Brown Bag Seminar: Historical roots of women’s occupational choices: the role of family ties

Abstract:

Women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In this paper, we explore the influence of gender roles and stereotypes transmitted down to children by their parents, teachers, or society at large in shaping the probability of women sorting in STEM occupations. Using a sub-population of second-generation immigrants from the European Social Survey (ESS), we find that intergenerationally transmitted cultural backgrounds related to stronger family ties that emphasize the importance of rules and social norms significantly reduce the probability of women sorting into STEM and high-skilled white collar occupations, as well as the likelihood of being in the labor force. The results are robust to a rich set of parental and geographical controls and several potential confounding factors at the country of origin level.