Mapping Gendered Employment Trajectories In China: Multilevel Determinants and Implications for Social Policy

Background and Purpose: Life-course employment trajectories extending beyond retirement age remain under examined, and little is known about gendered differences or how they are shaped by the complex interactions among individual characteristics, life events, and historical contexts that influence individuals’ opportunities, constraints, and life choices. Investigating these gendered patterns in the Chinese context is particularly important, given China’s unique institutional arrangements, rapid socioeconomic transformations, traditional gender norms, and strong familism.

Methods: Drawing on life-course perspective, this study examines gendered employment trajectories from ages 15 to 70 using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2014 Life History Survey (N=2,820). Sequence analysis identifies both shared and gender-specific trajectories. Next, multinomial regression models examine factors at multiple levels, including individual characteristics (such as early-life financial status, parental occupation and education, personal education level, and household registration status), life events (such as the timing of parenthood and marriage), and historical contexts (such as wartime and the Cultural Revolution).

Results: Men and women share several clusters, including transitions from agricultural wage work to self-employment, non-agricultural wage work followed by retirement, persistent agricultural self-employment, and agricultural work leading to later-life non-employment. For gender-specific trajectories, men are more likely to experience mixed agricultural and non-agricultural careers, indicating greater cross-sector mobility, whereas women are more likely to follow trajectories marked by prolonged non-employment. Multinomial regressions show that education, rural household registration, and parental occupation shape employment trajectories for both genders, particularly in distinguishing agricultural from non-agricultural pathways. Life-course events shape women’s trajectories: early parenthood links to non-agricultural careers and agricultural self-employment, while early marriage and mid parenthood influence transitions from agricultural work to later-life non-employment. Historical cohort exposure also shapes trajectories differently by gender: the 1937 wartime cohort is linked to women’s agricultural and later-life non-employment pathways, adulthood around 1949 to men’s entry into non-agricultural careers, and Cultural Revolution exposure to mixed careers for men.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings highlight gendered life-course employment trajectories and their links to multiple life-course factors, with several policy implications. First, the strong influence of education and early-life socioeconomic conditions underscores the need to reduce rural–urban inequalities and expand access to quality education and skills training, particularly for disadvantaged groups. Second, as life-course events such as marriage and parenthood shape women’s trajectories, policies should support women’s continuous labor force participation through improved childcare provision and family-friendly workplace practices. Third, persistent gender disparities call for stronger labor market policies to reduce occupational segregation, expand women’s access to stable employment, and enhance social protection in informal and agricultural sectors. Finally, cohort effects highlight the lasting impact of historical disruptions, pointing to the need for cohort-sensitive policies, including targeted retraining and more inclusive pension and social security systems to mitigate cumulative disadvantage in later life.