Speaker: Myera Rashid
Title: How Occupations Become Gendered: Social Learning and the Long-Run Evolution of Women's Work
Abstract: This paper studies how social learning about non-wage amenities shapes occupational gender segregation. I develop an equilibrium model of occupational choice in which women are imperfectly informed about occupational amenities and learn from their own work experience and that of earlier cohorts. Temporary shocks to the demand for women’s labor induce entry into new occupations. Entrants who discover favorable amenities and remain employed transmit information to subsequent cohorts, allowing occupations to continue to feminize. I test the implications of the model using variation in exposure to the World War II draft across local occupations in the US. Occupation-by-county cells that lost more men to the draft had greater employment of women concentrated in occupations with higher female-valued amenities, including low physical demands and greater schedule flexibility. Consistent with the role of social learning, women too young to respond directly to wartime labor demand sorted into occupations with greater female-valued amenities in which their older sisters and female neighbors remained employed. Model simulations show that, absent temporary shocks that induce women’s entry into untested occupations, occupational gendering would proceed more slowly as beliefs take longer to converge to true values of non-wage amenities.
Maggie Hendrix
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