In the US, where the main driver of the economy is healthcare.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/03/business/econ...

> As the needs of an aging population stack up, occupations that men have historically been loath to enter, such as jobs as home health aides and medical assistants, will likely play a bigger role in the labor market.

> Women now earn bachelor’s degrees at a substantially higher rate than men, and employment rates among people who are college-educated are substantially higher than those who aren’t.

Unclear why this is.

This article has a large finding of "Just didn't want to.", which is hardly satisfying.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/08/whats-beh...

There's a definite theme in the literature that points to the female superior ability in schooling as a causal factor.

Pekkarinen, T. (2012). Gender differences in education.

DiPrete, T. A., & Buchmann, C. (2013). The rise of women: The growing gender gap in education and what it means for American schools. Russell Sage Foundation.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7322061/

Buchmann, C., & DiPrete, T. A. (2006). The growing female advantage in college completion: The role of family background and academic achievement. American sociological review, 71(4), 515-541.

But that seems like a strange conclusion to make, given this a _reversal_ of an existing trend, rather than a parity that trends toward an improvement of one gender over another. More explicitly, males tended to do better in school as compared to females in the past. So superior ability in academics could be assumed to be present in the past as well. And so we would expect to see some indication of this superior ability as perhaps some parity between the sexes in terms of post-secondary education attainment, where sexism would naturally favour males, and ability would naturally favour females. But a reversal does not indicate this sort of parity.

There's also a theme of facility with "Non-cognitive skills" as the reason. Definitions vary, but this seems to be nice wording associated with skills that are traditionally (read: sexist) associated with females; For example, empathy, nurturing, etc.

Jacob, B. A. (2002). Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education. Economics of Education review, 21(6), 589-598.

Conger, D., & Long, M. C. (2010). Why are men falling behind? Gender gaps in college performance and persistence. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 627(1), 184-214.

Delaney, J., & Devereux, P. J. (2021). Gender and educational achievement: Stylized facts and causal evidence.

This one cites behavioural differences: "... including lower rates of behavioral problems, arrests, school suspension, and disorders like ADHD among girls compared to boys."

Goldin, C., Katz, L. F., & Kuziemko, I. (2006). The homecoming of American college women: The reversal of the college gender gap. Journal of Economic perspectives, 20(4), 133-156.

Becker, G. S., Hubbard, W. H., & Murphy, K. M. (2010). Explaining the worldwide boom in higher education of women. Journal of Human Capital, 4(3), 203-241.

Another possible reason is that women are generally cheaper to employ as compared to men. They get paid less because of the "wage gap" between the genders.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hollycorbett/2026/03/26/equal-p...

Despite this plethora of findings, records of this reversal indicate that it began right around when birth control became readily available. Though it's unclear if that a causative or correlative relationship ...

Charles, K. K., & Luoh, M. C. (2003). Gender differences in completed schooling. Review of Economics and statistics, 85(3), 559-577.

Gemici, A., & Wiswall, M. (2014). Evolution of gender differences in post‐secondary human capital investments: College majors. International Economic Review, 55(1), 23-56.

O’Connor, P., Carvalho, T., Vabø, A., & Cardoso, S. (2015). Gender in higher education: A critical review. The Palgrave international handbook of higher education policy and governance, 569-584.

Interestingly, women tend to NOT be present in the executive positions. Employment for women outstrips male in most every area, but the C-suite.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2023/02/22/gender-diversity-...

One wonders then, do organizational leaders somehow prefer women as subordinates, and discourage them from attaining leadership positions? Do they perceive them as somehow easier to control than their male counterparts? If so, then this might explain why male leaders would tend to hire female subordinates, and thus neglect male ones.

That's a hard one to answer, as it's politically incorrect to ask those sorts of questions, and so funding for research into these areas seems to have significantly reduced since the ~1980s.

However, there is some indication that women seem to be easier to professionally threaten and intimidate in a professional setting. For example, a C-suite executive might threaten women in their employ with losing their jobs to prevent pay raises. A reason that these sorts of threats might be extra effective, would be that women tend to more commonly have familial dependents; In other words: they have trouble with the threat, because then they couldn't support their families/children/etc. Given higher unemployment rates of males going forward, this might become more of an issue; That is, families become more dependent, if males become less employable.

Carli, L. L. (2001). Gender and social influence. Journal of Social issues, 57(4), 725-741.

Biswas, A., Harbin, S., Irvin, E., Johnston, H., Begum, M., Tiong, M., ... & Smith, P. (2021). Sex and gender differences in occupational hazard exposures: a scoping review of the recent literature. Current environmental health reports, 8(4), 267-280.

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.

Pocock, B., Elton, J., Preston, A., Charlesworth, S., MacDonald, F., Baird, M., ... & Ellem, B. (2008). The Impact ofWork Choices' on Women in Low Paid Employment in Australia: A Qualitative Analysis. Journal of Industrial Relations, 50(3), 475-488.

Ballakrishnen, S., Fielding-Singh, P., & Magliozzi, D. (2019). Intentional invisibility: Professional women and the navigation of workplace constraints. Sociological Perspectives, 62(1), 23-41.

Females also tend to be more risk averse in many common situations present in professional environments as compared with males, which may also contribute to their ability to be professionally intimidated. That is, if a female can be threatened with risk (e.g. losing their jobs) more effectively than males, then there's an incentive to keep costs down via threatening risk.

Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (2008). Men, women and risk aversion: Experimental evidence. Handbook of experimental economics results, 1, 1061-1073.

Byrnes, J. P., Miller, D. C., & Schafer, W. D. (1999). Gender differences in risk taking: A meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 125(3), 367.

Maxfield, S., Shapiro, M., Gupta, V., & Hass, S. (2010). Gender and risk: women, risk taking and risk aversion. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 25(7), 586-604.

Pawlowski, B., Atwal, R., & Dunbar, R. I. (2008). Sex differences in everyday risk-taking behavior in humans. Evolutionary Psychology, 6(1), 147470490800600104.

Nelson, J. A. (2015). Are women really more risk‐averse than men? A re‐analysis of the literature using expanded methods. Journal of economic surveys, 29(3), 566-585.

Schubert, R., Brown, M., Gysler, M., & Brachinger, H. W. (1999). Financial decision-making: are women really more risk averse?. American economic review, 89(2), 381-385.

So, in conclusion, a reason that women are becoming more represented in the work force, as they're easier to control in a professional setting. Materially this is represented by lower wages for women, as well as lower representation of women in executive positions.