Information frictions in job search and occupational segregation by gender

To evaluate the role of incomplete information during job search in explaining occupational segregation by gender, we administered a survey experiment with 1,000 female senior undergraduates in Korea. At random, half the students were provided with average wage and nonwage statistics for representative male- and female-dominated industrial sectors. The students in the treatment group reported substantially less biased beliefs on sector characteristics than those in the control group. During the four months postintervention, the treated students not only reported relatively higher aspirations to enter but also searched and applied for more jobs in male-dominated sectors. In addition, we found suggestive evidence that conditional on employment, treated students were hired in jobs with lower concentrations of women and better work arrangements after graduation. The results support our hypothesis that occupational segregation is aggravated by information frictions in the labor market during the transition from school to work