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Does Rosie like riveting? Male and female occupational choices

Author

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  • Lordan, Grace
  • Pischke, Jorn-Steffen
Abstract
Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large, while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps seem to have weakened over time. We explore the possibility that women and men have different tastes for the content of the work that they do. We relate job satisfaction and job mobility to measures that proxy for the content of the work in an occupation, which we label ‘people’, ‘brains’ and ‘brawn’. The results suggest that women value jobs high on ‘people’ content and low on ‘brawn’. Men care about job content in a similar fashion, but have much weaker preferences. High school students show similar preferences in a discrete choice experiment and indicate that they make their choices based mainly on preferences for the work itself. We argue that the more pronounced preferences of women can account for occupational sorting, which often leads them into careers with large pay penalties for interruptions due to childbearing.

Suggested Citation

  • Lordan, Grace & Pischke, Jorn-Steffen, 2022. "Does Rosie like riveting? Male and female occupational choices," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111928, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:111928
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/111928/
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

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