Job Segregation Research Articles

Evidence of Earnings Inequality Based on Caste in Nepal

In this article, the monthly earnings gap between Dalit and non‐Dalit caste members in Nepal is estimated using two methods: Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition method and the matching‐based nonparametric decomposition method. The nonparametric decomposition method estimates the monthly earnings gap based on a one‐to‐many matching of the given income‐generating characteristics, taking into account the differences in the support of the distribution of those characteristics for Dalits and non‐Dalits. According to the results, the majority of the earnings gap between Dalits and non‐Dalits is attributed to the endowment effect. Dalits earn less than non‐Dalits because Dalits have some characteristics that non‐Dalits do not, that are unfavorable in the labor market. That this endowment effect works against Dalits could be a reflection of the social exclusion and job segregation faced by Dalits in the past.

Part-Time Wage Penalties for Women in Prime Age

Using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for the year 2009, the authors evaluate how vertical and horizontal job segregation explains the differential between full-time and part-time pay for prime-age women in four European countries: Austria, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom. The selected countries are representative of different welfare state regimes, labor market regulations, and extents and forms of part-time employment. Full-time hourly wages exceed part-time hourly wages, especially in market-oriented economies, such as Poland and the United Kingdom. Results using the Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition methods show that most of the full-time–part-time wage gap is driven by job segregation, especially its vertical dimension. Vertical segregation explains an especially large part of the pay gap in Poland and the United Kingdom, where, more than elsewhere, part-timers are concentrated in low-skilled occupations and the wage disparities across occupations are quite large.

Occupational segregation and gender differentials in earnings in Macedonia

This paper examines gender differentials in earnings in Macedonia, with special emphasis on the role of occupational segregation. The lower earnings of women in Macedonia cannot be explained by gender differences in measured human capital endowments. There is a high degree of segregation of jobs along gender lines, the end product of which is lower earnings for women relative to men. Women are over-represented in female-dominated occupations, and feminization of occupations has a negative impact on earnings. Even after controlling for numerous individual and job characteristics and gender composition of occupations, a huge amount of the gender wage gap remains unexplained. J31, P2

The Role of Powerful Women for Reshaping Organizations and Professional Labor Markets and Practices

A recent Forbes.com article states that “Women must take a special interest in supporting other women in order to help make gender equality in business a reality” (Perkett, 2014). But to what extent do women actually serve as catalysts for reducing inequality? As women now hold about fifty-percent of all management positions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013) and are becoming the majority of new entrants in high-status professions, such as medicine (American Association of Medical Colleges, 2013), management scholars are beginning to examine the impact of women leaders, in particular, on gender inequality (e.g. Hoff 2010; Perkins, Phillips & Pearce, 2013; Powell & Butterfield, 2013). Given the pervasiveness of gender inequality in terms of wages, job segregation, and access to resources, for example, it becomes pertinent to understand whether women leaders provide a potential lever for reducing this form of inequality. Thus, our proposed panel symposium will address the following central questions: What r...

Task Segregation: A Mechanism for Work Inequality

While research has shown that various forms of segregation such as job segregation contribute to work inequality, scholars have overlooked the possibility of task segregation: when a subgroup is disproportionately allocated to spend more time doing particular tasks within a job. If these tasks are more undesirable to workers than other tasks, then the segregated subgroup may experience worse workplace outcomes. I argue that task segregation is an important inequality-generating mechanism that can explain within-job outcome differences. To examine the processes by which task segregation may emerge and lead to work inequality, I draw on an inductive, interview- based case study of female and male security screening workers at a unit of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at a large urban airport. I discover and analyze a case of task segregation, where female screeners, relative to male screeners, were disproportionately allocated to what was perceived as an undesirable task – direct physical in...

Where Do Immigrants Fare Worse? Modeling Workplace Wage Gap Variation with Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data

We propose a strategy for observing and explaining workplace variance in categorically linked inequalities. Using economy wide Swedish linked employer-employee panel data, we examine variation in workplace wage inequalities between native Swedes and non-Western immigrants. Consistent with relational inequality theory (RIT) we find that immigrant-native wage gaps vary dramatically across workplaces, even net of strong human capital controls. We also find that, net of observed and fixed effect controls for individual traits, workplace immigrant-native wage gaps decline with increased workplace immigrant employment and managerial representation and increase when job segregation rises. These results are stronger in high inequality workplaces and for white collar employees: contexts in which we expect status-based claims on organizational resources, the central causal mechanism identified by relational inequality theory, to be stronger. While Sweden displays substantial workplace rank segregation between non-western immigrants and native Swedes and patterns of statistical discrimination against non-western immigrants, both decline with increased labor force experience. Overall, workplace variation in the non-western immigrant-native wage gaps are contingent on organizational variation in the relative power of groups and the institutional context in which that power is exercised.

