1.1  General description on research question

Occupational aspirations in terms of desired career goals, or job wishes (Rojewski, 2005) are considered to be one of the most powerful drivers of occupational attainment in adulthood (Mau & Bikos, 2000). In this regard, a plenty of studies have consistently shown that girls tend to desire occupations with higher prestige levels compared to boys (e.g. Ashby & Schoon, 2010; Howard et al., 2011; Perry, Przybysz, & AI-Sheikh, 2009), albeit they often end up with lower occupational status, career advancement, and financial reward than men (Gutman & Ackerman, 2008). Given this paradox, it is a crucial question, why woman do strive for highly prestigious jobs. 

However, previous studies on gender differences in occupational aspirations suffer from a number of limitations. First, most of the previous studies involve small and restricted samples, and they are mostly conducted in the United States. Therefore, whether or not and to what extent, the previous findings are generalizable to populations outside of the United States still remains unanswered. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no previous studies have answered the question why girls tend to aspire for occupations with higher prestige levels compared to boys.

1.2  Objectives

The aim of our study is to enhance previous research on gender differences in occupational aspirations in a twofold manner: First, we investigate whether girls desire for occupations with higher prestige levels than boys using representative large-scale data of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Secondly, we investigate the social mechanisms which explain gender differences in occupational aspirations. Our study is among the first which investigate the reasons why gender differences in the levels of occupational aspirations exist.

1.3  Theoretical framework

Why do girls tend to aspire for occupations with higher prestige levels compared to boys? One possible explanation may be attributed to gender differences in teachers’ assessments on students’ academic achievements. According to the Social Cognitive Career Theory(Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), adolescents’ career choices and attainment are influenced by their self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals that are shaped by their academic achievements evaluated by teachers. Previous research has consistently shown that teachers seem to perceive school attitudes, behaviors, and achievements of female students more positively than they do for male students (e.g. Spilt, Koomen, & Jak, 2012; Krkovis et al., 2014; Younger & Warrington, 2006). Therefore, we expect that teachers’ positive evaluations encourage and motivate girls to develop more ambitious occupational goals compared to boys.

In addition, girls’ comparatively higher occupational aspirations may be explained by gender differences in occupational interests. Holland’s Theory of Career Choice (Holland, 1997) states that occupational interests generally play a crucial role in shaping career choices as individuals tend to self-select themselves into environments in which they can reinforce their interests. Previous research has shown that occupational interests are strongly shaped by gender (Armstrong, Su, & Rounds, 2011; Bubany & Hansen, 2011), with females showing higher interests in social and artistic activities, while males showing higher interests in scientific, technical, and mechanical activities (Su, Rounds & Armstrong 2009). These gender differences in occupational interests may be embedded in the gender differences in the social prestige levels of occupational aspirations. More specifically, occupations which heavily rely on mechanical skills tend to fall at the low prestige levels of occupations (e.g., automobile mechanic or carpenters). In contrast, occupations which do not heavily rely on mechanical skills can be largely represented in the middle and upper-middle range of prestige levels (e.g., teachers, nurses, and social workers).

We conduct our analyses by using large-scale cross-sectional data on the starting cohort 4 ‘School and vocational training—educational pathways of students in 9th grade and higher’ from the National Educational Panel Study, NEPS from wave 2, 2011 (Blossfeld et al. 2011). The study comprises a representative sample of 15,110 students in 540 schools and provides in-depth information on students’ occupational orientations, including their occupational aspirations and interests, and relevant information on students’ educational achievements. Furthermore, the data contain a plenty of useful control variables. Occupational aspirations were surveyed by the question: ‘Imagine you had all opportunities to become what you want. What would be your ideal occupation’? In order to map the social prestige level associated with the respective occupation mentioned by the students, we made use of the latest International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status, ISEI (Ganzeboom et al. 1992). Occupational interests are measured based on Holland’s (1997) established RIASEC model, which distinguishes six interest types: realistic (R), investigative (I), artistic (A), social (S), enterprising (E), and conventional (C). In order to analyze the social mechanisms underlying gender differences in occupational analyses, we apply mediation analyses in Mplus and compute the direct and indirect effects of gender on occupational aspirations via (1) the assessment of students’ abilities by teachers and (2) the six types of occupational interests. In all models we control for the type of school, parental cultural capital and socio-economic status, the percentage of women in the aspired occupation as well as literacy, numeracy and fluid intelligence. Especially controlling for students’ actual competencies is essential to identify the mediating role of the assessment of students’ abilities by teachers in explaining gender differences in occupational aspirations. We use Full Information Maximum Likelihood Estimation to handle missing values in relevant variables and estimate the standard errors via bootstrap, while also taking into account the clustering of observations within schools.

In line with established research, our results show that the total gender differences in occupational aspirations are considerable, with girls having approximately 5 points higher occupational aspirations on the ISEI scale (the observed values of ISEI range from 12 to 89). In addition, our study enhances the knowledge on gender differences in occupational aspirations, in that 60 percent of the aspiration gap can be attributed to the mediating variables analyzed in our study. However, the explanatory power of the mediating variables differs to a great extent. With 9 percent of the total indirect association between gender and occupational aspirations, teachers’ assessment of students’ abilities plays a minor, however, not negligible role for explaining gender differences in occupational aspirations. While controlling for students’ competencies and fluid intelligence, girls receive better grades, which are positively associated with occupational aspirations. This finding speaks in favor with our assumption that teachers’ encourage or foster girls to aim for high prestigious jobs. Much more important for the explanation of the gender aspiration gap are occupational interests, in particular realistic occupational interests, which account for 69 percent of the total indirect effects of gender on occupational aspirations. In general, realistic interests are negatively associated with occupational aspirations as they relate to mechanical activities: setting up or putting things together, building something according to a plan or sketch and working with metal/wood or making something out of metal/wood. Girls may prefer for occupations with higher prestige levels than boys because girls are less interested than boys in occupations which require more stereotypical “blue collar” activities that are often represented at the low prestige levels of occupations.

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