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Cited by 12Career Development and DiversityIntergenerational and Educational Inequality StudiesLabour Market and Migration

Do women's empowerment and self-expression values change adolescents' gendered occupational expectations? Longitudinal evidence against the gender-equality paradox from 26 European countries

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Erdmann, Melinda, Marques Hill, Agustina, Helbig, Marcel, Leuze, Kathrin·2023·Frontiers in Sociology
DOI 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1175651PMC PMC10288873
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Abstract

Despite the increases in women's educational attainment in recent decades, female labor market participation and labor market returns are still lower than those of their male counterparts. Among the main factors explaining this persistence of economic inequality is the persistently gendered nature of occupational expectations, which results in gender segregation of labor. In this paper, we describe how gender-specific adolescents' occupational expectations change over time (2006–2018) and how women's empowerment and cultural norms might influence gender-specific occupational expectations. Against the backdrop of the research on the gender-equality paradox and from a comparative perspective, we focus on national and institutional characteristics to investigate how individual and national factors explain gendered occupational expectations. We answer our research questions by applying a two-step multilevel model with fixed effects. For this, we used PISA data and merged them with state-level information from 26 European countries. We add to existing research by making three contributions. First, we describe the changes in occupational expectations over time within European countries by looking at the gender composition of the desired occupation and distinguishing three categories (gender-typical, gender-balanced, and gender-atypical). Second, we investigate the relationship between national characteristics and the evolution of gendered occupational expectations separately by gender to reveal gender-specific mechanisms. Third, by using data from two-time points, we explore which national-level changes lead to changes in students' occupational expectations. Our first descriptive results show that the patterns of how students' occupational expectations change over time differ remarkably between countries. In 2018 in some countries, students' occupational expectations became more segregated while in others the number of students with gender-balanced or gender-atypical expectations increased. Our fixed effects models show that women's empowerment and self-expression value explained variance over time. For example, women's empowerment measured via an increase in women's employment and participation in parliament led to less gender-typical occupational expectations among girls and boys. Similarly, a rise in self-expression values led to less gender-typical occupational expectations, again for both boys and girls. Remarkably, our results do not verify the gender-equality paradox for occupational expectations, as is the case in previous cross-sectional analyses.

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  • There is little evidence that gender differences increase as a result of increasing gender equality over time.

    “However, there is little such evidence. The few longitudinal GEP preference studies that have examined gender differences (in values, as in ref. 32, and occupational expectations) as a function of gender equality have not found the paradox (and rather point to decreased differences with time) 33, 34”

    From Simpson’s gender-equality paradox (2025) · cites this paper as [34]

  • This further supports other research that has found GEP results to replicate poorly across time, and within countries.

    “This further supports other research that has found GEP results to replicate poorly across time (33, 34), and within countries (52).”

    From Simpson’s gender-equality paradox (2025) · cites this paper as [34]

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2 of the 88 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Rubery J. (2019). A gender lens on the future of work. J. Int. Aff. 72, 91– 106. 10.2307/26588345 · DOI

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Authors
Erdmann, M., Marques Hill, A., Helbig, M., & Leuze, K.
Affiliations
  • WZB Berlin Social Science Center (DE)
  • Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
Corresponding author
Erdmann, Melinda
ORCID
Venue
Frontiers in Sociology
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Published
2023-06-09
Volume
8
Pages
1175651-1175651
ISSN
2297-7775 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3389/fsoc.2023.1175651
PMC
PMC10288873
OpenAlex
W4380083158
Cited by
12
References
88
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2
FWCI
3.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Frontiers in Sociology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Common Library Network (Der Gemeinsame Bibliotheksverbund) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Social Science Open Access Repository (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
  • Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Career Development and Diversity
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Labour Market and Migration
Keywords
gender-equality paradox, women's empowerment, self-expression values, female labor market participation, women's political representation, cultural norms, adolescents, PISA

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