Movin’ on up: Hierarchical occupational segmentation and gender wage gaps

Our study evaluates and extends existing wage decomposition methodologies that seek to measure the contributions of endowments, pure wage discrimination, and job segregation. We employ data from a regional supermarket that faced a Title VII class-action lawsuit to examine how standard wage specifications integrated with a model of hierarchical segregation might perform in wage decompositions. Our results show that a common misspecification of the wage structure leads to false inferences about the presence of pure wage discrimination. We demonstrate the generalizability of our methodology using CPS data.

Missing Links: Referrer Behavior and Job Segregation

The importance of networks in labor markets is well known, and their job-segregating effects in organizations is a given. Conventional wisdom attributes this segregation to the homophilous nature of contact networks, and leaves little role for organizational influences. Yet employee referrals are necessarily initiated within a firm by employee referrers subject to organizational policies. We build theory regarding the role of referrers in the segregating effects of network recruitment. Using mathematical and computational models, we investigate how empirically documented referrer behaviors affect job segregation. We show that referrer behaviors can segregate jobs beyond the effects of homophilous network recruitment. Furthermore, and contrary to past understandings, we show that referrer behaviors can also mitigate most, if not all, of the segregating effects of network recruitment. Although largely neglected in previous labor market network scholarship, referrers are the missing links revealing opportunities for organizations to influence the effects of network recruitment. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen. organizations.

Social Mobility in Five African Countries

This paper conceptualizes intergenerational occupational mobility between the farm and non‐farm sectors in five African countries, measures it using nationally representative household survey data, and analyzes its determinants through a comparative method based on pooled logit regressions. We first analyze intergenerational gross mobility. Until the end of the 1980s, intergenerational flows toward the non‐farm sector are high in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea, flows toward the farm sector are more often observed in Ghana and Uganda, and Madagascar displays less mobility in either direction. The pace of change in occupational structures and the magnitude of labor income dualism between the farm and non‐farm sectors appear to explain those differences. We then net out structural change across generations and establish the first measurement of intergenerational net mobility in those five African countries. Ghana and Uganda stand out as relatively more fluid societies. Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea come next while Madagascar shows a particularly high reproduction of occupations. Educational mobility accounts for the Madagascar exception to a large extent, but not for the differences between the other countries. Spatial dualism of employment, i.e. the geographic segregation of farm and non‐farm jobs, accounts for most of those remaining differences. We argue that the main determinants of intergenerational mobility, namely income and employment dualisms, likely reflect a historical legacy of different colonial administrations.

Does This Make Me Look Fat? Aesthetic Labor and Fat Talk as Emotional Labor in a Women's Plus-Size Clothing Store

Drawing on participant observation at a women's plus-size clothing store, “Real Style,” this article draws on the unique experiences of plus-sized women in their roles as workers, managers, and customers, to examine how mainstream beauty standards, body-accepting branding, and customers' diverse feeling rules shape service interactions. Despite branding that promoted prideful appreciation for “Real” bodies, the influence of these body-accepting discourses was constrained by women's internalization of mainstream fat stigma, resulting in an environment characterized by deep ambivalence toward larger body size. This ambivalence allowed hierarchies between women to be reified, rather than dissolved; although plus-sized employees and customers expressed gratitude to have Real Style as a “safe space” to work and shop, workers experienced gender segregation of jobs, and thinner employees were privileged with special tasks. Further, managers and white (but not black or Latina) customers used body-disparaging “fat talk” to elicit workers' emotional labor while confronting thinner workers for defying aesthetic expectations. This research offers a more nuanced understanding of the ties between aesthetic labor and emotional labor, while highlighting some of the factors that prevent stigmatized groups from successfully reclaiming status within consumer contexts.

The Influence of Social Values and Childhood Socialization on Occupational Gender Segregation and Wage Disparity

This work investigates continued and persistent wage disparity between women and men in the U.S. labor market and seeks to identify the main cause of this phenomenon. Statistics are provided to demonstrate that although female participation in the paid workforce has increased, overall women's wages relative to men's has not. Using the latest statistics, this study argues that occupational gender segregation is a fact in the job market and one of the major causes of wage disparity between two genders. The author contends that job segregation itself is a by product of social values and especially the early socialization of children in society. This work explores how social values influence and formulate the content and process of socialization in children's early education. The childhood socialization phenomenon, including its significance, origin and primary agents, as well as its relationship with job segregation, is examined in depth. In conclusion, this study advocates policy changes in order to achieve a non-gender based wage system in the labor market. It argues that wage fairness is achievable in the long-term through careful planning.

