Are parents an obstacle to gender-atypical occupational choices?
通过一项对5940名瑞士成年人的随机调查实验，研究父母对子女职业的偏好是否阻碍了性别非典型职业选择，发现成人在建议女儿时性别中立，但建议儿子时明显偏好男性主导职业。
Abstract Despite numerous measures intended to enhance gender equality, gender-specific study and career choices remain a persistent concern for policymakers and academics globally. We contribute to the literature on gendered career choices by focusing on explicitly stated parental preferences for their children’s occupations, using a large-scale randomized survey experiment with 5940 adults in Switzerland. Adolescents consistently name their parents as the most influential factor in career decisions, motivating the focus on parents (and hypothetical parents). In the experiment, respondents are presented with a realistic choice scenario in which they must advise on two proposed apprenticeships for their hypothetical daughter or son. The experiment randomly selects the occupations from 105 pairs, without disclosing their gender distribution. Results show that adults are gender neutral when advising a daughter but have a pronounced preference for male-dominated occupations when advising sons. The latter are found across all ages of adults and for parents and non-parents.