Siv Gustafsson

When Siv Gustafsson began studying at the Stockholm School of Economics in the 1960s, almost everyone around her was a man. All her teachers were men, as were all the teaching assistants, and about 90 per cent of the students. In this environment, Siv began noticing something that would shape much of her academic career: women's work was largely absent from the economic questions being asked.

We met up with Siv Gustafsson on a lovely summer day at her house at Svartsö in the beautiful Stockholm Archipelago. Siv welcomed us with warmth and her own baked cinnamon buns. Sitting on the porch, she told us about her career and background.

This autumn, Siv returns to SSE to be recognized as a Jubilee Doctor. Looking back on a career devoted to research on women's work, wages, family economics, and the choices people make between work and family life, she traces much of it back to a conviction she formed early on: important questions deserve rigorous answers.

“You should conduct research with both your heart and your head. The statistics must be real, and you have to use the best methods available.”

“I absolutely did not want to become a housewife”

Going to school in Västerås, Siv did not have a carefully mapped-out plan to become an economist. There were far fewer universities and colleges to choose from than there are today, and she admits that she did not really know what studying at SSE would entail.

Her reasoning was partly pragmatic.

“Everything people do has an economic dimension. So I thought that if I learned economics, I would surely be able to support myself,” she says, before adding with characteristic directness: “I absolutely did not want to become a housewife.”
There was an expectation of education in her family, too. Siv remembers her mother telling her father that if they had daughters, they should receive just as much education as if they had sons.

By her second year at SSE, something had clicked. Siv had become fascinated by economics and its effects of it, by changing something in one part of the economy, consequences appear somewhere else. Economic theory offered a way to understand those connections. Somewhat around here, Siv decided she wanted to become an economist.

Seeing what others did not

Siv was studying in an environment dominated by men, but at the same time, her own life was giving her a perspective that few of the people around her shared.
In 1965, halfway through her studies, she had her first child. Siv was 22.

“I saw women's work because I was living it. The men didn't see it.”

The experience would eventually become closely connected to the questions she pursued as a researcher: women's participation in the labor market, wages, unpaid work, family economics, and the challenge of combining a career with family life.

“I have researched what was my own reality,” she says. But personal conviction alone was never enough for Siv.

She remembers encountering arguments for gender equality that relied on statistics she considered unreliable or simply invented. She wanted research on women's lives to be taken seriously and that meant the evidence had to withstand scrutiny.

“You should conduct research with both your heart and your head.” That principle became especially important when her own research faced criticism.

“There were certainly shortcomings, but you never heard anything about what was good, only what was lacking,” she says. Her response was simple. “What I don't know, I can learn.” So, she did.

Find the question first

For Siv, research has always started with the question rather than the method.
“First decide what question you want to research. Then use the best possible technique to answer it.”

One researcher who profoundly influenced her approach was economist Jacob Mincer of Columbia University, a pioneer in using econometrics to understand labor market behavior.

When Mincer came to SSE to give a series of guest lectures, Siv had just begun working on her dissertation. She attended all six of his two-hour sessions. Later, after presenting her doctoral research internationally, she realized that her work needed to be accessible beyond Sweden.

At the time, her dissertation was expected to be written as a Swedish-language monograph, so Siv added a 25-page English summary.

Then she sent the book to Mincer with a note thanking him for the inspiration.
His response opened several doors. He invited her to a conference, encouraged her to submit her research to the Econometric Society, and told her that if she could secure funding, she was welcome to come to Columbia as a visiting researcher. “I did all three,” Siv says.

The last took a few years, but in 1979 she went to Columbia. Her advice to young researchers today follows directly from that experience. “Seek out your idol professor,” she says. “If you know what your heart questions are, research those questions.”

Siv Gustafsson

You should conduct research with both your heart and your head. The statistics must be real, and you have to use the best methods available.

Siv Gustafsson

Jubilee doctorate

Looking beyond the “reference country"

As Siv's career developed, research increasingly took her beyond Sweden and into international collaborations. Working with researchers from different countries also made her reconsider assumptions she had previously taken for granted.

She remembers a French colleague once asking:
“How is this in the reference country?” The reference country, Siv realized, was Sweden. “I had never really reflected on that. Sweden was always my reference country.”

At the same time, international researchers were interested in understanding the Swedish model. Siv's knowledge of languages, institutions, and family policy allowed her to explain the Swedish context while comparing it with systems elsewhere.

Those encounters made something else clear: there is rarely one obvious policy solution. Different countries organize childcare, parental leave, work, and family life in different ways, and every choice affects something else. “There are trade-offs,” she says

It is, in many ways, the same idea that first attracted her to economics as a student: change something in one place, and something happens somewhere else.

The questions that have not disappeared

The Sweden Siv sees today is very different from the country in which she began her career. Women now hold positions throughout academia, politics, business, and public life that were overwhelmingly occupied by men when she was a student.

But some of the underlying questions that drove her research have not disappeared.
How do we combine careers and family life? How does the way society organizes childcare and parental leave affect people's choices? How is unpaid work divided? And what happens when the demands of professional life collide with the desire to have children?

“The work-life puzzle is still there,” Siv says.

Today, declining birth rates have brought many of these questions back into public debate. Siv is particularly interested in how a new generation of father’s approaches work and family responsibilities and believes there are still areas where more research is needed. In the 1980s we showed women’s professional skills under the motto Women Can. Now it is time to emphasize Fathers Can.

For her, that is part of what makes research exciting. Society changes, and old questions return in new forms.

“I wanted to do research”

When asked what the most enjoyable part of her career has been, Siv answers immediately. “Research.”

In 1985, she published a book on wage differences between women and men that attracted considerable attention. Demand for lectures became so great that she found herself traveling to speak to organizations and groups around Sweden.
Some people suggested that someone so comfortable communicating her ideas might consider becoming a politician.

But Siv eventually began declining the speaking invitations. “I wanted to do research and dedicate my time to that.”

Decades later, her curiosity has increasingly turned toward the researchers coming after her. Her advice is not to chase a particular method, title, or predetermined career path, but to identify the questions that genuinely matter to you and pursue them rigorously.

Research your “heart questions,” as she puts it. Find the people who inspire you. And if you do not yet know something you need to know, learn it.

Returning to SSE

More than half a century after entering an almost entirely male academic environment, Siv returns to SSE in the autumn of 2026 as a Jubilee Doctor.

The school has changed. Society has changed. But many of the questions that first caught her attention about work, family, equality, and the choices people can make remain.

Her own journey began with observing the world around her and asking why economic research did not fully account for what she could see in everyday life. In doing so, Siv helped make visible questions that economics could no longer afford to overlook.

And perhaps her own advice best captures the approach that made that possible:
“Research with both your heart and your head.”

Visit Siv's website and learn more about her career, research and books here: Link to website here