The Gendered Edge of Job Appraisals: Gender Typicality, Sexual Identity, and Occupational Gender Compositions

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8. Gendered Work Trajectories and Labor Market Inequality

Abstract

This article examines job context in the gendered production of perceived job quality. Though numerous studies highlight sources of stigma in the job context, the integrated role of embodiment and occupational context is less understood. We test the extent to which (non)normative identities shape job appraisals according to occupational context. We elaborate on the association between gender, sexuality, and job appraisals by linking a gradational measure of gender in Wave 5 of Add Health to occupational composition data from the American Community Survey.

Gender typicality was associated with greater autonomy and satisfaction for women, but these associations were modified by the percentage of men and women in a respondent’s occupation. In fact, in female-dominant occupations, gender typicality was associated with higher autonomy for men while atypicality was associated with lower satisfaction for women. By linking social identities and occupation context, we illustrate how to combine concepts from embodied research and job context for greater analytical leverage in the study of gender inequality.

Authors

• Jaime Hsu, University of Texas-Austin

• Jesse Shircliff, Utah State University