Partnership penalties for working in gender-atypical occupations?
- Does working in a gender-atypical occupation reduce individuals’ likelihood of finding a different-sex romantic partner, and do such occupational partnership penalties contribute to occupational gender segregation? To answer this question, we theorized partnership penalties for working in gender-atypical occupations by drawing on insights from evolutionary psychology, social constructivism, and rational choice theory and exploited the stability of occupational pathways in Germany. In Study 1, we analyzed observational data from a national probability sample (N= 1,634,944) to assess whether individuals in gender-atypical occupations were less likely to be partnered than individuals who worked in gender typical occupations. To assess whether the observed partnership gaps found in Study 1 were causally related to the gender typicality of men’s and women’s occupations, we conducted a field experiment on a dating app (N = 6,778). Because the findings from Study 2 suggested that young women and men indeed experienced penalties for workingDoes working in a gender-atypical occupation reduce individuals’ likelihood of finding a different-sex romantic partner, and do such occupational partnership penalties contribute to occupational gender segregation? To answer this question, we theorized partnership penalties for working in gender-atypical occupations by drawing on insights from evolutionary psychology, social constructivism, and rational choice theory and exploited the stability of occupational pathways in Germany. In Study 1, we analyzed observational data from a national probability sample (N= 1,634,944) to assess whether individuals in gender-atypical occupations were less likely to be partnered than individuals who worked in gender typical occupations. To assess whether the observed partnership gaps found in Study 1 were causally related to the gender typicality of men’s and women’s occupations, we conducted a field experiment on a dating app (N = 6,778). Because the findings from Study 2 suggested that young women and men indeed experienced penalties for working in a gender-atypical occupation (at least when they were not highly attractive), we employed a choice-experimental design in Study 3 (N = 1,250) to assess whether women and men were aware of occupational partnership penalties and showed that anticipating occupational partnership penalties may keep young and highly educated women from working in gender-atypical occupations. Our main conclusion therefore is that that observed penalties and their anticipation seem to be driven by unconscious rather than conscious processes.…
Author details: | Lena HippORCiDGND, Sandra Leumann, Pia S. SchoberORCiDGND |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ydurp |
Subtitle (German): | observational and experimental evidence from Germany |
Publication type: | Preprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2024/01/31 |
Publication year: | 2024 |
Release date: | 2024/05/07 |
Tag: | dating; experiment; gender; marriage; mating; observational data; occupational gender segregation; partnership; stereotypes |
Number of pages: | 35 |
Source: | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ydurp |
Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Sozialwissenschaften / Fachgruppe Soziologie |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Green Open-Access |
License (German): | CC BY-ND - Namensnennung, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |