Occupational Segregation - Essay Example

 Introduction Most women work in occupations in which the workers are predominantly female while most men work in occupations in which the workers are predominantly male. This allocation of work based on gender appears in the earliest human societies and persists in the modern labour force; but while divisions of labour by gender endure, the forms and degree of the division of labour vary. In hunting and gathering societies, for example, men hunted large game and women gathered wild plants while both hunt small animals. In British market societies, men and women are segregated in different occupations, as well as by sector and workplace. Occupational segregation exists, then, when women and men are distributed across occupations so as to be out of proportion with their overall participation in the labour force. In the United Kingdom, most occupations are comprised of predominantly male or predominantly female workers and many are identified as men’s or women’s work. This essay covers different theories explaining facts and figures of occupational segregation as described by researchers, its measurement and existence, gender, occupations, its consequences and explanations have been covered. The measurement of occupational segregation Levels of aggregation affect the index of segregation in two ways. First, occupational segregation increases with the decrease in the level of aggregation of the data. For instance, women hold 74.5 of all teaching positions in 1995 but 89.5 of all elementary school positions (Bureau of Labour Statistics, 1995). Gender segregation increases still more when one considers job-level segregation within firms. Second, the variability of occupational categories between years or between organizations can cause misleading comparisons. Some English scholars cite more fundamental problems with the index of dissimilarity. Watts (2005) claims that it is faulty because it fails to replace those workers who move to other occupations, resulting in a distribution that does not resemble the previous occupational structure. To overcome this problem, Watts proposes the use of the Karmel-MacLachlan index, which factors in the replacement workers. Blackburn, Jarman, and Siltanen (2005) conclude that the index of dissimilarity is seriously flawed by the fluctuation in sex and occupational composition. Jacobs (2006), however, argues that the Karmel-MacLachlan index does not allow valid comparisons of both cross-sectional and temporal studies because it is sensitive to the overall proportion of men and women in the labour force. According to Jacobs, the index will rise with the increasing numbers of women in the labour force, even if the actual degree of occupational segregation remains the same. He further concludes that although the index of dissimilarity has limitations, they are not so troubling that it should be replaced. Occupational segregation over time Goldin (2004) applied the index of dissimilarity to two United Kingdom Commissioner of Labour Reports on factory jobs published in 2000, and found it exceeded 90, indicating that most factory workers were employed in extremely gender-segregated industries and occupations. Women operatives were concentrated in occupations specific to the apparel and textile industries while male workers made up the vast majority of workers in other industrial occupations. When examining changes in occupational segregation by both gender and race, one finds that racial segregation has declined more than has gender segregation. The most significant convergence appears in the occupational distribution of white and black women with the greatest change occurring between 1990 and 2005 (King, 2007), a period of sharp decline, when the participation of non white women in private household labour decreased sharply (Albelda, 2006). Occupational segregation between genders Anthropological and sociological data show that gender-based divisions of labour have existed at all stages of development (Boserup, 2002), but as societies evolved, the gender divisions of labour became more elaborate and varied. For example, medicine can be predominantly male in one country and predominantly female in another. (Millward and Woodland, 2002) The lack of a consistent pattern in this and other instances, challenges the notion that women’s reproductive role or other sex specific characteristics determines job allocation. Levels of overall occupational segregation vary as well. A number of studies of different countries indicate that the increase in female labour force participation does not dramatically reduce occupational segregation. In her study of occupational segregation in Sweden, Jonung (2007) found that between 1990 and 2005, the labour force participation rate for women aged 20 to 60 increased from 54% to 85% while occupational segregation fell by no more than 10% during the same period. Similarly, Hakim (2001) also found only a slight decline in gender occupational segregation in Great Britain during the 1970s when the labour force participation for women rose rapidly. Ocuupational segregation and Economy The level of economic development of an economy does not appear to determine the level of gender segregation either. Jacobs and Lim (2006) examined gender segregation by occupation and industry over time in 56 countries to determine whether occupational segregation is related to modernization and found no consistent relationship. For example, the growth of manufacturing was