Gendered university major choice: the role of intergenerational transmission

Abstract

In this paper, I study the role of gender-typical parental occupation for young adults’ gender-typical university major choice using data on a recent cohort of university students in Germany. Results show significant intergenerational associations between the gender typicality in parental occupation and young adults’ majors. As to why these effects occur, findings suggest that the transfer of occupation-specific resources from parents to their children plays an important role and that a transmission of gender roles explains at least some of the father-son associations. The paper contributes to existing literature by introducing a novel measure that operationalises the extent to which majors and occupations are ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’ and by studying different transmission channels.

Born to care (or not): How gender role attitudes affect occupational sorting

“…Our findings are consistent with Zafar (2013) who suggests that gender differences in college majors are not due to differences in academic ability (or background) but instead due to gender differences in preferences and tastes (or perceived constraints) formed well before college. They are also consistent with the findings of Philipp (2022) that certain fields of study are considered "typically male" or "typically female." Our results suggest that exposure to traditional gender role attitudes affects whether someone enters a care occupation through the choice of major/field of study (and not through the choice of the type of postsecondary education).…”

Analysis of factors influencing women's participation in engineering education: An improved fuzzy DEMATEL approach

“…In terms of family factors, parental occupation (X 21 ) plays a key role in influencing WPEE. Consistent with recent research findings, parental occupation significantly affects daughters' major choices [2,24]. There may be two intergenerational transmission channels for this influence: one is the direct transmission of professional/major-related resources from parents to their offspring, and the other is through the transmission of gender roles or norms, which then influence gendered major choices, such as engineering [2,24].…”