Gender differences and similarities in work preferences: Results from a factorial survey experiment

Despite increased gender equality in many arenas in most of the Western world, women and men continue to choose different educational paths; this is one reason for the persistent gender segregation in the labour market. Cultural and economic explanations for occupational gender segregation both contend that gendered career choices reflect gendered preferences. By analysing data from a multifactorial survey experiment conducted in Norway, designed to isolate the preferences for occupations from preferences for job attributes with which occupation is often correlated: pay; type of position; and amount of work, this article examines whether and to what extent boys and girls who have not yet entered the labour market have different preferences for different work dimensions. The study shows some gender differences in occupational preferences, while also demonstrating similarities in boys’ and girls’ preferences for work dimensions, such as pay and working hours. This indicates that attributes tested by the experiment, which are typically associated with gendered occupations, cannot independently explain why boys and girls tend to have divergent occupational preferences. Importantly, however, the results suggest that boys’ reluctance to undertake some female-typed occupations might be reduced if they did not pay less than male-typed occupations requiring the same level of education.

Dressed for Work: The Sartorial Representations of Working Women in Early 21st-Century American Primetime Dramas

The present study is theoretically located in the field of critical feminist studies of the representation of women in the mass media. It discusses the ways in which working women characters construct and express their occupational identity in selected American primetime TV dramas of the early 21st century. The observed strategies, which range from highly restricted self-expression to unbridled sartorial liberty, appear to be heavily correlated with the prestige of the presented occupations and their levels of masculinization/feminization. Moreover, the self-limiting sartorial choices of high-achieving professional women, frequently containing their femininity, result from the competitive nature of prestigious yet traditionally male-gendered occupations. However, it is also pointed out that working women are generally depicted as determined to accentuate the physical aspects of their femininity regardless of the established dress code or traditional gendering of their occupations. Thus, the sartorial choices made by the female characters at the workplace serve in the analyzed TV shows as symbolic manifestations of women’s growing confidence as players on the job market in their own right.

The (Un)Managed Heart: Racial Contours of Emotion Work in Gendered Occupations

The concept of emotional labor has been very useful for elucidating how the expansion of a service economy perpetuated new forms of work that maintained gender divisions and inequalities. Research has been slower to catch up to the ways that emotional labor has racial implications as well, but recent studies are making important contributions and moving the literature in this direction. In this review, I consider how increasing racial diversity in the US population informs how emotion work is performed in the current economy. I also discuss how other macrostructural changes such as the rise of aesthetic labor, the gig economy, and the overwhelming growth of the service industry can reshape our understanding of the intersections between race and gender in emotional labor.

THERE IS NO DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN GIRLS AND BOYS!

This paper refers to a selected fragmant, which is about children’s gendered behaviours and children’s thoughts on gender issue, of an ethnographic study on children’s subjectivitation processes through digital technologies. For this whole study, philosophy for children approach was used as a technique to conduct focus group interviews with children in a periodical basis. The selected parts for this paper are based on three different sections of those interviews; first one is about children’s opinions on gender roles, referring to gendered occupations and plays for kids, the second one is also conducted to reveal the hidden discourses on gender in real society and virtual world which has been built on the existed world, and lastly adult-children hierarchical relations, was debated with children in order to connect this distinction to gender differences, will be mentioned.

Influences of Gender and Computer Gaming Experience in Occupational Desktop Virtual Environments

This study used a cross-case analysis methodology to compare four line-of-inquiry studies of Desktop Virtual Environments (DVEs) to examine the relationships of gender and computer gaming experience to learning performance and perceptions. Comparison was made of learning patterns in a general non-technical DVE with patterns in technically complex, occupationally-specific DVEs. Two oppositely-gendered occupations were sampled in the technical studies: surgical technology and policing. The cross-case analysis confirmed in the occupationally-specific DVEs the gender effect in favor of males on spatial learning that has been documented in previous research literature. It also supported a gaming experience effect in favor of more experienced gamers, but did not clearly demonstrate a relationship between gender and gaming experience. Several implications and recommendations are presented for practitioners and researchers in adult vocational, career, and technical education.