associated with increases in segregation in Australia, Ecuador, Italy, Korea, and Paraguay but with a decline in Ireland, Peru, and Switzerland. Furthermore, to the extent that there was some overall movement toward greater integration, men more often entered women’s occupations than vice versa. Nevertheless, researchers have identified a relationship between occupational segregation and some selected social and economic factors. In her cross-national study of occupational gender segregation in 25 European industrial countries, Charles (2002) found that some structures of modern economies, such as a relatively large service sector and a large employee class, are associated with a greater proportion of women in clerical, sales, and service occupations. Low fertility rates and women-friendly governmental policies can, however, mitigate these structural influences. Occupational segregation between nations Cross-national studies of individual occupations or of more detailed jobs can be help to identify common problems in breaking down occupational segregation. For instance, Allmendinger and Hickman’s (1999) comparison of women in 78 symphony orchestras in the former East and West Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, reveals that there are substantial differences in the rate and degree of integration, but that all the orchestras were hiring more women, suggesting progress toward integration Explanations for occupational segregation To explain occupational segregation, one must account for both persistence and change in the gender composition of occupations. Although both women and men could experience exclusion from an occupation, because men rarely find jobs for which women are preferred attractive, most complaints of exclusion and most research on the issue of exclusion concern women’s experiences. Therefore, like the scholarly literature in general, this section concentrates on explanations for the barriers to women’s entry into predominantly male occupations and on explanations why these barriers have been slow in coming down. (Panteli, 2001) Some early justifications for women’s absence from many traditional male occupations turn on the preferences of women themselves. Polachek (2005), relying on the human capital perspective, argues that women will choose those occupations where their skills depreciate less if they leave for periods of time because of family obligations. This explanation has not, however, received empirical support. Economists have also developed theoretical models that located the source of occupational segregation within the actions of employers, called “demand-side” factors. For example, Becker (1999), proposed an explanation which assumed that employers may have what he termed a taste for discrimination, so that they will act as if there were an additional cost when they hire women. Such employers will only hire women if they are willing to work for lower wages. Phelps (2002), on the other hand, proposed an explanation that does not assume employers have such preferences, but rather that they exclude women as a result of imperfect information. Because they can never have adequate information about individuals, employers rely on what they know, or often merely on what they believe about groups, and practice statistical discrimination against women and others on this basis, although they are motivated only by a desire to maximize profits. Institutional economists offer a quite different set of explanations. Their approach to gender discrimination attributes specific forms of occupational segregation to the inflexibility of institutional arrangements that hinder competition within firms and within the labour market as a whole. Like statistical discrimination theorists, institutionalists argue that occupational segregation results from more than employer discrimination. They point to formal structures found in many work organizations which inhibit market forces (Doeringer and Piore, 1997). Women are also most likely to be hired for those jobs which do not fare well in a system with internal promotions. Lack of promotion opportunities results in vertical as well as occupational segregation. This is illustrated by Jordan’s (1996) case study of a British insurance company that established to what extent the jobs for which women were initially hired had short job ladders and offered little on-the-job training, hence assuring there would be little mobility for them. According to this approach, gender differences in internal promotions depended more on initial job assignments than on discrimination after hiring. In addition to examining impediments to women’s employment, efforts to identify those conditions which facilitate women’s entry into predominately male occupations assists us in understanding how occupational segregation can be reduced. Reskin and Roos (1990) provide a conceptual framework for such developments. Building on Thurow’s (2002) conceptualization of the labour market as a labour queue in which employers rank prospective employees, they hypothesize a job queue, in which workers also rank jobs. Changes in the racial and gender composition occur when modifications in conditions affecting either queue come into play. The changes in conditions that could increase the number of female workers include a shortage of male workers because of a reduction in wages or a decline in autonomy. Alternatively, employers might rerank men and women in the labour queue, influenced by a new perception of the value of