Movin' on Up: Hierarchical Occupational Segmentation and Gender Wage Gaps

Our study evaluates and extends existing wage decomposition methodologies that seek to measure the contributions of endowments, pure wage discrimination, and job segregation. Of particular interest is the model of hierarchical segregation in Baldwin, Butler, and Johnson (2001). We employ data from a regional supermarket that faced a Title VII class-action lawsuit to examine how standard wage specifications integrated with a model of hierarchical segregation might perform in wage decompositions. Our results show that a common misspecification of the wage structure leads to false inferences about the presence of pure wage discrimination. We demonstrate the generalizability of our methodology using CPS data.

Can Gender Traits Explain Job Aspiration Segregation?

Occupational segregation is a persistent feature of modern labor markets. This study investigates the role of schooling ability and traits of the opposite sex as source of job segregation among young individuals. We make use of a follow-up of the Swiss PISA 2000 sample, which allows investigating aspirations at age 15 and subsequent career choices. The analysis on aspirations is carried out for both academic and non-academic students. Then we turn to the access to apprenticeship positions to disentangle between supply side and demand side effects. Results suggest that the effect ofn on-cognitive traits is more important than the one of cognitive abilities. Boys are found to be more likely to aspire female dominated jobs than girls male dominated jobs, holding everything else constant. Finally, we find that job segregation may be essentially driven by supply side effects.

Cohort change, diffusion, and support for gender egalitarianism in cross-national perspective

Abstract Arguments about the spread of gender egalitarian values through a population highlight several sources of change. First, structural arguments point to increases in the proportion of women with high education, jobs with good pay, commitment to careers outside the family, and direct interests in gender equality. Second, value-shift arguments contend that gender norms change with economic affluence among women and men in diverse positions-at all levels of education, for example. Third, diffusion arguments suggest that structural changes lead to adoption of new ideas and values supportive of gender equality by innovative, high-education groups, but that the new ideas later diffuse to other groups. This study tests these arguments by using International Social Survey Program surveys in 1988, 1994, and 2002 for 19 nations to examine gender egalitarianism across 85 cohorts born from roughly 1900 to 1984. Multilevel models support diffusion arguments by demonstrating that the effects of education first strengthen with early adoption of gender egalitarianism and then weaken as other groups come to accept the same views. However, the evidence of a sequence of divergence and convergence in educational differences across cohorts appears most clearly for women in Western nations. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) 1. Introduction Under the broad term of the second demographic transition, demographers have described the wide-ranging changes that have occurred in living arrangements, gender roles, and childbearing (e.g., Lesthaeghe 2010). The changes encompass not only new behaviors involving sexual freedom, declining fertility, childbearing outside of marriage, and a greater variety of family forms (cohabitation, divorce, blended families, living alone) but also underlying value changes of individual autonomy, social equality, and tolerance of diversity (Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 1988). Central to the second demographic transition and to the broader liberalization of values are new roles for women and more favorable values, attitudes, and beliefs toward gender equality (or gender egalitarianism for short). The progress made over past decades toward the goal of widespread support for gender equality (Fischer and Hout 2006; Jackson 1998; Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001) has affected most demographic processes, including fertility (Goldscheider, Olah, and Puur 2010; Rindfuss, Brewster, and Kavee 1996), childlessness (Henz 2008), combining work and family responsibilities (Olah and Bernhardt 2008), job segregation (Charles and Bradley 2002), and family relationships (Amato and Booth 1995; Kaufman 2000). Demographers have also noted that a good part of the change in gender egalitarianism involves processes of cohort differentiation and replacement. The cohort approach to societal change follows a long tradition (Ryder 1965) in emphasizing the importance of the economic and ideational context at the time of a cohort's youth. Relatively stable values, attitudes, and beliefs that develop during youth and young adulthood endure over the later life course, and change comes from replacement of older cohorts raised decades ago with younger cohorts raised more recently. Numerous studies have demonstrated that differences in gender egalitarianism stem in large part from cohort membership (Brooks and Bolzendahl 2004; Firebaugh 1992; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Schnittker, Freese, and Powell 2003; Scott, Alwin, and Braun 1996). In a recent article, Pampel (2011) evaluated several cohort-based explanations of increasing gender egalitarianism. Using data from the General Social Surveys of the United States and focusing on differences across cohorts born from 1900 to 1985, support was found for a diffusion theory that predicts changes in the socioeconomic distribution as well as the level of gender egalitarianism. More limited support was found for competing theories that emphasize the importance of either structural change in levels of female education and labor force participation or broad cultural changes in values affecting all education and labor force groups. …

THE ORGANISATIONAL NATURE OF UNION CAREERS

ABSTRACT The equality agenda has gained a much higher visibility in the UK and in France. Most unions have adopted specific measures to improve women's representation in their structures. However, even in highly feminised unions, women remain under-represented in union leadership positions. To understand the gap between the presence of women in the lay membership/activist population and their slow disappearance at the higher levels of the union hierarchy, this study is focused on the role of organizational contexts. We argue that to understand the feminisation of union leadership, we need to consider the characteristics of ‘internal union labour markets’: ports of entry, typical/atypical career routes, norms of job evaluation, internal job segregation and hierarchy, human resources management and gender-equality policies. To fully grasp the influence of contexts on the process of feminisation, specific attention to the evolution of the repertoires of action by unions is also useful.

