Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/335145 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Population Economics [ISSN:] 1432-1475 [Volume:] 38 [Issue:] 4 [Article No.:] 80 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2025
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Despite numerous measures intended to enhance gender equality, gender-specific study and career choices remain a persistent concern for policymakers and academics globally. We contribute to the literature on gendered career choices by focusing on explicitly stated parental preferences for their children’s occupations, using a large-scale randomized survey experiment with 5940 adults in Switzerland. Adolescents consistently name their parents as the most influential factor in career decisions, motivating the focus on parents (and hypothetical parents). In the experiment, respondents are presented with a realistic choice scenario in which they must advise on two proposed apprenticeships for their hypothetical daughter or son. The experiment randomly selects the occupations from 105 pairs, without disclosing their gender distribution. Results show that adults are gender neutral when advising a daughter but have a pronounced preference for male-dominated occupations when advising sons. The latter are found across all ages of adults and for parents and non-parents.
Subjects: 
Gender
Occupational choice
Career advice
Vocational education
JEL: 
J24
J16
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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