Title: Occupational Aspirations, Gender, and Educational Attainment
Abstract: Abstract While in the past women had lower educational attainment than men, women in recent years have caught up to and passed men in educational attainment. Lower occupational aspirations for women compared to men contributed to lower educational attainment in the past. In this article, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to consider whether occupational aspirations still act to lower educational attainment for women compared to men or whether occupational aspirations are currently an advantage for young women. We find that occupational aspirations are an advantage for women for high school graduation but not for college graduation. The authors contributed equally to this manuscript. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. Notes 1Lower occupational aspirations refers to aspirations for those types of occupations which rank lower in the occupational hierarchy due to less prestige and lower pay relative to other occupations. Historically, women have been disproportionately represented in the middle of the range of occupations (e.g., teaching, nursing, clerical) and disproportionately underrepresented at the highest levels (e.g., lawyers, doctors) and at the lowest levels (e.g., laborers). Female-dominated occupations pay less, offer lower prestige, less autonomy, and fewer opportunities for advancement (CitationMarini 1978; CitationReskin and Padavic 1994). 2NLSY79 is comprised of three independent probability samples. The samples represent the entire population of youth aged 14 to 21 as of December 31, 1978, residing in the United States on January 1, 1979 (CitationNLSY79 User's Guide 1999:17). The completion rate ranged from 72 to 90% for the three samples (CitationNLSY79 User's Guide 1999:21). 3Only 9.6 percent of the respondents were missing on occupational aspirations. We included a variable for missing on occupational aspirations in the regression analysis. 4It should be noted that there is some occupational heterogeneity in the professional/managerial group. However, these occupations are similar in that they require specialized training, if not a college degree. Preliminary analysis showed that the high school and college graduation rates were nearly the same for those with managerial aspirations as for those with professional aspirations. 5The descriptive statistics for all of the variables used in the analysis are shown in the Appendices. Note: Percentages are weighted. Note: Percentages are weighted. *significantly different from zero at .05 level
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-08-31
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 37
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