Gender Differences in First Jobs for Economists

Abstract

Over the last several decades women have made substantial progress into traditionally maledominated professions. Reflecting this trend, much recent research has focused on explaining the choice of profession and the gender composition of the workforce [5; 23; 16]. However, a focus on occupation choice may conceal interesting patterns within professions. Because a profession can include a number of different job types with a distinct mix of professional activities, the dual labor-market phenomenon of primary and secondary jobs may also be present, although perhaps to a lesser extent, within a particular profession [17]. Gender differences in composition of employment among the various jobs within a profession could thus affect the status, pay, and advancement of women in the occupation. If women primarily place in secondary-type jobs, the advantages of entering a profession will be lower for women. Relatively little is known about career choice within a profession [15]. In this paper, we model the first-job choice of economists among several careers, and use data on new Ph.D. economists over the last thirty years to examine whether career choices differ by gender over a period of low, but increasing, representation of women. An advantage of our single-profession analysis is that it contains a relatively homogeneous set of workers with quantitative human-capital measures that other studies of job choice suggest are important [7]. There is significant variation in career choices available within economics that permits possible market segmentation [2]: there are research and teaching academic jobs, and the government and private sectors employ large numbers of economists. We find significant structural differences in the placements of male and female economists, indicating that the choices of female economists differ from those of their male counterparts both within academia and between this and other sectors. The economics profession provides a useful background to examine gender differences in the career choices of professionals in a male-dominated occupation. Over the last 30 years the average number of Ph.D.s conferred annually in the U.S. has increased from approximately 300 to over 800, reflecting increased opportunities for economists within economics departments and expansion of other-academic, government, and private-sector jobs. At the same time, the proportion

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