Ongoing Projects

I currently coordinate two funded research projects tracing the impact of family and labor market reforms on gender-based inequalities in Spain.

FAIRLEAVE – Longer paternity leave, fairer labor markets? Evidence of the 2021 paternity leave reform in Spain.

Funded in 2021 by the Spanish State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación)

The project investigates, broadly, whether the introduction of equal and non-transferable maternity and paternity leave entitlements in Spain has helped reduce gender-based equalities. We have collected two waves of a longitudinal survey among parents of children born before and after the reform. Results were recently featured in a dedicated article in El País, debated in the Spanish Senate, and blogged in Agenda Pública. The project was featured on the State Research Agency’s web.

FAIRLEAVE is a four-year project hosted by the Institute of Government and Public Policy. For more information, visit the project’s website.

POLGENDA – Gender-Based Public Policies and Labor Market Discrimination: A Field Experiment in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia

Funded in 2024 by the Institute of Women, part of the Ministry of Equality in Spain

The project aims to offer causal evidence on the effectiveness — and potential unintended consequences — of gender-based public policies through a large-scale correspondence study. We are interested in the impact of extending paternity leave entitlements on hiring biases toward recent and prospective parents, particularly fathers. In addition, we test whether the presence or absence of registered equality plans in companies - following the 2021 requirement for Spanish firms to register these plans in the REGCON system - reduces discrimination or moderates the impact of family policies. The project’s fieldwork is pending. Stay tuned!

The project’s co-PI is Gabriela de Carvalho.

Feel free to reach out for more information about these or related lines of research!