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Title: Gender Inequality in the Labor Market: Trends and Mechanisms

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: Despite significant gains made over the last decades, women—and mothers in particular—are still disadvantaged in the labor market. For example, women are less likely to be employed in the most prestigious occupations, such as managerial and professional occupations (MPOs), especially those that have been historically dominated by men. Moreover, women are more likely than men to reduce their work hours or exit the labor market after the transition to parenthood. Consequently, women more often work in position with lower levels of autonomy, lower salaries, and less beneficial working conditions. In this dissertation, I examine social change in women’s participation in (male-dominated) MPOs and illuminate two prevalent factors that past research has identified as impacting women’s participation in those occupations: motherhood and overwork. In addition, I investigate the role of the male partner’s involvement in domestic work on women’s employment after the transition to parenthood among heterosexual couples. My findings suggest that women are more likely to work in historically male-dominated MPOs with each successive cohort, although participation rates for MPOs overall have been stalling among the youngest cohorts. The prevalence of motherhood does not differ between male-dominated MPOs, non-male iii dominated MPOs, and other types of occupations, but women working in historically maledominated MPOs are less likely to have more than one child. My findings further show that overwork is more prevalent in male-dominated MPOs throughout time and across all cohorts, and may be a barrier for having more than one child. Lastly, my results demonstrate that mothers who are most disadvantaged on the labor market benefit most from their partner’s involvement in child care in terms of their labor force participation. Taken together, my findings show a positive development in terms of women’s participation in the most prestigious occupations—i.e., historically male-dominated MPOs—but also suggest that gendered assumptions in the home and in the workplace still create barriers for women’s employment participation. Lastly, my results indicate that the prevalence and impact of those gendered norms varies by women’s labor market (dis)advantages.

Url: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/128145/2/Ingenfeld_Julia_202306_PhD_thesis.pdf

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Authors: Ingenfeld, Julia

Institution: University of Toronto

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Pages: 1-164

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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