Vocational education and training (VET) is the most common post-compulsory pathway in Switzerland, followed by around two thirds of each birth cohort (Cortesi and Imdorf, 2013). Upon completion, the majority of apprentices are awarded a Federal VET Diploma (FVETD) following one of its 250 training programmes (Cortesi and Imdorf, 2013). By providing ready-to-use occupation-specific skills in a wide range of professions, VET has repeatedly been credited for fostering smooth and linear transitions into employment (Müller and Shavit, 1998; Bol, et.al, 2019 ; Kriesi and Schweri, 2019).

However, despite growing political concern, the Swiss VET system remains marked by a strong horizontal gender segregation(Leemann and Keck, 2005; Becker and Glauser, 2015; Kriesi and Imdorf, 2019). While men more often undertake technical and manual occupations, women generally cluster in only a few apprenticeships in the health and social care sectors (Becker and Glauser, 2015). This gender segregation may represent a key step in the reproduction of the social inequalities in the Swiss labor market, given the close link between VET apprenticeships and their subsequent occupational prospects (Kriesi and Imdorf, 2019; Grønning and Kriesi, 2022). Furthermore, male-dominated occupations tend to be more rewarding than the female-dominated and mixed-gender ones (Kriesi and Imdorf, 2019; Korber and Oesch, 2019, Grønning, et al., 2020).

This article studies the consequences of horizontal gender segregation by looking at the school-to-work trajectories (SWT) of new Federal VET Diploma (FVETD) holders using a fine-grained database. After VET graduation, SWT trajectories show a great diversity, which is expected for at least four reasons. First, the SWT has become increasingly diversified in most European countries over the last decades (Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011; Brzinsky-Fay and Solga, 2016). Second, for many apprentices the SWT is linked with important transition risks and may be marked by unemployment or NEET (Not in Education, Employment nor Training) states (Stalder, 2012; Salvisberg and Sacchi, 2014; Babel, 2018). Third, there is a growing diversity of higher education opportunities following VET education, which may represent only the first step in the apprentices’ educational trajectory (Stalder and Nägele, 2011; Imdorf, et al., 2017). Finally, this diversity of post-VET trajectories may stem from the institutional characteristics of the diploma itself (Grønning, et al., 2018; Grønning and Kriesi, 2022). The FVETD indeed regroups approximately 250 training programmes differing in many dimensions, such as in terms of content, teaching modalities, and are rooted in distinct labor market sectors.

Using sequence analysis and the administrative LABB database (FSO, 2024), this article provides a typology of trajectories of the 2012 FVETD graduate’s cohort over seven years, demonstrating the great diversity of pathways into higher education, employment, reorientation, and NEET status. We then rely on this typology to study the gender disparities in SWT pathways, highlighting that women are more likely to experience a fast transition to employment. In a second step, we use multilevel models to estimate how the allocation into one of the 250 specific VET training programmes is related to subsequent SWT. This analysis emphasizes that male-dominated VET programmes offer a substantial protection against more problematic SWT pathways. This methodological approach also allows studying how other key characteristics of VET programmes, such as the number of provided lessons, are related to subsequent pathways. Finally, we look at the consequences of evading the gender norms by enrolling into gender-atypical VET occupations. Our findings reveal that women graduating from male-dominated VET apprenticeships do not benefit from their protection against more problematic pathways and are instead more likely to pursue unstable or NEET trajectories.

Across modern societies, occupational gender segregation remains persistently high, especially in technical fields (Su and Rounds 2015; OECD 2023). Since economic growth increasingly relies on knowledge- and information-based services, rapid advances in information technologies (IT) may further aggravate these gender differences (Powell and Snellman 2004). Cross-national labor market data reflects this trend, as in recent years, only 20% of new IT students across all OECD countries were women, while men constituted 83% of the IT workforce. Moreover, this gender gap has progressively widened over the past decade (Eurostat 2018; OECD 2017). Hence, a growing labor market demand for people with technical skills could exacerbate existing gender inequalities. Thus, the question of how to mitigate technology-induced gender gaps in occupational choices is paramount.

Our main contribution focuses on the social construction of occupational profiles. Individuals choose occupations in situations of imperfect information. Occupational choices are thus informed by what individuals (stereotypically) believe these occupations to entail. The existing literature has shown that gendered occupational choices are influenced by individual-level factors such as exposure to (parental) role models, peers, personal motivation/interests, and self-efficacy. For all these factors, gendered expectations and perceptions can push individuals in gender-typical directions. However, the literature has yet to investigate if the IT gender gap can also be (at least partially) explained by what individuals associate with IT because men and women might make different associations (McLachlan 2010). This is important because differences in associations suggest that these associations can potentially be changed by providing additional information on skill requirements and typical activities of occupations.

