The Gendered Intergenerational Transmission of Managerial Status
Do the sons and daughters of managers become managers? Nick Martindale, Lasse Folke Henriksen, and Thomas Lyttelton published an article at American Sociological Review using half a million Danish workers to answer this. Even in egalitarian Denmark, they find strong intergenerational transmission of managerial jobs, but stronger for sons than daughters, and strongest for the sons of senior managers.
The mechanisms are gendered too. For most children of managers, intergenerational transmission looks similar to professional occupations, with educational pathways explaining reproduction. The sons of senior manager fathers, however, draw uniquely upon their fathers’ elite social connections to move into management. The authors provide rare empirical evidence for the importance of informal pathways for elite reproduction.