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Scholarship on occupational gender segregation has almost exclusively focused on women’s experiences (e.g., as targets of discrimination in masculine domains), yet understanding factors that perpetuate men’s underrepresentation in traditionally feminine occupations is equally important. In my dissertation, I examine a consequential dynamic early in the job search process in which individuals come to learn that an occupation that fits them is perceived as stereotypically feminine versus masculine. Specifically, I develop and test the prediction that the perceived femininity or masculinity of occupations will exert a stronger impact on men’s (versus women’s) interest in them, such that men will be less interested in gender-atypical occupations than women. Across six studies (N = 4,914), I consistently observed robust evidence for this prediction among diverse samples, including high school students, unemployed job seekers, US adults, and undergraduates, and using experimental and archival methods. I observed this asymmetry after controlling for alternative accounts related to economic factors (e.g., expected salary), suggesting that they alone cannot fully explain men’s lack of interest in feminine occupations, as previously discussed in the literature. Further, I consistently observed that men, compared to women, show heightened sensitivity to gender-based occupational status, and men’s greater sensitivity to gender-based occupational segregation explains men’s (versus women’s) reduced interest in gender-atypical occupations. Notably, an intervention aimed at addressing men’s sensitivity to gender-based occupational status effectively increased their interest in a traditionally feminine occupation. Though past scholarship suggests that increasing pay is key to stoking men’s interest in feminine occupations, this research suggests that targeting men’s sensitivity to gender-based occupational status may be an underappreciated pathway to reducing gender segregation.

Studies suggest that diverse mixtures of plants may improve forage productivity and also be suitable as bioenergy crops. The objectives of this research were: 1) to measure the effects of native, warm-season perennial (NWSP) forage mixtures and management methods on productivity, weed biomass, nutritive value, and community composition, and 2) to identify mechanisms that generate any positive diversity-productivity relationships over a three-year establishment period. In 2008, two experiments were established to evaluate the use of native, warm-season plants in forage-livestock systems using a pool of ten native species. The first, a large-scale, three-year, experiment tested three different NWSP mixtures (switchgrass monoculture, a four-grass mixture, and a ten-species mixture) and two management methods (grazed or biomass crop). Switchgrass monocultures had the lowest forage yield and highest weed biomass in both grazed areas and biomass crop exclosures. Analysis of forage nutritive value did not show many differences among mixtures, although the monoculture tended to have higher crude protein and lower fiber concentrations than the polycultures. Management method affected community composition, with NWSP richness higher and weed species richness lower in biomass crop exclosures than in grazed areas. A second experiment examined if species richness would enhance yields through a positive biodiversity effect. It employed additive partitioning to separate the selection effect (SE) from the complementarity effect (CE) by sowing random assemblages of NWSPs at five levels of richness into small plots. Species richness was associated with increased yields in the first year only, but overyielding and positive diversity effects were present in all three years. On average, over 50% of multi-species plots overyielded and 64% exhibited a positive biodiversity effect. Both SE and CE contributed to the biodiversity effect and the importance of each effect changed over time as communities became better established. All ten species were also individually analyzed for their yield potential, nutritive value, and elemental composition. Warm-season grasses tended to be higher-yielding but of lower nutritive value. All ten NWSPs contained sufficient concentrations of eleven elements to support nonlactating cows. These experiments demonstrated that diverse NWSP mixtures may be a valuable addition to both forage and bioenergy agroecosystems. / Ph. D.