Female Overrepresentation in Public and Nonprofit Sector Jobs: Evidence From a French National Survey

Women are overrepresented in the public and nonprofit sectors. This article aims to bring to light the reasons behind this phenomenon. The originality of the employer– employee matched data used allows us to consider a large scope of potential reasons. Using a nonlinear decomposition technique, we find that in addition to the well-known occupational segregation effect, the overrepresentation of women in the public and nonprofit sectors is associated with two common factors: greater offerings of familyfriendly practices and higher attraction of men for certain fringe benefits that are more frequently provided by the for-profit sector. Sector-specific factors also exist. The higher wage advantage obtained by women compared with men working in the public sector rather than in the for-profit sector contributes to the feminization of the public sector. Similarly, the overrepresentation of women in the nonprofit sector is linked to greater access to part-time jobs and shorter workweeks there.