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When does gender matter? Gender segregation in the professions of medicine, teaching and law [electronic resource]

In this dissertation, I investigate when and why gender segregation occurs in the professions of medicine, law and teaching. Drawing on social psychological perspectives on gender and theories on career development, I posit that segregation patterns differ across these three occupational contexts due to differences in gender valence of jobs and structures of career process. Specifically, I argue that early career choices are more gender-segregated in the highly gendered context of medicine and teaching, while the extent of gender segregation may vary (and increase) more substantially over time in the less structured contexts of teaching and law. Using data from professional organizations and government sources, I analyzed careers of a cohort of doctors, lawyers and teachers from their entry into their professions in 1991-1994 to 10-17 years after entry. Consistent with my hypotheses, doctors and teachers displayed highly gender-different aspirations than lawyers, and whereas the level of gender segregation remained fairly constant for doctors, it fluctuated somewhat for teachers and increased substantially for lawyers, particularly after the first six years of work. Analysis of 39 in-depth interviews further suggests that job choices among doctors and teachers reflect deeply held gendered ideas about people and work, whereas job choices among lawyers are seen as series of adjustments to organizational contexts, adjustments that usually differ for women and men. In total, these findings make the case for a more detailed view of intra-occupational gender segregation, one that places gender processes within the occupational context. In proposing a context-driven paradigm for studying gender inequality, this study brings the occupation to the center of the investigation, and argues for a more expansive view of gender segregation that takes into account the meanings and structures that delineate career decision-making and the constraints on the process.