Pathways into a Degendered Labor Market: Exploring the Factors Allowing Notable Danish Women to Attain High-Status Occupations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Gendered occupational segregation remains salient in today’s labor market, clustering many women in lower-status and lower-paid jobs, despite progress in increasing female labor force participation in recent decades. Yet, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Denmark, a notable group of women managed to break through structural barriers and make a name for themselves in various fields. This study aims to understand the factors that explain their occupational status attainment, and how historical insights may help to inform contemporary efforts to secure women’s positions in the labor market. The Status Attainment Model by Blau and Ducan (1967) combined with the Social Capital Theory by Bourdieu (1986) was used to explore how family background, educational attainment or external support could influence women’s occupational accomplishments. A quantitative method was conducted with data obtained from the Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon - Biographical Dictionary of Notable Danish Women (N = 199). The findings reveal that higher education was the strongest predictor of women’s occupational status and a partner’s occupational status also had a modest positive effect, while the influence of parental status and support from organizations were not statistically significant. The relatively small sample size of this study urges the need to expand the research scope and further explore the effects of these predictors on women across two centuries. This study sheds light on the important role of promoting higher education as a key strategy to foster a more gender-neutral labor market.

Key words: gendered occupational segregation, status attainment, social capital, Notable Danish Women, Denmark, nineteenth-century and twentieth-century