Virtual: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7905645674
Codi: 1984

Title: A research program at the intersection of gender inequalities, fertility, and family complexity

Abstract:
The Independent Max Planck Research Group “Gender Inequalities and Fertility” at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) seeks to explore how gender, deeply embedded in social structures, operates at the individual, interactional and institutional levels and influences decision making regarding union formation, fertility and the experience of parenthood.
The talk presents an overview of a research program and its ongoing research projects, which integrate gender inequalities into demographic analyses of fertility. The program is structured around three core objectives. First, it seeks to capture the multidimensionality of gender role attitudes and their uneven change, addressing the ambivalence they may create both within societies and individuals. Second, it bridges research on assortative mating, union formation and fertility research, emphasizing the dyadic nature of fertility decisions and how relationship dynamics influence reproductive behavior and navigating parenthood. Third, it examines the fertility preferences and plans of today’s young adults, whose choices will shape future population trends.
By addressing these objectives, the research program aims to generate a nuanced understanding of how gender inequalities and increasingly complex relationship and family dynamics interact to influence fertility patterns, offering insights that are crucial for informing demographic research and policy.

About the speaker:
Nicole Hiekel is Head of the Max Planck Research Group “Gender Inequalities and Fertility” at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany.
Nicole received her PhD in Sociology (2014) from VU University Amsterdam with her dissertation, entitled “The different meanings of cohabitation across Europe”. She conducted this research at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague. She was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne and senior researcher at the German Youth Institute in Munich before joining MPIDR.
At the intersection of sociology and demography, her research has contributed to demographic theory building on how social inequalities interact with demographic processes and applied innovative methods to study the intergenerational transmission of relationship behavior.