Gender occupational segregation: the role of parents *

Abstract

We explore the role of parents in the choice of occupation of their children and the role of parents in gender occupational segregation. We construct an index of female-biased intensity of occupation and test whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the gender-biased intensity of occupations of parents and their children. We find there is a statistically significant correlation between fathers and their daughters: daughters of fathers who worked in more female – dominated occupations (with high female-biased intensity), are themselves more likely to work in more male-dominated occupations. Furthermore, we find such a correlation also between father’s and son’s index of female- biased intensity of their occupations, but this concerns only the youngest cohort, born after 1980s. There is no effect for mothers: even if mothers work in occupations with relatively high shares of women, this does not correlate with how intensively female-biased the occupations of their sons or daughters are. JEL codes: J16, J13, J24