The Strength of Gender Norms and Gender-Stereotypical Occupational Aspirations among Adolescents

Andreas Kuhn () and Stefan Wolter
Additional contact information
Andreas Kuhn: Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training

No 12861, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We empirically test the hypothesis that adolescents' occupational aspirations are more gender-stereotypical if they live in regions where the societal norm towards gender equality is weaker. For our analysis, we combine rich survey data describing a sample of 1,434 Swiss adolescents in 8th grade with municipal voting results dealing with gender equality and policy. We find that occupational aspirations are strongly gender-segregated and that adolescents living in municipalities with a stronger norm towards gender equality are significantly less likely to aspire for a gender-stereotypical occupation, even after controlling for individual-level controls. At the same time, gender norms have virtually no power in explaining the gender stereotypicity of individual occupational aspirations - challenging the widespread conception that societal gender norms are one of the most important determinants of occupational gender segregation. Moreover, a more detailed analysis shows that the association may mainly reflect the intergenerational transmission of occupations from parents to their children and/or regional differences in the prevailing occupational structure.

Keywords: occupational choice; occupational segregation; gender norms; preferences; intergenerational transmission; regional occupational structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hme and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - revised version published in: Kyklos, 2023, 76 (1), 101-124

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12861.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The strength of gender norms and gender‐stereotypical occupational aspirations among adolescents (2023)
Working Paper: The Strength of Gender Norms and Gender-Stereotypical Occupational Aspirations Among Adolescents (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12861

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().