Are women overrepresented in communal jobs, and men overrepresented in agentic jobs? A test of the assumptions of social role theory

Social role theory suggests that men and women are represented in jobs based on whether the work is agentic or communal, but most research has focused on a small set of occupations, like STEM and HEED. In this study, we measured perceived masculinity, femininity, agency, and communion for 347 U.S. jobs using O*NET descriptors and 2022 Census data. Participants rated 134 job characteristics, which we combined into composite scores weighted by activities, skills, abilities, and values. We tested whether percent women in a job predicted communal or agentic work, whether job femininity-masculinity aligned with perceived communion and agency, and whether these relationships differed by job preparation level. Results show that women are consistently overrepresented in communal jobs, but men are only overrepresented in agentic jobs for high-preparation occupations. Job femininity strongly aligns with communal content, while job agency only aligns moderately with masculinity in high-prep jobs. These findings show that the links between gender, agency, and communion vary across the occupational landscape.