Gendered Study Choice and Prestige of Professions: France in the Long 20th Century

School choice factors play a different role according to gender. According to the literature, women have “adaptative exceptations” whereas men have so called “static exceptations”. Men and women adopt also different attitudes to expected payoffs, to risk or towards their level of aspiration. Finally, women generally associate their career plans with their life plans, which influences their choice of studies. But, what about social prestige, i.e. does the prestige of profession play an identical role in the demand for education among men and women? More specifically and over the long term, is the phenomenon of substitutability between prestigious career paths equally true for men and women? Finally, does the medical sphere regulate the male and female education systems equally? The ambition of this contribution is to contribute to the discussion using an unpublished historical dataset for France in the long 20th century.