Women's Occupational Choices Research Articles

Do Counter-Stereotypical Female Role Models Impact Women's Occupational Choices?

This paper examines the impact of counter-stereotypical female role models on women's labor supply and occupational choices. Using hand-collected data from Gallup surveys that cover a long time series, we create a direct measure of counter-stereotypical female role models based on the fraction of local survey respondents who admire famous women in business, politics, or science. We show that the presence of counter-stereotypical female role models is associated with more women participating in the labor market, working in male-dominated industries, choosing occupations with abstract tasks, and taking managerial positions, which eventually alleviates the gender pay gap.

The Gendered Societal Equilibrium: In Search for an Economic Rationale

Several occupations are male-dominated while others are women-dominated, and gender-based segregation shows great resistance to change. Researchers attribute it to secular stereotypes, socialization practices and gender-constructed roles. This paper attempts to establish an economic rationale behind these theories. In this paper, women have greater difficulty to conciliate the labor market with the household and for that reason have a higher cost of effort. We found that when the marginal cost of effort is increasing with effort, production tends to be organized in more competitive ways in which men are more competitive. In those cases, the economic forces push men towards these more competitive occupations, which are also the ones with higher returns. On the other hand, when the marginal cost of effort is decreasing with effort, production is organized in less competitive ways and women tend to provide higher effort than men. In those cases, the economic forces push women towards these less competitive occupations, which are also the ones with lower returns. These findings may help researchers and decision-makers better understand the economic mechanisms behind men and women occupational choices, e.g., in STEM, and designing policies that can allow men and women to have the same labor market opportunities.

More Women in Tech? Evidence from a Field Experiment Addressing Social Identity

This paper investigates whether social identity considerations-through beliefs and norms- drive women's occupational choices. We implement two field experiments with potential applicants to a five-month software-coding program offered to women from low-income backgrounds in Peru and Mexico. When we correct the perception that women cannot succeed in technology by providing role models, information on returns and access to a female network, application rates double and the self-selection patterns change. Analysis of those patterns suggests that identity considerations act as barriers to entering the technology sector and that some high-cognitive skill women do not apply because of their high identity costs.

Prevalence of Long Hours and Skilled Women's Occupational Choices

Prevalence of Long Hours and Skilled Women's Occupational Choices

On gender and growth: The role of intergenerational health externalities and women's occupational constraints

This paper studies the growth effects of externalities associated with intergenerational health transmission, health persistence, and access to infrastructure (or lack thereof), which affects women's occupational choices. Following a brief review of the evidence on these issues, a gender-based overlapping generations (OLG) model of endogenous growth that captures these interactions is presented and its properties characterized. The endogeneity of mothers’ rearing time and rearing costs implies that improved access to infrastructure has in general an ambiguous effect on growth. Numerical experiments, based on a calibrated version of the model for low-income countries, show that it is possible for higher investment in infrastructure to actually reduce the steady-state growth rate. The possibility of multiple equilibria induced by an endogenous survival rate is also discussed, and so is the role of public policy in that context.

Dads and Daughters: The Changing Impact of Fathers on Women's Occupational Choices

Abstract:We examine whether women's rising labor force participation led to increased intergenerational transmission of occupation from fathers to daughters. We develop a model where fathers invest in human capital that is specific to their own occupations. Our model generates an empirical test where we compare the trends in the probabilities that women work in their father's versus their father-in-law's occupation. Using data from birth cohorts born between 1909 and 1977, our results indicate that the estimated difference in these trends accounts for at least 13-20 percent of the total increase in the probability that a woman enters her father's occupation.

Reconsidering a Classic: Assessing the History of Women's Higher Education a Dozen Years after Barbara Solomon

In this article, Linda Eisenmann examines the role and impact of Barbara Solomon's now classic text in women's educational history, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. Eisenmann analyzes how Solomon's book influenced, defined, and in some ways limited the field of women's educational history. She shows how current historical research — such as the study of normal schools and academies — grew out of Solomon's work. She points out where the book is innovative and indispensable and where it disappoints us as teachers and scholars in the 1990s. Eisenmann criticizes Solomon for placing too much emphasis on women's access to higher education, thereby ignoring the importance of wider historical and educational influences such as economics, women's occupational choices, and the treatment of women in society at large. Finally, Eisenmann examines the state of subsequent research in women's higher educational history. She urges researchers to investigate beyond the areas defined by Solomon's work and to assess the impact of these neglected subjects on women's experiences in education.

MALE‐FEMALE DIFFERENCES IN OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE AND THE DEMAND FOR GENERAL AND OCCUPATION‐SPECIFIC HUMAN CAPITAL

A human capital model of occupational choice as demand for general and occupation‐specific human capital is developed to show how women's occupational choices vary with their lifetime labor force participation patterns. The model is tested using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women. The major empirical finding is that women who take less home time choose occupations which require more human capital, especially specific human capital. Women's occupations and wages are quite responsive to changes in their labor force participation patterns. If women worked continuously, their occupations and wages would be much closer to those of men.

Females' Combination of Work and Family Roles: Adolescents' Aspirations

Women's occupational choices are part of a two-stage process through which overall lifestyle decisions are made. In the first stage, women make a decision about the way in which they will combine family and work roles; in the second stage, a specific occupation is chosen. In this study the first stage of decision making was explored by examining the aspirations of adolescent women for combining marriage, motherhood, and labor-force participation. The aspirations of adolescent males for their future wives' combination of marriage, motherhood, and labor-force participation also were examined to uncover any sex differences. Path models suggest that, for both males and females, sex-role variables are the most important predictors of these aspirations but that background, significant other, and achievement variables also are influential.

