Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender Segregation and Integration in Select Professions

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SES-1002613David B. GruskyManwai C. KuStanford UniversityDespite women's advances in the labor market in the U.S., studies continue to find gender segregation within occupations, even in professions that have become more gender-balanced in their workforce compositions. While similar explanations have been proposed to understand within-occupation gender segregation, few have assessed which of these explanations best explains gender segregation, and whether the predominant explanation varies from one occupational context to another. This dissertation research compares gender segregation across the contexts of medicine, law and teaching, and asks: 1) What do gender differences emerge in the careers of doctors, lawyers and teachers? And 2) Does 'when gender matters' differ across these three cases? Quantitative analysis of synthesized career history data, already completed, reveals that gender segregation emerges at different points in the career process across these three occupational groups - suggesting that the forces that drive gender segregation are occupation-specific. To identify the particular mechanisms, this project undertakes qualitative analysis of sixty interviews with current students and practitioners in the three professions. This project aims to extract the nuances in decision-making processes at different stages of the career, as well as differences in how gender figures into career decisions across the three occupational contexts. By moving the level of analysis to the occupational level, this study offers insights into the specificity of the mechanisms that drive gender differences, and encourages researchers to consider the occupational factors that may foster and delineate the emergence of gender inequality. Broader ImpactsFindings from this study have implications for gender-based policies, as the identification of the emergence of gender segregation can direct and enhance efforts to promote gender equity and diversity. As the causes of gender segregation may differ by occupational context, efforts to raise women?s representation in male-dominated fields would benefit from observations about gender inequality within the specific occupation, more so than conjectures based on common explanations for gender imbalances. As public awareness of and demands for gender diversity increase, this research can contribute to a stronger understanding of the causes of gender inequality, as well as a stronger basis on which gender policies can be made.