Globally, women are more likely than men to work in care economy jobs, such as teachers, nurses, or social workers. However, a new study led by Katharina Block of the University of Amsterdam has found that the gender gap in care work is larger in economically developed countries.
For their study, Dr. Block and her co-authors from dozens of universities around the world conducted two experiments. First, in a sample of 70 countries, the authors found the share of women working in care economy fields varied from 43.6 percent to 90.3 percent, while the share working in STEM-related fields ranged from 3.5 percent to 35.7 percent. Countries with higher scores on the 2017 Human Development Index showed larger gaps in care jobs.
In their second experiment, the authors surveyed over 19,000 students from 125 universities in 49 countries about their values and career interests. Participants were asked to rate their personal importance of three values: communal, agentic, and competence. They were also asked to rate their interest in three care-economy jobs (social worker, teacher, and nurse) and three STEM jobs (mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and computer programmer). The authors also incorporated data on each country’s cultural individualism.
Even after accounting for a country’s level of economic development, the authors found that gender differences in interest in care-economy jobs were associated with gender differences in communal values and with national levels of individualism.
“It’s not the case that men and women in different countries just have different career interests in a vacuum,” Dr. Block told Yale Insights. “In cultures where we value individualism more, men specifically become less and less communal, and that translates into career interests. But there are cultures in which men are very socialized to take another person’s perspective, to show empathy, to cooperate with others, to be communal, and that also translates into their career preferences.”