Occupations are segregated with respect to sex, even in modern, egalitarian societies. There are strong pressures to eliminate segregation and therefore strong reasons to correctly the-orize why segregation persists. The dominant view underpinning most public policies is essentially that environmental factors nudge women and men into different occupational paths. Nudging, however, ignores research suggesting that psychological traits that influ-ence occupational choice differs between women and men, on average. Some of the most well-documented and persistent average sex differences between men and women suggest that the taken-for-granted assumption that an egalitarian society would exhibit a more or less equal distribution of men and women across the occupational landscape may be mistaken. Rather, models of occupational choice informed by individ-ual differences in preferences, broadly understood, would help us better explain how men and women behave in the labor market. Differences in occupational preferences will affect choices. Therefore, differences in proportions of women and men across professions may be in line with an egalitarian society and the well-being and best interest of both men and women in society.

Lagen om anställningsskydd är omdebatterad och skapar friktioner på svensk arbetsmarknad. Å ena sidan finns arbetsgivare som vill ha flexibla företag och rätten att leda och fördela arbetet för att främja verksamheten. Å andra sidan finns arbetstagare som vill ha trygga anställningar och rätt till en icke-godtycklig behandling. På aggregerad nivå får lagstiftningens avsedda och oavsedda konsekvenser förhållandevis mycket utrymme i debatterna såväl som inom forskningen, där studier exempelvis visar att ett strikt anställningsskydd hämmar företagens produktivitet. Mer sällan ställs frågan hur lagstiftningen tillämpas och upplevs fungera lokalt och i praktiken, det vill säga ute på företagen.

Den här studien syftar till att bidra med sådan konkret och lokal kunskap i syfte att undersöka avsedda och oavsedda konsekvenser av anställningsskyddets utformande i företagens dagliga verksamhet. Frågan undersöks genom tolv intervjuer med företagsledare i medelstora tillverkande företag med erfarenhet av att avsluta anställningar. Företagsledarna fick berätta om vad som hände, hur och när processen initierades, och när - men också hur - de upplevde att processen fungerade.

Resultaten visar att företagsledarna principiellt har en positiv inställning till anställningsskydd, men upplever att lagstiftningen inte fungerar väl i praktiken. Exempelvis står turordningsreglerna i konflikt med företagsledningens fokus på att vid arbetsbrist behålla rätt kompetens. Vidare menar de att avslut av anställningar på grund av personliga skäl är näst intill omöjligt.

Rapportens slutsats mynnar ut i att anställningsskyddslagstiftningen - sett ur ett företagsledningsperspektiv - har viktiga oavsedda konsekvenser: Man kan frångå turordningsreglerna, men det är dyrt. Man kan avsluta anställningar som inte fungerar, men bara genom låtsad omorganisering och konstruerad arbetsbrist. Sammanfattningsvis framkommer många, av lagstiftaren oavsedda, oförutsedda, och oönskade, konsekvenser ur intervjuerna som framkallar frågan i vilken utsträckning lagstiftningen i praktiken uppfyller sitt egentliga syfte.

Using Swedish registry data, we study the chances of mobility into the Swedish labour market elite for men who graduated in the years 1985-2005. The elite is defined as top earners within mid- and large sized firms and within the public sector organisations (henceforth, we use organisation for both firms and public organisations). Using discrete time event history models, we study the incidence of elite entry in terms of external recruitment and internal promotion. The choice of field of study and of college or university are important, as are personality and, to a limited extent, cognitive ability. What is most striking is that having kin in elite positions increases the chance of elite entry in general, and having parents in top positions in the same organisation increases the likelihood of internal promotion. In sum, elite entry among college-educated males is associated with a diversity of factors, suggesting that complex explanations for labour market success should be considered, where skills, personality, and family ties all seem to matter.

In my experience as a sociologist, I see many ways in which gender sociology tends to insulate itself from challenges to its own sacred beliefs and sacred causes. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the biological differences between the sexes are minor and that the cultural differences between the genders have little basis in biological differences. The scholarly findings that challenge the sacred beliefs come from anthropology, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, genetics, biology, and many other fields. For many decades now researchers have amassed findings of differences in competitiveness, aggression, sexual interest, risk behavior, and many other traits, and differences in brain physiology and neuroimaging, by many different methods and approaches. I investigated a sample of top cited gender sociology papers to test my impression, and indeed the findings illustrate extreme insularity. It saddens me to see students and scholars fall into insular communities of highly dubious sacred beliefs and causes. I propose that gender sociologists strive to undo insularity.

In our target article, we made four claims: (1) Social psychology is now politically homogeneous; (2) this homogeneity sometimes harms the science; (3) increasing political diversity would reduce this damage; and (4) some portion of the homogeneity is due to a hostile climate and outright discrimination against non-liberals. In this response, we review these claims in light of the arguments made by a diverse group of commentators. We were surprised to find near-universal agreement with our first two claims, and we note that few challenged our fourth claim. Most of the disagreements came in response to our claim that increasing political diversity would be beneficial. We agree with our critics that increasing political diversity may be harder than we had thought, but we explain why we still believe that it is possible and desirable to do so. We conclude with a revised list of 12 recommendations for improving political diversity in social psychology, as well as in other areas of the academy.

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity - particularly diversity of viewpoints - for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology.

Using unique Swedish register data on all employees in large private companies, we study trends in the gender composition of top wage employees from 1993 to 2007. The analyses reveal that the likelihood of women holding top wage positions has more than doubled since the early 1990s, but men are still markedly over-represented in this group of employees. We focus on educational choices, considering level and field of study as well as university attended. One important conclusion is that, although education is important in reaching a top wage position, field of education and university attended only marginally explain the gender  gap. However, relative to other women, having a career signalling degree (i.e. economics, law or engineering) from a more prestigious university helps women. Dividing the sample into different cohorts indicates that the gender gap is partly a cohort effect, i.e. it is smaller among those born in the 1960s compared to cohorts born in the 1940s and 1950s. It should be noted that there is still a gender gap among employees born in the 1960s and that the gap widens after age 30. Future studies should focus more deeply on this family-related ‘period of divergence’.