed anything,” she notes. But in general, she would like her research to continue providing a comprehensive picture of these issues—for instance, the position of mothers in the labor market. “Taken together, my studies provide a clear conclusion: from the labor market’s perspective, very long breaks are not beneficial, especially for mothers in skill-intensive fields,” Pertold-Gebicka concludes.
