The relationship between cultural sentiments about gender and occupations and the gender composition of occupations

Abstract

Building on prior theories of gender segregation in the labor market, this thesis investigates the mutually reinforcing forces of gender segregation at the macro-level – specifically, cultural beliefs about gender and occupational identities and structural arrangement of employment. I hypothesized that changes in gender distributions within occupations would be predicted by the distance in cultural meanings between gender and occupational identities and that those distributional changes would, in turn result in future changes in cultural meanings about gender and/or occupations. My data were only sufficient to test the first part of that argument and did not support the hypotheses. The (dis)consonance between gender identity and occupational identities meaning does not predict changes in the gender distributions within occupations over time, even after controlling for the main effects of the identities meanings. With new wave of data collected underway, studies can test the hypothesized reciprocal relationship in the future.