Gender Typing of Occupational Aspirations: Comparing Young Women with Turkish and without Migration Background

Author: Tobias Roth

Cooperation partners: Manuel Siegert, Irena Kogan

Project description:

Employed women of Turkish origin work often in low-skilled occupations - and in occupations in which women predominate. This is problematic as the salary in these occupations is often poor and opportunities for promotion are limited. Possible reasons for women of Turkish origin being employed more frequently than other women in female-dominated occupations include their preferences, their qualification-related opportunities on the training and labour market, discrimination and the influence of parents and friends in their choice of occupation. To date, there are no reliable empirical results that clearly support or refute any of the possibilities. Using the data from NEPS Starting Cohort 4, we are therefore investigating the career preferences of ninth-grade girls with a Turkish background and the extent to which they actually favour predominantly female-dominated occupations. At such an early stage, possible restrictions to which the young women may be exposed in the application process and later in the employment process still play a subordinate role, which means that they have not yet been able or have not yet had to adapt their career goals to these restrictions. Contrary to our expectations, we found that female ninth-graders with a Turkish background were significantly less likely to wish to enter a female-dominated profession than female ninth-graders without a migration background. Instead, they are significantly more likely to aspire to a mixed-gender occupation. This result can be explained by the high career aspirations of young women of Turkish origin: the status (ISEI) of gender-specific mixed occupations is higher on average than the status of female-dominated occupations. However, it can also be seen that although ninth-grade girls of Turkish origin comparatively rarely wish to work in a female-dominated occupation, they often anticipate this. Thus, the discrepancy between desire and (anticipated) reality is already manifested here.

Publications:

Siegert, Manuel, Tobias Roth und Irena Kogan (2023): "Gendered Occupational Aspirations: A Comparison of Young Native-Born and Turkish Minority Women." In Education, Competence Development and Career Trajectories: Analysing Data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), edited by Sabine Weinert, Gwendolin Blossfeld, and Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment, 403-423. Cham: Springer. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27007-9.