Consensus and Dissensus in Social Evaluation of Occupations. Gender Differences

In this article, we study the presence of dissensus within occupational stratification scales, with particular reference to gender, a fundamental aspect in every research about inequality. Previous researches on this topic have stressed the relevance of gender-typed jobs, where the highest differences in the evaluations of respondents are found. Our findings basically confirm the relevance of sex-typed jobs, because men tend to give a higher evaluation to predominantly male jobs and, at the same time, women tend to do the same with predominantly female jobs. This result might be due to direct experience & to the fact of being more familiar with gender-typed jobs. However, sometimes women evaluate more male jobs or occupational titles with a male incumbent. This could indicate that, on the whole, women are more aware than men of the advantages attributed to men & of the difficulties that women have to overcome to reach the same results. Last but not least, it is important to underline that most of the found gender differences concerns positions in the middle of the scale, while the extremes present a higher stability, probably because it is easier to evaluate the advantages & disadvantages connected to the extreme positions that the ones, more mixed, connected to central positions. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.