Gender-Atypical Occupations and Instability of Intimate Unions: Examining the Relationship and Mechanisms

Abstract

Although social scientists have long been interested in the effects of occupational gender composition on workers, previous research has rarely examined how working in a gender-atypical occupation affects people’s private lives. This study draws on 17 rounds of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to investigate how individuals in occupations with varying gender ratios differ in the stability of their intimate unions. The authors also consider various mechanisms that may explain the link between working in a gender-atypical occupation and union instability. Results from random-effects event-history models show that both men and women in gender-atypical occupations experience faster paces of union dissolution than their counterparts in gender-balanced or gender-typical occupations. Female-dominant occupations’ lower pay accounts for a modest portion of the effect of working in female-typed occupations on men’s union instability. By contrast, the more irregular work schedules of male-typed occupations explain a substantial part of why women in such occupations have lower union stability. The remaining associations between occupational gender composition and union instability, we suggest, reflect the tendency for men and women in gender-atypical occupations to undergo greater psychological strain, which in turn increases the difficulty of maintaining intimate relationships.