The Sex Factor in Occupational Choice

This article first examines the extent to which a sex-differentiated dual labour market exists in Australia with males being concentrated in different types of occupations from those of females. Factors affecting women's occupational choices are reviewed and the article goes on to report findings on the differences between Western Australian male and female students' occupational aspirations and expectations. It shows that most male and female students clustered into occupations that are traditionally seen as sex stereotyped but there was significant overlap in the occupations chosen by both males and females. The three occupations chosen most often by females were teaching, nursing and therapy and those by males were teaching, accounting and engineering. Occupational features which females selected involved the characteristics of helping others and working with people while males more often selected features which would provide high income, prestige and freedom from close supervision. The findings suggest that although there is a slight movement away from sex stereotyped career choices by these students, the indication for the future is that a sex segregated labour market will persist in Western Australia.

Women's Occupational Choices and Lifetime Work Rhythms: Are We Still Making Progress?

This article reviews women's present and expected future place in the world of work. It considers two issues that grow out of changes that have taken place in women's economic roles: (a) expansion of the range of occupations in which women engage; and (b) work structure flexibility that responds to the intertwined nature of work and family lives. The article recommends a number of initiatives to ensure that social changes that have occurred will result in more life satisfaction rather than just more life complexity.

Sex Differences in the Educational-Occupational Expectation Process

This study presents a path analytic model of status expectations that focuses on how sex influences the educational and occupational expectations of a large sample of American adolescents. While female and male expectations can be predicted by the same model variables, the process is by no means identical for both sexes. Exogenous background variables have greater total effects for females, while intervening social-psychological and achievement related variables have substantially lesser effects for females than males. The same-sex parent is found to have a greater effect on adolescent expectations than the opposite-sex parent. No significant sex differences are found in the mean level of either expectation, but the distribution of occupational choices parallel the current sex segregation of the occupational sector. Further, relative to academic achievement, the females have lower expectations than the males. These results are interpreted as consequences of traditional sex role socialization. Research on social inequality has shown that women are underrepresented in the higher echelons of the American occupational structure. Women constitute approximately 40 percent of the labor force; more than half of all adult women work outside of the home. Yet only 8 percent of all physicians, dentists, and other related practicioners are women; the ratio of women to men in managerial and administrative positions is low (.20), and even lower (.05) among lawyers and judges (Featherman and Hauser; U.S. Bureau of the Census). Undoubtedly, the relatively low occupational attainment of women, given their large numbers in the labor force, reflects in large part the discrimination they encounter seeking work and on the job: among other things, discriminatory employment practices severely limit women's occupational choices and channel them into positions with highly restricted chances for promotion. But job discrimination does not tell the *This research was supported by a grant to the senior author from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-23542).

Economic Research on Women and Families

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe New Scholarship about Women: Review EssaysEconomic Research on Women and FamiliesHilda KahneHilda Kahne Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 3, Number 3Spring, 1978 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/493508 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1978 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Flora L. Williams Research in family financial counseling, Lifestyles Family and Economic Issues 10, no.33 (Jan 1989): 181–204.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989506RICHARD D. ASHMORE, FRANCES K. DEL BOCA Toward a Social Psychology of Female–Male Relations, (Jan 1986): 1–17.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-065280-8.50006-3Carol J. Ireson Feminism, Scholarship, and the University Curriculum, The Review of Education 9, no.11 (Jul 2006): 53–58.https://doi.org/10.1080/0098559830090110 Marianne A. Ferber Women and Work: Issues of the 1980s, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8, no.22 (Oct 2015): 273–295.https://doi.org/10.1086/493963Lauri Steel, Ronald P. Abeles, Josefina J. Card Sex differences in the patterning of adult roles as a determinant of sex differences in occupational achievement, Sex Roles 8, no.99 (Sep 1982): 1009–1024.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00290025Glenna D. Spitze, Linda J. Waite Labor Force and Work Attitudes, Sociology of Work and Occupations 7, no.11 (Sep 2016): 3–32.https://doi.org/10.1177/009392858071001Nona Glazer Overworking the working woman: the double day in a mass magazine, Women's Studies International Quarterly 3, no.11 (Jan 1980): 79–93.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-0685(80)92675-5M. Ann Hall Intellectual Sexism in Physical Education, Quest 31, no.22 (Nov 1979): 172–186.https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.1979.10519936HILDA KAHNE Women's Occupational Choices and Lifetime Work Rhythms: Are We Still Making Progress?, Journal of Employment Counseling 16, no.22 (Feb 2012): 83–93.https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.1979.tb01174.xSheila Kishler Bennett, Glen H. Elder Women's Work in the Family Economy: a Study of Depression Hardship in Women's Lives, Journal of Family History 4, no.22 (Jun 1979): 153–176.https://doi.org/10.1177/036319907900400205

Home-Career Conflict Reduction Revisited: the Effect of Experimental Directions on Kois Scores for Women

The effect of experimental directions designed to reduce a home-career conflict in women's occupational choices was investigated. The Kuder Occupational Interest Survey DD was administered to randomly formed experimental and control groups. The participants in the study were 121 women considering reentry to the educational system in a community college. The finding from previous research with the Strong Vocational Interest Blank-Women that use of experimental directions would yield scores increasing the range of occupations considered and the level of interest expressed, called into question the validity of interest inventory results for women. Different item types are used in the Kuder. It was hypothesized that changing directions would not change the results. For the women in this study, experimental directions at the time of test administration did not affect the level or, in general, the diversity of occupational choices. The validity of the Kuder is not compromised with experimental directions designed to reduce home-career conflict in women's occupational choices.