Exports, Gender Inequality, and Family Commitment

ABSTRACT This paper examines how exporting firms, gender, and family commitments interact to shape wage disparities. Using Finnish matched employer–employee data, we estimate wage equations that control for firm, worker, and match‐specific unobservables. While exporting firms do not exhibit a wider gender wage gap overall, women with young children face additional short‐run wage penalties, as shown by an event‐study analysis that reveals a temporary but pronounced gap in the early post‐childbirth years. These penalties are concentrated in occupations with greater temporal rigidity and limited scheduling flexibility, highlighting workplace flexibility constraints as a key mechanism. The findings suggest that the interaction between export‐related temporal demands and caregiving responsibilities contributes to gendered wage dynamics. These results also raise questions about the continuing relevance of gender norms that disadvantage female employees, even in a context with strong public support for parental leave and childcare in Finland.