What Works for Women Does Not Work for Men: A Large Field Experiment on Countering Gendered Occupational Choices

Patricia Palffy, Patrick Lehnert and Uschi Backes-Gellner

No 207, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: To foster gender equality and diversity in the workplace, firms and policymakers strive to attract women and men to gender-atypical occupations. However, particularly for men, such attempts have been of limited success. We theorize (a) that identity threat-related barriers hinder gender-atypical occupational choices, (b) that these barriers differ for women and men, and (c) that therefore the success of recruitment strategies aimed at encouraging gender-atypical occupational choices differs for women and men. We conduct a large-scale field experiment on a widely used online job board with young women and men choosing their occupations when applying for their first job. We find that, for women, a low-cost recruitment intervention countering occupational stereotypes in typically male jobs substantially increases their applications for those jobs. However, for men, an equivalent intervention countering occupational stereotypes in typically female jobs does not increase their applications for those jobs. Thus strategies that work for women do not necessarily work for men. Supplementary survey evidence supports our theoretical expectation that women and men face differences in identity threat-related barriers to entering gender-atypical occuptions. Our research has significance for the management field because reducing occupational gender segregation remains an important challenge for firms and societies.

Keywords: occupational choice; gender typicality; occupational gender segregation; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J16 J24 M59 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0207

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