Male managers hire and pay women more after their first daughter, Danish study finds

Male managers start hiring and paying women more after their first child turns out to be a daughter, according to a study by economists Maddalena Ronchi of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and Nina Smith of Aarhus University, published in The Review of Economic Studies and reported widely in early October 2026. Using Danish government records on workers and firms from 1992 to 2017, the researchers compared managers whose first child was a girl with those whose first child was a boy. After a daughter's birth, women's relative earnings at the manager's firm rose by 4.4% and their relative employment by 2.9%, with no measurable effect on how the firm performed.

Many explanations of the gender gap at work focus on women's choices or on formal rules. This study points to something else: the personal views of the people who make hiring and pay decisions. When a manager's own life changes, by raising a daughter, his decisions about whom to hire and how much to pay shift towards women. That suggests that ordinary bias, often unconscious, plays a measurable role in who gets hired and promoted.

The finding that firm performance did not change is just as important. Replacing men with equally qualified women did not hurt the business. In other words, the earlier, more male-heavy hiring was not driven by productivity. That undercuts a common argument that gender gaps at work simply reflect differences in ability or commitment.

For women building careers, and for organisations trying to close gaps, the study offers a lesson about leadership. If a manager's personal experience can move outcomes this much, then exposure, training and diverse hiring panels may help too. It also shows why who sits in management matters: decisions concentrated in a few hands can tilt the field for many.

For India, where women's participation in paid work remains low and few women reach senior roles, the study is a reminder that the attitudes of managers, most of whom are men, shape opportunities. The authors' data come from Denmark, a country with strong gender-equality policies, so the size of the effect may differ elsewhere, but the mechanism is likely to be familiar.

Short-term: The study gives companies and HR teams evidence that hiring and pay decisions can carry personal bias, and that correcting it need not cost performance.

Long-term: Findings like this can shape policies on structured hiring, pay audits and diverse decision-making panels, aimed at reducing reliance on individual managers' views.

Who is affected: Women job-seekers and employees, managers and HR leaders, policymakers working on gender equality at work, and researchers studying discrimination.

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