Occupational sex segregation in state socialist and market economies: Levels, patterns, and change in East and West Germany, 1980s and 1998

Abstract

From 1949 to 1989, East Germany was a state socialist society, while West Germany remained capitalist. In 1990, the East again became one country with the West. What were the level and nature of occupational sex segregation in the former East and West Germany in the decade before reunification? How had East/West differences in occupational sex segregation changed by the end of the first decade after unification? Much of the discussion about changes with unification is based on the assumption that in the GDR compared with the West, there was less overall segregation and more integration especially of predominatelymale occupations because of the East's stronger ideology of gender equality and higher need for labor. Such arguments fail to take into consideration East Germany's higher rate of women's labor force participation, more extensive support for working mothers, and slower development of the service sector. In this paper we use detailed occupational information from 1980s East and West German population censuses and from the 1998 German micro-census. We recode occupations to be comparable across surveys using the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations. We find that before 1989, the East had a higher level of occupational gender segregation and more concentration in predominantly female occupations. It also had somewhat more integration of “male” jobs and a greater overall range of occupations for women than in West Germany. By 1998, these patterns had largely converged to those of the West.