Introduction

Despite the fact that women have gained much in terms of educational attainment in recent decades in Switzerland, their occupational opportunities still lag far behind those of men. A major factor that accounts for the inequalities between the sexes in the Swiss labor market is occupational sex-segregation (Buchmann & Kriesi, 2008; Charles, 2005a; Charles & Grusky, 2004). The unequal distribution of men and women between occupations is to a large degree responsible for women's lower pay, lower upward-mobility chances, and fewer opportunities for continuous training and tertiary-level further education (Buchmann, Sacchi, Lamprecht, & Stamm, 2007). Occupational sex-segregation has been revealed as a highly stable phenomenon (Buchmann & Kriesi, 2008 Charles, 2005a; Gottschall, 1995). Women continue to choose from a narrow range of occupations and crowd into a few female-dominated occupations characterized by inferior rewards and prospects (Brown, Eisenberg, & Sawilowsky, 1997).

This raises the question of how young women manage to avoid the “gender trap” at the time when they are selecting educational programs and making career choices. In particular, we need to better understand what supports women in choosing non-female-typed occupations (i.e., the incumbents of which are either predominantly men or equally men and women). Typical examples are journalists, photographers, legal professionals, and medical doctors, to name just a few. In contrast, the incumbents of female-typed occupations are predominantly women (e.g., office clerks, primary school teachers, nurses, and sales workers).