Gender differences in the labour market insertion of tourism graduates

Abstract

This article studies gender differences in labour mobility, employment type, contract type, and sectoral mismatch among tourism graduates in the first 4 years after graduation. We exploit a longitudinal dataset of seven graduation cohorts to ascertain gender differences in their labour market insertion process at the beginning of their careers. We estimate Heckman probit regressions for each outcome variable that deal with self-selection into employment status. Our results show that females are less likely to move outside their region for labour reasons and more likely to work part-time and with temporal contracts. Moreover, females exhibit a 15 per cent higher probability of being horizontally mismatched in their jobs. Importantly, the documented gap remains over time and even widens, suggesting a faster transition of males towards matched jobs and better labour conditions.