This paper examines the relationship between the prevalence of overwork and skilled women's labor force participation and occupational choice. Using country-level variation, we find a negative relationship between the share of males working 50+ hours a week and the LFP of young married women, with the correlation being much smaller for single women and older married women. Using a panel of occupations across countries, we find that overwork in an occupation is negatively correlated with the share of married women working in that occupation. This finding is robust to controlling for the occupational distribution of groups with fewer household responsibilities.

This article investigates gender differences in the job search process in the field and lab. Our analysis is based on rich information on initial job offers and acceptances from undergraduates of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. We find (i) a clear gender difference in the timing of job offer acceptance, with women accepting jobs substantially earlier than men, and (ii) a sizable gender earnings gap in accepted offers, which narrows in favor of women over the course of the job search period. To understand these patterns, we develop a job search model that incorporates gender differences in risk aversion and overoptimism about prospective offers. We validate the model’s assumptions and predictions using the survey data and present empirical evidence that the job search patterns in the field can be partly explained by the greater risk aversion displayed by women and the higher levels of overoptimism displayed by men. We replicate these findings in a laboratory experiment that features sequential job search and provide direct evidence on the purported mechanisms. Our findings highlight the importance of risk preferences and beliefs for gender differences in job-finding behavior and, consequently, early-career wage gaps among the highly educated.