Labour Market Segregation Research Articles

Gender compositions of occupations and firms jointly shape switches from gender-atypical towards more gender-typical positions

ABSTRACT Research on sex segregation in the labor market has repeatedly found that women and men are more likely to exit from occupations and firms in which they are the numerical minority and subsequently seek positions that are more represented by their gender. However, this research looked at mobility either across occupations or across firms, leaving unclear how the simultaneous exposure to gender compositions of occupations and firms shapes attrition from gender-atypical positions. We draw on linked employer-employee register data from the German social security insurance system (SIEED, 2012-2018) to highlight that some occupations can be found in firms with various gender compositions, indicating that gender compositions of occupations and firms do not always align and thereby may independently affect mobility. Conditional relative risk ratios for mobility between gender-typed occupations and firms reveal substantial switches from gender-atypical towards more gender-typical positions. This gendered labor market mobility is most pronounced for men across occupations. For women, gender compositions of firms drive not only mobility across firms but also switches out of gender-atypical occupations. Our findings underscore that gender compositions of occupations and firms jointly shape attrition from gender-atypical positions, which ultimately perpetuates labor market segregation.

Asian = machine, Black = animal? The racial asymmetry of dehumanization.

How different racial minorities experience racism differently remains underexplored in existing research. Here, we show that Asian and Black people are often dehumanized differently. Twelve studies spotlight a racial asymmetry in dehumanization using a wide array of methods (experimental, archival, and computational) and data sources (online samples, word embeddings, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data): Whereas Black people are more often subjected to animalistic dehumanization, Asian people are predominantly subjected to mechanistic dehumanization. We demonstrate this asymmetry from the vantage point of victims (Studies 1a and 1b) and perpetrators (Studies 2a-2d). We further document the prevalence of this asymmetry across diverse domains, from everyday language (Study 3) to perceptions in the realms of romantic relationships (Study 4a), crime rates (Study 4b), and business skills (Study 4c). Finally, we demonstrate the asymmetry's real-world consequences in labor market segregation (Studies 5 and 6). Our findings shed light on the distinct experiences of racism encountered by different racial groups and, more critically, introduce a framework that unifies and integrates scattered empirical observations on perceptions of Asian people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Wage Disparities across Immigrant Generations: Education, Segregation, or Unequal Pay?

Immigrants and their native-born children often face considerable wage penalties relative to natives, but less is known about whether this inequality arises through differences in educational qualifications, segregation across occupations and establishments, or unequal pay for the same work. Using linked employer-employee data from Norway, the authors ask whether immigrant-native wage disparities 1) reflect differences in detailed educational qualifications, labor market segregation, or within-job pay differences; 2) differ by immigrant generation; and 3) vary across different segments of the labor market. They find that immigrant-native wage disparities primarily reflect sorting into lower-paying jobs, and that wage disadvantages are considerably reduced across immigrant generations. When doing the same work for the same employer, immigrant-background workers, especially children of immigrants, earn similar wages to natives. Sorting into jobs seems more meritocratic for university graduates, for professionals, and in the public sector, but within-job pay differences are strikingly similar across market segments.

Media coverage of the impact of the war on gender segregation in the Ukrainian labor market

The article aims to outline the trends of gender professional segregation occurring in Ukraine during the military conflict. Materials and Methods. The research was carried out with the use of qualitative methods. A content analysis was chosen for this study. The material consists of online textual publications, which include interviews with managers, specialists, and employees of the State Employment Center. It also includes interviews in which women residing on the territory of Ukraine share their experiences of employment and work during the war. Results and Discussion. In Ukraine today, two factors operate in parallel. On the one hand, there is an urgent need to fill vacancies in professions that have traditionally been dominated by men. On the other hand, the financial situation of women is on the decline. Women are forced to rethink their gender identity in the family and in society because of financial difficulties and their inability to guarantee a minimum of financial stability for themselves and their families. This leads them to be willing to accept jobs with working conditions that are particularly harmful and difficult. Employment opportunities for women are increasing due to differentiated demand, which contributes to the reduction of horizontal gender segregation. One factor that impedes this process is the demand for professions traditionally considered women’s domains, which do not require basic skills, and for which demand increased during the war. These professions are mainly related to manufacturing and working specialties. Given that educated and skilled women occupy blue-collar jobs, we can expect vertical segregation to intensify during wartime, when gender differences are manifested in positions and roles with differing status or potential for advancement. In the area of state gender policy, Ukraine has business development initiatives that reduce the gender gap in women’s access to assets and capital to invest in profitable entrepreneurial industries. However, these initiatives only involve a limited number of women and cannot be associated with radical gender changes in society. At the same time, the positive aspects of reducing horizontal gender segregation observed in Ukraine during wartime may be negated by the lack of or insufficient incentives for the development of preschool education. Thus, there are few effective levers to overcome gender segregation in Ukraine in the short and medium term. Achieving gender equality in the labor market is practically declaratory. Conclusions. In the context of the wartime crisis, gender segregation is a significant issue with negative consequences. A market specifically for women’s labor is emerging, and the social status of women’s work is declining compared to pre-war times. This situation may reinforce societal stereotypes that view men as more suitable for leadership positions, potentially decreasing women’s motivation and career aspirations.

