IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednsr/98021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Miss-Allocation: The Value of Workplace Gender Composition and Occupational Segregation

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Schuh

Abstract

I analyze the value workers ascribe to the gender composition of their workplace and the consequences of these valuations for occupational segregation, tipping, and welfare. To elicit these valuations, I survey 9,000 U.S. adults using a hypothetical job choice experiment. This reveals that on average women and men value gender diversity, but these average preferences mask substantial heterogeneity. Older female workers are more likely to value gender homophily. This suggests that gender norms and discrimination, which have declined over time, may help explain some women’s desire for homophily. Using these results, I estimate a structural model of occupation choice to assess the influence of gender composition preferences on gender sorting and welfare. I find that workers’ composition valuations are not large enough to create tipping points, but they do reduce female employment in male-dominated occupations substantially. Reducing segregation could improve welfare: making all occupations evenly gender balanced improves utility as much as a 0.4 percent wage increase for women and a 1 percent wage increase for men, on average.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Schuh, 2024. "Miss-Allocation: The Value of Workplace Gender Composition and Occupational Segregation," Staff Reports 1092, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:98021
    DOI: 10.59576/sr.1092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1092.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr1092.html
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.59576/sr.1092?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Judd B. Kessler & Corinne Low & Colin D. Sullivan, 2019. "Incentivized Resume Rating: Eliciting Employer Preferences without Deception," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3713-3744, November.
    2. Grace Lordan & Jörn‐Steffen Pischke, 2022. "Does Rosie Like Riveting? Male and Female Occupational Choices," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(353), pages 110-130, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kyle Greenberg & Melanie Wasserman & E. Anna Weber, 2024. "The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military," NBER Working Papers 33235, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ye Zhang, 2020. "Discrimination in the Venture Capital Industry: Evidence from Field Experiments," Papers 2010.16084, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    2. Carvajal, Daniel & Franco, Catalina & Isaksson, Siri, 2024. "Will Artificial Intelligence Get in the Way of Achieving Gender Equality?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 3/2024, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics, revised 20 Mar 2025.
    3. Nikolaos Theodoropoulos & John Forth & Alex Bryson, 2019. "Are Women Doing It For Themselves? Gender Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap," DoQSS Working Papers 19-07, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    4. Shulamit Kahn & Donna Ginther, 2017. "Women and STEM," NBER Working Papers 23525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. José-Ignacio Antón & Rafael Grande & Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo & Fernando Pinto, 2023. "Gender Gaps in Working Conditions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 53-83, February.
    6. Pham, Tho & Talavera, Oleksandr & Wu, Zhuangchen, 2023. "Labor markets during war time: Evidence from online job advertisements," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 1316-1333.
    7. Tsou, Meng-Wen & Yang, Chih-Hai, 2019. "Does gender structure affect firm productivity? Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 19-36.
    8. Tukiainen, Janne & Blesse, Sebastian & Bohne, Albrecht & Giuffrida, Leonardo M. & Jääskeläinen, Jan & Luukinen, Ari & Sieppi, Antti, 2024. "What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    9. Lordan, Grace & McGuire, Alistair, 2019. "Widening the High School Curriculum to Include Soft Skill Training: Impacts on Health, Behaviour, Emotional Wellbeing and Occupational Aspirations," IZA Discussion Papers 12439, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Bram Timmermans & Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2023. "(Gender) Tone at the top: the effects of gender board diversity on gender wage inequality in Europe," GRAPE Working Papers 89, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    11. Tomlin, Bryan, 2024. "Pronoun usage and gender identity's effects on market outcomes: Evidence from a preregistered field experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    12. Warn N. Lekfuangfu & Grace Lordan, 2023. "Documenting occupational sorting by gender in the UK across three cohorts: does a grand convergence rely on societal movements?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(5), pages 2215-2256, May.
    13. Yana Gallen & Melanie Wasserman, 2021. "Informed Choices: Gender Gaps in Career Advice," Working Papers 2021-025, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    14. Keller, Wolfgang & Molina, Teresa & Olney, William W., 2023. "The gender gap among top business executives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 270-286.
    15. Diego A. Martin, 2024. "Women Seeking Jobs with Limited Information: Evidence from Iraq," CID Working Papers 157a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    16. Gallen, Yana & Wasserman, Melanie, 2023. "Does information affect homophily?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    17. Funk, Patricia & Iriberri, Nagore & Savio, Giulia, 2024. "Does scarcity of female instructors create demand for diversity among students? Evidence from an M-Turk experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    18. Willén, Alexander & Willage, Barton & Riise, Julie, 2022. "Employment Protection and Child Development," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 19/2022, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    19. Cher Hsuehhsiang Li & Basit Zafar, 2020. "Ask and You Shall Receive? Gender Differences in Regrades in College," NBER Working Papers 26703, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Halla, Martin & Kah, Christopher & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2021. "Testing for Ethnic Discrimination in Outpatient Health Care: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Germany," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 319, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender; labor; occupational choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:fip:fednsr:98021. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    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.