How Occupations Become Gendered:
Social Learning and the Long-Run Evolution of Women's Work
[Job Market Paper]
Draft Coming Soon
Abstract:
This paper studies how social learning about non-wage amenities shapes occupational gender segregation. I develop an equilibrium model of occupational choice in which women are imperfectly informed about occupational amenities and learn from their own work experience and that of earlier cohorts. Temporary shocks to the demand for women’s labor induce entry into new occupations. Entrants who discover favorable amenities and remain employed transmit information to subsequent cohorts, allowing occupations to continue to feminize. I test the implications of the model using variation in exposure to the World War II draft across local occupations. Occupation-by-county cells that lost more men to the draft had greater employment of women concentrated in occupations with higher female-valued amenities, including low physical demands and greater schedule flexibility. Consistent with the role of social learning, women too young to respond directly to wartime labor demand sorted into occupations with greater female-valued amenities in which their older sisters and female neighbors remained employed. Model simulations show that absent temporary shocks that induce women’s entry into untested occupations, occupational gendering would proceed more slowly as beliefs take longer to converge to true values of non-wage amenities.
Revise & Resubmit (Second Round),
American Economic Review
[Draft]
Abstract:
Workplace technological changes were instrumental in creating new
tasks for women over the last century. This paper studies the
adoption of the typewriter into US workplaces. Exploiting exogenous
variation in typist demand across sectors, I document that the
typewriter increased women’s labor force participation, leading to
lower rates of marriage and fertility. These developments stemmed
from a transition of White women from households into office work
and an indirect crowding-in effect drawing Black women into domestic
services. Acting as a “meeting technology,” the typewriter reshaped
social interactions, enabling White women to marry above their
socioeconomic backgrounds and achieve upward mobility.
Presentations:
NBER Development of the American Economy SI (2025),
Opportunity Insights Conference (2025),
Paris School of Economics Economic History Seminar,
Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics Gender Conference (2024),
EHA Annual Conference (2024),
Cliometric Conference (2024),
Chicago Federal Reserve,
Harvard Graduate Economic History Workshop,
Yale Graduate Economic History Workshop,
Stanford Graduate Economic History Workshop
Featured in:
Marginal Revolution,
The Argument Podcast,
National Affairs
with
Katherine Eriksson,
Gregory Niemesh,
and Jacqueline Craig
[Draft]
[NBER Working Paper]
[CEPR Working Paper]
Abstract:
We document that women’s economic mobility improved nearly a
century before married women gained broad labor market opportunities.
Using Massachusetts marriage registers linked to U.S. censuses
(1850–1920), we create new father–child links for women to estimate
intergenerational mobility and assortative mating, overcoming a key
historical linkage barrier. Estimates from a structural marriage
market model suggest assortative mating fell 61% from 1850–1870 to
1900–1920. Counterfactuals imply women’s mobility would have been far
lower absent the decline in assortative mating. Had late cohorts
faced early cohort sorting, the rank–rank slope between a woman’s
father and husband would have been 2.5 times higher.