Trade and labor market segregation in Colombia

AbstractGary Becker's theory of discrimination argues that increasing competition will reduce discrimination by reallocating market share to less discriminatory firms. We develop a simple model in which increased competition can also affect discrimination by affecting firm‐level hiring decisions. We use the 1984–1991 Colombian trade liberalization episode and plant‐level data to investigate this claim. We find that plants in industries that faced the greatest reductions in tariff protection increased the female share of their workforce more than plants in industries that saw little or no reduction in tariffs. In addition, we find that exporting plants tended to employ a higher share of female workers than non‐exporters did. In contrast, we find little evidence that trade liberalization drove discriminating plants from the market.

The gender stereotyping of entrepreneurship

The gender stereotyping of entrepreneurship Professors Jennings and Tonoyan distill prior research and chart avenues for future research. In two prior Open Access Government articles, Dr Jennifer Jennings from the University of Alberta and Dr Vartuhi Tonoyan from California State University, Fresno, shared findings from their research (with collaborator Dr Robert Strohmeyer from the University of Mannheim) on how sex-based labour market segregation affects women’s perceptions of entrepreneurship and innovativeness as entrepreneurs. Here, they summarise key takeaways from their review of the academic literature on the gender stereotyping of entrepreneurship.

Production and Learning in Teams

To what extent is a worker's human capital growth affected by the quality of his coworkers? To answer this question, we develop and estimate a model in which the productivity and the human capital growth of an individual depend on the average human capital of his coworkers. The measured production function is supermodular: The marginal product of a more knowledgeable individual is increasing in the human capital of his coworkers. The measured human capital accumulation function is convex: An individual's human capital growth is increasing in coworkers' human capital only when paired with more knowledgeable coworkers, but independent of coworkers' human capital when paired with less knowledgeable coworkers. Learning from coworkers accounts for two thirds of the stock of human capital accumulated on the job. Technological changes that increase production supermodularity lead to labor market segregation and, by reducing the opportunities for low human capital workers to learn from better coworkers, lead to a decline in aggregate human capital and output.

RACIAL/ETHNIC COGNITIVE HEALTH DISPARITIES: THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL COMPLEXITY AND OCCUPATIONAL STATUS

Abstract High levels of labor market segregation mean that Black and Latino workers may not have the same exposure to jobs involving complex work as their White counterparts, an aspect of work that appears to be protective of older adult cognition. The association between cognitive disparities and variation in exposure to occupational complexity by race/ethnicity remains understudied. Using work histories constructed from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) life history data we analyze the role of occupational complexity in the development of dementia at older ages and address a conjecture that complexity reflects occupational status. Findings highlight that: (1) occupations involving complex work with data during working ages may be protective against dementia at older ages, potentially contributing to the differentials in dementia prevalence by race/ethnicity, and (2) occupational complexity reflects occupational status. This research increases understanding of the implications of labor market segregation for cognitive health disparities by race/ethnicity.

Sex-based labour market segregation and women's perceptions of entrepeneurship

Sex-based labour market segregation and women's perceptions of entrepeneurship Here Professors Tonoyan, Strohmeyer, and Jennings investigate sex-based labour market segregation and women's perceptions of entrepreneurship. As noted in a prior Open Access Government article, women tend to participate in entrepreneurial activity at lower rates than men within most countries included in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Numerous plausible reasons for this gender gap exist. A large-scale study by Professors Vartuhi Tonoyan (California State University, Fresno), Robert Strohmeyer (University of Mannheim), and Jennifer E. Jennings (University of Alberta) put forth and examined the argument that women are likely to possess less favourable perceptions than men, on average, of how easy it would be to start a business. These scholars further argued that this disparity can be attributed to sex-segregated positions within traditional wage-and-salary employment, which present structural disadvantages for women’s entrepreneurship.

Promoting Change in the Face of Retrenchment

This article delves into the challenges of teaching antidiscrimination law and the complexities students face in reconciling legal doctrines with their expectations of justice. It explores the persistent inequalities embedded in wage gaps, labor market segregation, and more, highlighting the transformative potential of addressing stereotypes. Professor Kerry Stone's book, "Panes of the Glass Ceiling," is lauded for unveiling deeply ingrained cultural assumptions, offering tools to challenge them. The article reflects on hidden assumptions exposed in Stone's work and discusses the ideological pushback against education aimed at revealing and dismantling stereotypes. It concludes with a call for a nuanced understanding of cultural practices to drive meaningful reform.

