Gendered Pathways Through Postsecondary Education and Into Work

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

Why do women’s dramatic gains in educational attainment not translate into equivalent labor market standing? This session takes up that puzzle through five papers examining how gender shapes postsecondary trajectories and school-to-work transitions across national contexts. With settings spanning the United States, Germany, and China, the papers draw on longitudinal surveys, administrative records, and qualitative interviews to examine STEM participation, educational and occupational alignment, gender-typed behavior, and experiential learning. Some papers foreground cultural mechanisms; others emphasize structural and institutional forces. Together, they challenge essentialist accounts of gendered educational choices and demonstrate that inequality in postsecondary transitions is reproduced—and potentially disrupted—through the timing of mechanisms, the conversion of capital, and the organizational structures students navigate on their way to work.

Sub Unit

• Sociology of Education Section / Sociology of Education Section Open Call Paper Session

Presider

• Karin Yndestad, Northwestern University

Individual Presentations

• Aligned Expectations in an Era of Uneven Change - Abby Young, West Virginia University; Ann M. Beutel, University of Oklahoma

• Gendered Channels of Capital: The Divergent Role of Cultural and Economic Capital in Undergraduates’ Major Choice - Jingjing Wang, Nanjing University

• Gendered Entry, Convergent Exit: Labor-Market Signals and Women’s and Men’s STEM Trajectories - Mingming Li, University of Innsbruck; Wilfred Uunk

• Gender Typicality, College Major, and Postsecondary Educational Attainment - Garrett McArthur Ruley, Princeton University; Jennifer L. Jennings, Princeton University

• Microcosms of the Labor Market: How Universities Sort Students into Specialized vs. Exploratory Co-ops - Faith Ann Couts, University of California-Irvine; Enrique Eduardo Valencia-Lopez; Danielle Shariff; Richard Arum, University of California-Irvine

Discussant

• Adrienne Denise Dixson, Pennsylvania State University

Session Organizers

• Fithawee Tzeggai, University of Kansas

• Susan A. Dumais, CUNY-Lehman College