Not Always a Paradox: How National Gender Equality Shapes Gendered Career Preferences

Abstract

Does greater gender equality at the national level help reduce gender differences at the individual level? This seemingly simple question has propelled decades of cross-cultural research, and yet the answers have mostly been counterintuitive. Many large-scale studies revealed a so-called “gender-equality paradox” where more egalitarian countries observe larger, rather than smaller, gender differences for a wide range of psychological variables, including personality, values, basic preferences, and educational and career aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. These findings have generated a great deal of controversies, mainly about their policy implications. I will present findings from an ongoing research project on how national gender equality shapes gender differences in career interests/preferences, with data from 187,000 participants across 61 countries in the world. Our findings suggest that there is not always a gender-equality paradox and provide theoretical insights into why national gender equality may reduce gender differences in some areas while enlarging gender differences in other areas. Based on these findings, I will discuss policy implications for how countries may close gender gaps in career interests and reduce horizontal occupational segregation in the workforce.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Rong Su is an Associate Professor of Management & Entrepreneurship and the Pioneer Research Fellow at the University of Iowa and currently a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University. She received her PhD in Organizational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on individual differences and personnel selection, gender and diversity in organizations, and quantitative research methods (in particular, meta-analysis, psychometric measurement, structural equation modeling, and large-scale data analytics). Her work has appeared in numerous top-tier journals in psychology and management, including Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Journal of Management, and has been featured by major media outlets nationally and internationally including Time and The New York Times. Dr. Su has concluded eight grant-funded research projects to date in the role of PI or Co-PI totaling 1.2 million dollars and is the recent recipient of another research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). She has served as a research consultant for the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Army, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). She also currently serves as an Associate Editor for Psychological Bulletin, a premier journal for publishing high-impact, systematic research syntheses and reviews with an impact factor of 23.027.