Gender Equality in the Labour Market: Case Study: Romania

The main purpose of this article is to show that even if the gender equality is a fundamental principle of democracy, in reality, in Romania discrimination upon sex is still exists. Despite the increase of women participation in the labour market and in higher education, the differences between women and men in the labour market are still present. These differences are due to the fact that they are economical domains in which women are dominant, or domains in which men are dominant. This fact generates a gender segregation of jobs, observing that those feminized are, generally, worse paid. The article is formed by two sections: In the first section, we present the legislation regarding the gender equality in Europe. In the second section we presented the situation from Romania, insisting on three important elements: Gender inequality in hiring process, gender payment gap, and equality in opportunities in labour market, between women and men from Romania.

The determinants of gender pay gap in Portuguese private firms

PurposeThe paper aims to investigate the existence of gender segregation and to analyse the determinants of gender income disparity in Portuguese private firms.Design/methodology/approachThe main research instrument is a qualitative and quantitative questionnaire with 3,906 individuals from 75 Portuguese private firms. This paper uses separate multivariate ordered tobit models for men and women.FindingsIt is found that job segregation is one of the major sources of gender inequality in the labour market but does not contribute for a considerable gender pay gap. In fact only scant and nuanced evidence of a negative gap of 2.2 percent against women is found. However, no support for the contention that women are systematically underpaid if they work in occupations where females are predominant is found. When it comes to variable pay, differences between men and women are less significant than with base pay.Practical implicationsThe paper reveals that the under‐representation of women in high‐paying jobs and their over‐representation in low‐paying clerical and service occupations are key in explaining the existence of a glass ceiling. Despite that it appears wage disparity does exist, and that it will probably continue to exist, the results point towards a window of opportunity for women.Originality/valueThe paper shows that with a higher contribution of men in household and childcare activities, women will have more time and opportunity for lobbying activities, which will increase their opportunities for higher career.

“Looking Good and Sounding Right”

Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor practices we identify contribute to the re-entrenchment of job segregation, race and gender discrimination, and fetishism of consumption. The conclusion argues against rewarding aesthetic labor and suggests other rationales for upgrading low-wage retail employment.

Inequalities in the Nuclear Age: Impact of Race and Gender on Radiation Exposure at the Savannah River Site (1951–1999)

Changes in the workforce during the civil rights movement may have impacted occupational exposures in the United States. We examined Savannah River Site (SRS) employee records (1951-1999) for changes in radiation doses and monitoring practices, by race and sex. Segregation of jobs by race and sex diminished but remained pronounced in recent years. Female workers were less likely than males to be monitored for occupational radiation exposure [odds of being unmonitored = 3.11; 95% CI: (2.79, 3.47)] even after controlling for job and decade of employment. Black workers were more likely than non-black workers to have a detectable radiation dose [OR = 1.36 (95% CI: 1.28, 1.43)]. Female workers have incomplete dose histories that would hinder compensation for illnesses related to occupational exposures. The persistence of job segregation and excess radiation exposures of black workers shows the need for further action to address disparities in occupational opportunities and hazardous exposures in the U. S. South.

Missing Links: Referrer Behavior and Job Segregation

How does referral recruitment contribute to job segregation, and what can organizations do about it? Current theory on network effects in the labor market emphasizes the job-seeker perspective, focusing on the segregated nature of job-seekers’ information and contact networks, and leaves little role for organizational influence. But employee referrals are necessarily initiated from within a firm by referrers. We argue that referrer behavior is the missing link that can help organizations manage the segregating effects of referring.Adopting the referrer’s perspective of the process, we develop a computational model which integrates a set of empirically documented referrer behavior mechanisms gleaned from extant organizational case studies.Using this model, we compare the segregating effects of referring when these behaviors are inactive to the effects when the behaviors are active. We show that referrer behaviors substantially boost the segregating effects of referring. This impact of referrer behavior presents an opportunity for organizations. Contrary to popular wisdom, we show that organizational policies designed to influence referrer behaviors can mitigate most if not all of the segregating effects of referring.