A Balancing Act: How Engagement in Paid and Unpaid Labor Influences Males’ and Females’ College Enrollment

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 17. Gender and College Experiences

Abstract

More females enroll in college than males and have been since around the late 1980s. The gender reversal in higher education has had many researchers testing a variety of factors that contribute to its persistence. In this study, we test how time spent on paid and unpaid labor throughout high school impacts college enrollment for males and females. Our findings confirm those from previous studies that paid labor has significant, negative effects for college enrollment. However, results presented in this paper highlight the importance of unpaid labor, a labor that has gendered meanings and is often overlooked in previous literature, for college enrollment and the differences of these effects for males and females. We find that while both forms of labor negatively impact enrolling in college, this effect is worse for males. Moreover, even though females take on more unpaid labor than males, unpaid labor has the largest, negative effect on males’ college enrollment. We conclude this paper by discussing the implications our results have for research exploring the gender gap in higher education. Ultimately, we argue that both forms of labor take away from time and attention male and female students allocate towards the pursuit of college; however, because of the gender expectations placed on females to engage in more unpaid, “feminine” labor, females learn to take on more work overall and not let such time constraints deter their enrollment in higher education.

Authors

• Heidi Obach, University of Connecticut

• Angran Li, University of Connecticut