LGBTQ Identities and Career Plan Changes in Young Adulthood: Implications for Occupational Segregation and Disparities

Many young adults change their career plans after spending some time in the labor force, and those who hold marginalized identities change their plans in unique ways as they respond to unfair treatments in workplaces. Past research on this topic focused on (cisgender) women and people of color, and little is known about how LGBTQ people change their career plans. Furthermore, many LGBTQ youth today develop optimistic views that their sexual and gender identities will not undermine their career opportunities, but the existing literature provides limited information about whether they maintain such views after their transition to the labor force and how they change their career plans if their perceptions of career disadvantages change. To fill these gaps in the literature, the authors analyzed longitudinal data from in-depth interviews with 37 LGBTQ young adults, who were followed over 2 to 10 years at 2-year intervals. The data showed that young LGBTQ workers’ career plan changes were intertwined with their sexual and gender identities. For example, some participants decided to move to more LGBTQ-friendly careers after experiencing workplace harassment and heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and those who had entered careers that allowed them to integrate their LGBTQ identities into work decided to leave the careers because of emotional burnout. Overall, the results suggest that LGBTQ people’s career plan adjustments to identity-related challenges at work operate as a worker-level mechanism that contributes to labor market segregation and financial disparities between LGBTQ and straight, cisgender workers.

Are All Same-Sex Marriage Rights Created Equal? Homophobia and Labor Market Segregation from Heterogeneities in Same-Sex Marriage Legalization

Are All Same-Sex Marriage Rights Created Equal? Homophobia and Labor Market Segregation from Heterogeneities in Same-Sex Marriage Legalization

Intersectional understandings of the role and meaning of platform-mediated work in the pandemic Swedish welfare state

Digitally-mediated forms of services are increasingly normalized and rapidly transforming working and everyday lives creating new digital-social-spatial relations. The platform economy, in particular, offers new ways of work and new means of consumption. These changes challenge welfare states, both in the operations of institutions and to their foundational social goals and values. In Sweden, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and labour market segregation intersected and amplified inequalities resulting in media covering and querying the nature and role of platform-mediated work within the Swedish welfare context. Located within an intersectional perspective, this study explores how media articulations of platform-mediated work shape theoretical understandings of the platform economy during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. This was conducted through an ethnographic content analysis (ECA) of Swedish-language newspapers between January and September 2020 (96 articles). We show understandings of the platform economy are active and shifting in temporal and spatial contexts. We highlight how work and working forms tie closely to ideas of equality and welfare in the Swedish context. Intersectional perspectives reveal the central role of power structures in local context – a specific time/place- and decenters normative economic perspectives of the platform economy. This study reinforces the need for more studies on the platform economy that foreground social relations to understand inequalities produced in and through social-technological activities.

Segregation and internal mobility of Syrian refugees in Turkey: Evidence from mobile phone data

We use mobile phone usage data to measure the extent of segregation of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and analyze its role in their internal mobility patterns. We construct a range of dissimilarity and normalized isolation indices using the hourly phone call volume of refugees and natives. The richness of the data allows us to compute the indices across different provinces and over time. Segregation levels show high variation across the country, with significantly lower levels of segregation in provinces with a higher share of refugees. Refugee mobility across provinces over time appears to be negatively correlated with segregation at destination, while native mobility is not. Based on data from Istanbul, segregation does not influence intra-province mobility. This is possibly due to the differences in segregation indices across the hours of the day, suggesting that residential segregation is higher than labor market segregation.

Segregação ocupacional por sexo no mercado de trabalho brasileiro: uma análise de decomposição para o período 2004-2015

Este artigo analisa a evolução da segregação ocupacional por sexo no mercado de trabalho brasileiro de 2004 a 2015. Além da mensuração da segregação por meio de indicadores tradicionais, como o índice de dissimilaridade e o de Gini, utiliza-se a classe de medidas aditivamente decomponíveis proposta por Hutchens (2004), que permite decompor a segregação em duas parcelas: uma relacionada à segregação entre grandes grupos ocupacionais; e outra que corresponde a uma soma ponderada dos níveis de segregação dentro desses grupamentos. Os resultados mostram que a segregação aumentou entre 2004 e 2015, revertendo a tendência de queda que vinha sendo relatada na literatura referente a anos anteriores a esse período. A análise de decomposição indica que tal crescimento foi impulsionado pela segregação entre os grandes grupos ocupacionais, portanto, entre grupos com ocupações mais heterogêneas entre si. Conclui-se que, à medida que o nível da participação feminina no mercado de trabalho se estabiliza, o processo de integração das ocupações segundo o sexo também apresenta seus primeiros sinais de esgotamento.

