Unpacking gender segregation within occupations : a study of job queues and social closure mechanisms in the medical profession
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- When women make inroads into men-dominated professions and occupations, how should we interpret these trends? While there has been an overall stall in the gender integration of occupations in the 21st century, the one exception is women's entrance into men-dominated managerial and professional roles. Substantial literature has focused on this significant demographic trend. However, considerably less literature has delved into understanding the gender-segregating process within occupations and between specialties and how these processes interact and intersect at both the occupational and specialty levels. The importance of filling this gap is underscored by the fact that within-occupational processes explain a significant proportion of wage inequality in the United States. This dissertation aims to fill this theoretical and empirical gap in the literature through a case study of the medical profession, which has been feminizing over the past four decades, with equal numbers of men and women now graduating from medical school. I argue that the same processes influencing gender segregation between occupations also affect gender segregation within occupations. Furthermore, I contend that supply side factors, specifically how workers rank specialties within an occupation (referred to as "the job queue"), play a crucial role in the gender-segregating process within an occupation and can be leveraged to increase women's representation in men-dominated specialties. My dissertation comprises three separate empirical studies. In the first study, I apply principles from community ecology literature to investigate how relative decreases in rewards, compared to the occupation as a whole, in a specialty significantly influence job queues within occupations, independent of absolute decreases in rewards in that specialty. In my second study, I identify and examine the defining features of social closure mechanisms that create opportunities for women to enter specialties within an occupation. Building on these findings, in my third study, I construct a typology of social closure mechanisms within an occupation. I empirically analyze how supply and demand side mechanisms mediate the relationship between the types of social closure mechanisms in an occupation and subsequent specialty choices. Together, these studies highlight that women and men rank specialty characteristics similarly, providing opportunities for social closure mechanisms within a specialty to be structured in ways that decrease gender segregation within occupations.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Baer-Bositis, Livia Rose |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Freese, Jeremy |
| Thesis advisor | Freese, Jeremy |
| Thesis advisor | Correll, Shelley Joyce |
| Thesis advisor | Pedulla, David S, 1982- |
| Degree committee member | Correll, Shelley Joyce |
| Degree committee member | Pedulla, David S, 1982- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Livia Baer-Bositis. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/kh885bt3724 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Livia Rose Baer-Bositis
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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