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This is a phenomenon that has existed for twenty years. For fear of less earning a living or losing their social status, men are likely to turn away from a profession as soon as it becomes predominantly exercised by women. A trend that Swiss researchers examine in a recent study.
Even in 2023, professions remain strongly gendered. The idea that there are “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs”, for example, remains very widespread: 64% of men and 51% of women think that “jobs have a gender”, according to a survey published in 2020 by the group Oui Care. Even if many professions have tended to become more feminized in recent years within our Western societies (as is the case with doctors or wine-growing professions), parity is still far from being achieved and there are strong disparities between certain professional body.
According a report from the Youth Information and Documentation Center (CIDJ), only 17% of professions in France are mixed. In other words, barely a quarter of all the professions exercised in our country are occupied by an equal number of men and women. The best-known example of this imbalance is undoubtedly that of personal assistance service professions, which are mainly exercised by women (caregivers, nurses, carers, etc.). Conversely, trades associated with the construction or IT sector are still over-represented by men.
But another phenomenon could further complicate the task: men tend to leave a professional sector when it becomes predominantly represented by women, highlighted in a recent study carried out by researchers from the University of Zurich. Carried out in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2008, this research finds that when the share of women in a profession increases by 10%, it also reduces the probability for men to stay there by around 12%.
Fear of less earning a living or losing their social status
This resistance to diversity, which the authors of the work associate with “professional sexual segregation”, is partly explained by unconscious biases in gendered representations. For example, the fact of thinking that physical strength represents the number one asset for working in the construction industry (and would therefore be more suitable for men) or that women are “made” for personal assistance professions because “more empathetic” than men.
But this is not the only factor. The study explains that men are likely to leave their profession if it becomes more feminized, for fear of seeing their income and/or the social prestige associated with their profession diminish. “In anticipation of a drop in salary and status, or for fear of being already underpaid, they move away from these professions”, explain the authors of the work.
“This study shows that segregation is essentially produced by individuals’ active tendencies not to work in mixed occupations, regardless of job content. Thus, gender differences in labor market positions are not not purely a reflection of individual interests in the types of professional tasks”conclude the researchers.