So Far, so Similar? Labour Market Feminization in Italy and Chile

The article aims to analyse gender segregation in the labour market while comparing two national contexts in Europe and Latin America. Specifically, it will consider the growth trends of female employment in the last 25 years (1992–2017), its distribution between activity sectors and occupations, and the gender pay gap. Feminization models and gender inequalities are framed within labour market segmentation theories, which are in partial contrast to human capital theories and neoclassical economics. The initial hypothesis is that the gender distribution of occupations measured by a segregation index is similar in Italy and Chile, despite significant differences in the socio-economic and institutional contexts. Through this intercontinental comparison, the article intends to shed light on women’s labour market conditions and segregation patterns, which are multidimensional and generalizable (transcontinental) phenomena, connected to the unequal division of labour in the new post-industrial order.

A Historical View of Studies of Women\u2019s Work

This paper places observational studies of women’s work in historical perspective. We present some of the very early studies (carried out in the period from 1900 to 1930), as well as several examples of fieldwork-based studies of women’s work, undertaken from different perspectives and in varied locations between the 1960s and the mid 1990s. We outline and discuss several areas of thought which have influenced studies of women’s work - the automation debate; the focus on the skills women need in their work; labour market segregation; women’s health; and technology and the redesign of work – and the research methods they used. Our main motivation in this paper is threefold: to demonstrate how fieldwork based studies which have focussed on women’s work have attempted to locate women’s work in a larger context that addresses its visibility and value; to provide a thematic historiography of studies of women’s work, thereby also demonstrating the value of an historical perspective, and a means through which to link it to contemporary themes; and to increase awareness of varied methodological perspectives on how to study work.

Constructing Inequalities: Tenure Trajectories of Immigrant Workers and Union Strategies in the Milan Construction Sector

AbstractIn this mixed‐methods study, we examined the employment trajectories of immigrant employees in the construction sector in Milan and the role of unions in promoting their labour market inclusion. Drawing on a unique dataset of 417,004 contracts representing more than 166,000 construction workers over a 12‐year period (2000–2011), we employed Growth Curve Modelling (GCM) to explore national group differences in contract, firm and sector tenure trajectories. We found Egyptian and Romanian workers suffer from lowest tenure levels. To investigate these results, we conducted 15 interviews with key informants. Results suggested firm characteristics and position along the production process (mono‐task), pervasive immigrant hiring queues (mono‐national) and union's use of class strategies are interlocking forces that shape deep labour market segregation. We recommend unions develop and apply tailored ethnic strategies to empower highly segregated immigrant groups.

Immigrants and the ‘caring father’: Inequality in access to and utilisation of parental leave in Norway

How do parental leave rights and interacting societal structures influence immigrant fathers’ compliance with the ‘caring father’ model—typifying Nordic welfare states? Nordic parental leave schemes differ; this study investigated the impact of the Norwegian policy. Strong, stratifying effects related to access, particularly unfavourable for non-Western immigrant fathers, were demonstrated. These effects stemmed not only from the scheme being based on work performance criteria, but also from fathers’ rights being conditioned on mothers’ economic activity. Moreover, the observed gap between eligible immigrant and native-born fathers in the take-up of the father quota (the part of leave earmarked for fathers) was explored further. The gap was associated with weaker individual resources; however, ethnic labour market segregation played a significant role. The gap narrowed with the increased duration of stay of these fathers, suggesting that adaptation processes also are involved. The analysis is based on high-quality register data of all partnered men who became fathers in Norway in 2011, following them until their child was three years old in 2014.

Part-time employment as a way to increase women’s employment: (Where) does it work?

Part-time employment has repeatedly been proposed as a solution for integrating women into the labor market; however, empirical evidence supporting a causal link is mixed. In this text, we investigate the extent to which increasing part-time employment is a valid means of augmenting women’s labor market participation. We pay particular attention to the institutional context and the related characteristics of part-time employment in European countries to test the conditions under which this solution is a viable option. The results reveal that part-time employment may strengthen female employment in Continental Europe and especially in Southern Europe, where an increase in part-time employment—even if it is demand-side driven—leads to greater employment participation among women. We also discuss some policy implications and trade-offs: Although part-time work can lead to higher numbers of employed women, it does so at the cost of increasing gendered labor market segregation. We analyze data from the European Labor Force Survey (EU-LFS) 1992–2011 for 19 countries and 188 regions and exploit regional variation over time while controlling for time-constant regional characteristics, time-varying regional labor market features, and (time-varying) confounding factors at the national level.