employing women workers because they recognize that the stereotype of women as unproductive was unjustified. Hence, employers would then hire women into a number of predominantly male occupations and thus reduce occupational segregation. Strober and Catanzarite (2004) situate these queues in a labour market that is embedded in unequal power relations between women and men and between white people and people of colour. Their theory of occupational segregation suggest that employers have a fairly constant preference for white men, so that these preferred workers can choose those occupations they find most attractive in terms of wages, working conditions, status, and future potential. Accordingly, the gender composition of predominantly male occupations changes only when men no longer assess the occupation as being desirable as others for which they are qualified. Once white men begin to leave an occupation, employers commence to hire the next group in the labour queue. Reducing barriers to women’s entry into male occupations does not, however, necessarily mean that true integration of occupations will be achieved. Case studies reveal that once employers begin to hire women in significant numbers for positions in a formerly predominantly male occupation, the number of women often increases until they eventually become the vast majority in the occupation. Clerical work, teaching, banktelling (Strober and Arnold, 1997), and compositing (Roos, 1990) all began as exclusively male occupations and then became predominantly female. While these occupations were integrated for a time, this was short-lived as the continued influx of women caused the occupation to become feminized. Consequences of occupational segregation The gender gap in wages is the most frequently cited and most easily measured consequence of occupational segregation. Gender differences in qualifications have not been sufficient to explain the gender difference in wages. Although the gap has been closing, women working year-round, full-time still earned only 73.8 percent as much as men in 1996. Estimates of the degree to which occupational segregation contributes to this gap vary widely, depending on the data sets and statistical procedures employed (Sorenson, 1990). Treiman and Hartmann (2001), using 1990 census data, estimated that as much as 35% of the pay gap was explained by segregation, while other studies, which attempted to control for job skills and worker characteristics, resulted in considerably lower estimates, some as small as 8%. To the extent that a relationship can be found between occupational segregation and the gender pay gap, this argues for the importance of reducing segregation in order to achieve earnings equity. The trend in the wage gap has not always precisely followed the trend in occupational segregation. For instance, during the first half of the twentieth century the wage gap varied, while segregation remained virtually the same (Goldin, 2004). On the other hand, the largest changes occurred in both during the 1990s (Blau and Kahn, 1997). Occupational segregation at the level of the firm yields an even stronger relationship with the wage gap. Peterson and Morgan (1995), in their study of occupation-establishment gender segregation and earnings among clerical and blue-collar workers in 16 industries, found that occupational-establishment segregation accounted for as much as 89% of the wage gap. The results of Millward and Woodland’s (2002) investigation of two thousand British firms were similar. They found that even unskilled workers in mostly male establishments earned almost thirty percent more than if they worked at a predominantly female workplace. Conversely, when the proportion of women in a firm rose, male earnings fell. A recent study suggests that the influence of gender segregation on wages increases with the refinement of employment categories. When Tomaskovic-Devey (2005) compared the effects of job and occupation-based measures of gender composition on earnings, he found that estimates for the former were far greater. Both in the occupational model and the job model, gender segregation was the most important source of the gender pay gap, but gender segregation at the job-level proved more influential. Tomaskovic-Devey concluded that the processes of discrimination that allocate women into the less desirable and lower-paying jobs, and of the devaluing jobs that women hold, occur primarily at the job-level and then are reflected at the occupational level. Conclusions A key conclusion from this review is that although there has been substantial reduction of occupational-level gender segregation in the United Kingdom since the 1970s, this trend appears less promising when one considers that the decline in occupational-level segregation slowed considerably in the 1980s and even more during 2000s. Furthermore, studies of these developments suggest that the rapid decline measured in the 1980s may have captured occupations in the process of feminization, rather than stable integrated occupations. Finally, studies that use more detailed occupational data find considerably more segregation than those that use broader categories, and those that use job-level data uncover an even higher degree of segregation. In sum, much has been learned during recent decades since social scientists began to study the phenomenon of occupational segregation which continues to deny full equality to women in the labour market. 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