Research on vocational interests has played an important role in understanding workforce gender disparities. However, current understanding about gender differences in interests is primarily limited to broad RIASEC interest categories that average together differences in narrower interest scales. This study took a refined approach to examine gender differences in 30 basic vocational interests (e.g., medical science, management, social science) using a very large and diverse U.S. sample (N = 1,283,110). Results revealed that gender differences in basic interests are more complex than what can be captured using broad interests alone. There was meaningful variability in the pattern of mean gender differences across basic interests, even those related to the same RIASEC category. Turning to the labor market, we found that gender differences in basic interests showed high convergence with men and women's employment rates in corresponding occupations (r = 0.66). Despite this convergence, there were also discrepancies such that women's actual employment fell short of interest-based predictions in many high-status occupations and in jobs that involve working with tools and machinery. In contrast, fewer men were employed in prosocial occupations than predicted based on their interests. Finally, we examined how gender differences in basic interests varied across intersecting age, ethnicity, and education subgroups. The most striking finding was that gender differences in interests were considerably larger at lower education levels, pointing to specific educational tracks where applied initiatives might have the greatest impact in improving gender representation in the workforce.

职业兴趣研究在理解劳动力性别差异方面发挥了重要作用。然而，目前对兴趣性别差异的理解主要限于广泛的 RIASEC 兴趣类别，这些类别将较小兴趣范围内的差异平均化。这项研究采用了一种精细的方法，使用一个非常大且多样化的美国样本（ N = 1,283,110）来检查 30 个基本职业兴趣（例如医学、管理、社会科学）的性别差异 。结果显示，基本兴趣方面的性别差异比仅使用广泛兴趣所能体现的更为复杂。不同基本兴趣的平均性别差异模式存在有意义的变异，即使是那些与相同 RIASEC 类别相关的兴趣。转向劳动力市场，我们发现基本利益的性别差异与相应职业的男女就业率表现出高度趋同性（r =  0.66）。尽管存在这种趋同，但也存在差异，例如在许多高地位职业以及涉及使用工具和机械的工作中，妇女的实际就业情况低于基于利益的预测。相比之下，从事亲社会职业的男性人数比根据其兴趣预测的要少。最后，我们研究了不同年龄、种族和教育程度的亚群体之间基本利益的性别差异如何变化。最引人注目的发现是，在教育水平较低的情况下，性别利益差异要大得多，这表明在特定的教育轨道上，所采取的举措可能对提高劳动力中的性别代表性产生最大的影响。