To examine gendered occupational choices, we have surveyed 2,500 8th-graders (14-year-olds) in Switzerland, who are in the process of making their first choice for training occupations in vocational education and training (VET) at upper-secondary level and during early adolescence when gender role stereotypes are influential (Graham and Latulipe 2003; Kriesi and Imdorf 2019). To address the research question, we included next to more conventional survey items capturing occupational preferences, a discrete choice conjoint, and a video vignette experiment. Switzerland lends itself well to the purposes of our study because two-thirds of adolescents enter the VET track and there are only minimal formal admission restrictions on occupational training choices, meaning that we can examine the full range of occupational preferences among participants. Moreover, these choices are made within the next year and are thus less aspirational. In addition, occupational choices in VET systems are both more concrete and more consequential than in the case of major choices at university level, which allow for more occupational mobility (Kriesi and Imdorf 2019). Finally, at this age, individuals are still free from pre-existing job experiences that create unique biases towards an occupation (He et al. 2019).

Empirically, we show that young women and men associate different elements with IT and that these associations matter in their occupational choices. We find that young women are less likely to link social interactions and IT compared to young men. The conjoint analysis reveals that associating social interactions with IT makes IT-reliant occupations more attractive, and that young men do not perceive a trade-off between working with people and working with things. Our video experiment shows that IT-reliant occupations become significantly more attractive for young women if the presentation of IT occupations emphasizes interactive and social aspects of work rather than more technical aspects. Moreover, we find that young men are, in their strong preference for IT-reliant occupations, not negatively affected by a more social framing of this occupation. We conclude that a presentation of IT-reliant occupations emphasizing social interactions could increase interest among young women in such activities.

Adolescents’ interests and self-concepts regarding the mathematics, reading, and science do-mains are well-established determinants of their vocational choices. Sytematic gender differences in interests and self-concepts represent a major explanation for the ongoing female underrepresentation in certain fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics; Kriesi & Imdorf, 2019). However, technological change is constantly transforming occupational tasks and the skills that they require (Autor et al., 2003). As one major development of the last decades, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has become an integral part of many occupational task profiles across sectors (Fernández-Macías & Bisello, 2022).

Therefore, like mathematics and science, ICT represent an important occupational content domain that adolescents may consider in their early vocational choices. Although both the shortage of ICT specialists and the underrepresentation of women in this field are widely acknowledged as important societal problems, the psychosocial processes leading adolescents to choose careers with differing levels of ICT use are still not fully understood. This knowledge gap is particularly pronounced with regard to transitions into vocational educational and training (VET).

Drawing on Eccles’ situated expectancy value theory (Eccles et al., 1983) and related theories, we hypothesize that adolescents’ ICT interest and self-concept should influence their vocational choices with respect to the intensity of ICT use. We empirically examine three aspects: (1) whether adolescents' levels of ICT interest and self-concept by the end of compulsory school predict the intensity of basic and advanced ICT use in their future occupations, (2) the extent to which gender disparities in ICT interest and self-concept contribute to gendered vocational pathways regarding advanced ICT use, and (3) the moderating effect of gender on the relationships examined in (1). We analyze longitudinal survey data from the TREE2 cohort (Transitions from Education to Employment; Hupka-Brunner et al., 2023) on 1,964 Swiss adolescents transitioning into firm-based VET, which we link to a novel European database on occupational task content (Fernández-Macías & Bisello, 2022). This external database provides indicators on the intensity of basic (e.g., word processing) and advanced ICT use (e.g., programming, specialized software) across occupations and industries.

Our results are strongly gendered. Girls' future occupations are characterized by significantly lower levels of advanced ICT use. Girls’ lower average ICT interest and their less positive ICT self-concepts explain almost half of the gender differences in the intensity of advanced ICT use. Higher ICT interest predicts selection into occupations involving greater intensity of both basic and advanced ICT use, but only for girls. A more positive ICT self-concept is a significant predictor of greater ICT use in future occupations only for boys, and this association is driven mainly by boys choosing careers as ICT specialists. These findings indicate that ICT are an important content domain of adolescents’ vocational choices today and highlight how gendered interests and self-concepts towards ICT perpetuate occupational gender segregation. Furthermore, the results cast doubt on whether lower average self-perceived abilities of young women in relation to ICT represent a relevant barrier to entering careers in the ICT sector, at least at the transition from secondary school into firm-based VET.