Polavieja, Javier and Platt, Lucinda 
ORCID: 0000-0002-8251-6400
(2010)
Girls like pink: explaining sex-typed occupational aspirations among young children.
IAE working paper (844.10).
Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (IAE), Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract
There is a high degree of sex-typing in young children's occupational aspirations and this has consequences for subsequent occupational segregation. Sociologists typically attribute early sex- differences in occupational preferences to gender socialization. Yet we still know surprisingly little about the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of sex-typical preferences and there is considerable theoretical controversy regarding the role of individual agency in the process of preference formation. This study analyzes the determinants of sex-typed occupational aspirations amongst British children aged between 11 and 15. We specify different mechanisms involved in the transmission of sex-typical preferences and propose an innovative definition of individual agency that is anchored in observable psychological traits linked to self-direction. This allows us to perform a simultaneous test of socialization and agency predictors of occupational sex-typing. We find that parental influences on occupational preferences operate mainly through three distinctive channels: 1) the effect that parental socio-economic resources have on the scope of children's occupational aspirations, 2) children's direct imitation of parental occupations, and 3) children's learning of sex- typed roles via the observation of parental behavior. We also find a strong net effect of children's own psychological predispositions -self-esteem in particular- on the incidence of sex-typical occupational preferences. Yet large differences in the occupational aspirations of girls and boys remain unexplained.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.iae.csic.es/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2010 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Social Policy |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Feb 2014 10:18 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 20:17 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/55584 |
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