The increasing connection between higher education and the workforce may influence gender-based educational and occupational segregation. If men and women continue to gravitate toward fields historically dominated by their own gender, this segregation will persist. Furthermore, the chosen field of study carries implications for labor market mismatch, as certain majors are more prone to producing graduates who struggle to find positions aligned with their qualifications. Using a representative sample of employed graduates from the Spanish Labor Force Survey, this paper examines the relationship between gender, gender-dominated fields of study, and educational mismatch. Conditional on labor market participation, discrete choice models reveal that studying in a gender-dominated field is associated with lower vertical and horizontal mismatch (i.e., overeducation and field of study mismatch) —a finding supported by several robustness checks. This finding is especially pronounced in horizontal mismatch when gender and field-dominance coincide. Consequently, the higher risk of mismatch in gender-neutral fields may provide a rationale for the continued persistence of gender-segregated educational choices.
García-Mainar et al. (2026) studied this question.