As women have made unprecedented gains in paid labor since the 1960s, the study of
changes in occupational sex composition and its impact upon workers has emerged as one of the
most interesting phenomena to labor market researchers. However, this literature has suffered
from a number of data limitations. One of the most confining issues has been the inability to
determine how many men would have entered an occupation had women not supplanted them.
In focusing on one rapidly-feminizing occupation, veterinary medicine, the present research
overcomes this limitation by analyzing the sex composition of applicants to all twenty-seven
American veterinary medical colleges between 1976 and 1995. Applicants to the programs
represent some measure of interest in the profession and thus do not reflect biases by admissions
committees or employers. Cross-sectional pooled time-series analyses are used to test twelve
hypotheses of the impact of structural and economic factors on male and female applicants.
Support of feminization theories is mixed. Net of control variables, the structural variable
analysis does not support the theoretical expectation that men shy away from feminizing
occupations because of the presence of women. However, the presence of women as veterinary
faculty may serve to discourage other women from applying. This finding is unexplained. Tests
of economic hypotheses are similarly mixed in their support of feminization theory predictions.

Starting salaries for veterinary graduates are not predictive of the number of male and female
applicants a school subsequently receives. However, veterinary salaries relative to the average
workerís earnings serves to positively influence applicants. Further, consistent with discourse in
the popular and veterinary literatures, the wages of veterinarians relative to physicians serve to
deter male applicants. Contrary to the discourse, however, the relative wage gap also serves as a
disincentive to female veterinary applicants. Thus, support is found for the similarity of
application processes for applicants of both sexes. The findings may be suggestive of
mechanisms in veterinary medicine in other countries as well as feminizing health professions in
the United States.