GENDER DIFFERENCES IN JOB AUTONOMY - THE CONSEQUENCES OF OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION AND AUTHORITY POSITION

This research investigates the impact of gender, occupational segregation, and authority position on various forms of job autonomy. The empirical analysis was guided by theoretical concerns over the relevance of occupational characteristics and authority position in explaining the gender gap in job autonomy. Ordinary Least Squares regression results show that after taking various individual and employment-related factors into account, authority position, but not female-dominated occupation, explains a large portion of the gender gap in the degree of job autonomy. Furthermore, logistic regressions indicate that no gender differences in the likelihood of having any of five components of job autonomy remain, after taking all other factors in the model into account. It is concluded that authority position at work is more instrumental in explaining the gender gap in job autonomy than the gender composition of occupations.