IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/rleczz/s0147-91212024000052b027.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Times Have Changed: Tracking the Evolution of Gender Norms Over Time

In: Big Data Applications in Labor Economics, Part B

Author

Listed:
  • Andreas Kuhn

Abstract

This article shows how different data sources can be combined to learn about the evolution of gender norms over time. First, data on job advertisements from 1950 up to 2020 reveal that there was a significant change among Swiss employers' stated preferences regarding their prospective employees' gender. More specifically, the proportion of gender-neutral job posts increased from five to almost 95% within the observation period. To further corroborate and contextualize this finding, I complement it with time series on the relative frequency of several specific queries, such as equality between men and women, from Google's German language book corpus. These additional series are broadly consistent with the evolution of the share of gender-neutral job posts. However, it also appears that there are two distinct narratives, one concerned with the personal sphere, identity, and intimate relationships, the other with the political and public realm. Interestingly, the narrative on personal relations set off considerably earlier than the change in the proportion of gender-neutral job ads. Overall, the evidence from the different data series shows that gender norms have changed substantively, yet in a complex manner, over the past decades.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Kuhn, 2024. "The Times Have Changed: Tracking the Evolution of Gender Norms Over Time," Research in Labor Economics, in: Big Data Applications in Labor Economics, Part B, volume 52, pages 131-170, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:rleczz:s0147-91212024000052b027
    DOI: 10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0147-91212024000052B027?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:rleczz:s0147-91212024000052b027. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.