Occupational Sex Segregation Research Articles

Gender-Atypical Learning Experiences of Men Reduce Occupational Sex Segregation: Evidence From the Suspension of the Civilian Service in Germany

Occupational sex segregation persists in part because men seldom enter female-dominated occupations. Whereas programs providing women with gender-atypical learning experiences aim to increase female representation in male-dominated domains, similar programs for men—despite their potential to counteract the prevailing lack of men in female-dominated occupations—are rare. In this paper, I investigate whether men’s gender-atypical learning experiences affect their likelihood of entering female-dominated occupations by studying the effect of participation in Germany’s civilian service. The civilian service offered a social-sector alternative to compulsory military service, and its suspension in 2011 induced exogenous variation in men’s gender-atypical learning experiences. Combining register data from Germany’s social security system with data from the German Microcensus shows that men’s likelihood of entering the labor market in female-dominated occupations declined by about 21 percent when the civilian service was suspended. Scaling the estimate by participation in the civilian service indicates that having completed the civilian service increased men’s likelihood of entering female-dominated occupations by about 12 percentage points. This illustrates that programs exposing men to gender-atypical learning experiences can promote occupational integration and could “unstall” the gender revolution.

Expected Occupational Contexts and Postgraduate Pursuit among Skilled Immigrants and Natives in the United States

For college-educated immigrants, investing in a US postgraduate degree plays a critical role in skill transfer and career enhancement. However, little is known about the role of the US occupational structure, a key aspect in immigrants’ context of reception, in shaping immigrants’ postgraduate decisions. Using 2015 National Survey of College Graduates and linking three occupational characteristics to the field of study of bachelor's degree from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Current Population Survey, this article examines the associations of rising educational expectation, occupational sex segregation, and occupational immigrant concentration with the pursuit of a US master's degree among college-educated immigrants and natives. The analysis shows that while occupational female share was positively associated with postgraduate pursuit among natives, such relationship was weaker among immigrants with a foreign bachelor's degree. In contrast, occupational immigrant concentration was positively associated with postgraduate pursuit among foreign-educated immigrants but negatively among natives. The occupational share of workers with advanced degrees operated similarly between natives and immigrants. Moreover, these occupational effects varied more by immigration status than by gender. These findings underscore the host country's occupational contexts that generate different incentives and constraints for immigrants and natives to pursue a postgraduate degree. This adds nuance to the immigrant human capital investment model that posits immigrants will invest more in human capital than natives. The differential postgraduate investment between immigrants and natives in response to the occupational contexts yield implications for subsequent education–occupation match, career mobility, and economic stratification within the highly educated workforce.

Socio-economic constraints in re-entering the labour market during COVID-19 and the resilience of female informal workers living in urban informal settlements

ABSTRACT During COVID-19, female informal workers living in urban informal settlements in Bangladesh have faced greater challenges in re-entering the labour market than their male counterparts. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study, which has explored how the pre-existing socio-economic constraints around gender norms, gender roles, occupational sex-segregation, lack of education and skills, informality and restricted mobility have made the re-entry process extremely difficult for these workers during COVID-19 in Dhaka city. The paper also illustrates that these workers have adopted strategies catered for short-lasting crises to cope with the challenges arisen from their struggle to secure livelihoods.

Occupational sex segregation in agriculture: Evidence on gender norms and socio‐emotional skills in Nigeria

AbstractOccupational sex segregation is a key driver of the gender gap in earnings. Using data from 11,691 aspiring agribusiness entrepreneurs in Nigeria, this article explores factors that drive sectoral choice, gender differences in the choice decision, and especially the role played by norms around gender roles. When given a choice of 11 agricultural value chains in a government program, we find the majority (54 percent) of the applicants chose to enter into the poultry value chain, and women were more likely to choose poultry than men. This article finds evidence of more restrictive gender norms in Northern Nigeria states, which lowers women's likelihood of entering into agricultural value chains where the potential for profit may be higher. The gender bias in sectoral choice is also attributed to differences in work experience especially in agricultural activities and in the chosen value chain, as well as in land ownership. Women with more experience in male‐dominated agricultural value chains exhibit lower self‐efficacy, which could reflect the challenges they face when deviating from social norms to operate within nontraditional value chains.

Understanding the self-organization of occupational sex segregation with mobility networks

Decades after the beginning of the gender revolution, most women and men still work in sex-typed occupations. This is a primary driver of the gender wage gap. Most research describing the patterns of occupational sex segregation focuses on supposedly innate job characteristics that match gender stereotypical abilities and preferences, such as the use of mathematical skills or social skills, on income and status differences between occupations, and on organizational job characteristics, for example, the need to work long hours. However, beyond such occupational attributes, sex segregation is hypothesized to exhibit emergent patterns that are linked to the interdependent job mobility of women and men, in particular, men selectively leaving feminizing occupations. Developing new tools inspired by statistical network research, and using representative, longitudinal data that contain detailed occupational mobility from the UK between 2000 and 2008, this replacement mechanism is analyzed. It is shown that 19–28% of observed sex segregation is linked to this emergent phenomenon in a statistical model that disentangles the various predictors of the allocation of women and men to different occupations. This makes it the most important predictor of segregation in contrast to concurrently modelled explanations based on occupational characteristics. Data and materials availabilityThe BHPS data and the LFS data are available from the UK Data Service (https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/). The O*NET data is available from the O*NET homepage (https://www.onetcenter.org/). Software implemented in the environment R and code for data analysis are available upon request from the authors.

What Women Do, Believe in, and Financially Contribute—What Matters More in Couples' Decision Making? Gender Inequality in Ghana's Small‐Scale Fisheries☆

AbstractStudies of couple's decision‐making power consistently show that women disproportionately occupy subordinate positions. Using survey data (N = 400) from an ethnographic study on Ghanaian female fisherfolk, we examine the influences of women's financial contributions, ownership of production assets and gender role attitudes, and how they interact with the bodily capacities required to perform different fishery tasks to shape women's decision‐making power. Findings show that financial contributions and ownership of production assets remain salient determinants of women's fishery decision‐making power. However, their participation in strenuous tasks dampens the positive relationship between their financial contributions, gender role attitudes and decision‐making power, such that financial contributions become insignificant. Women's decision‐making power varies according to the sex‐typed division of labor in small‐scale fishing, and those who violate it are ‘punished’—as evident in their decreased decision‐making power. Attention to the co‐implications of socio‐economic forces and material factors such as women's embodied experiences highlights (1) the specificities of occupational sex segregation and decision‐making in agricultural sectors of developing economies and (2) how such entanglements can be reconfigured to enhance women's decision‐making power in such contexts.

Gender-Typed Skill Co-Occurrence and Occupational Sex Segregation: The Case of Professional Occupations in the United States, 2011–2015

Studies of occupational sex segregation rely on the sociocultural model to explain why some occupations are numerically dominated by women and others by men. This model argues that occupational sex segregation is driven by norms about gender-appropriate work, which are frequently conceptualized as gender-typed skills: work-related tasks, abilities, and knowledge domains that society views as either feminine or masculine. The sociocultural model thus explains the primary patterns of occupational sex segregation, which conform to these norms: Requirements for feminine (masculine) skills increase with women’s (men’s) representation in the occupation. However, the model does not adequately explain cases of segregation that deviate from these norms or investigate the ways in which feminine and masculine skills co-occur in occupations. The present study fills these gaps by evaluating two previously untested explanations for deviations from the sociocultural model. The findings show that requirements for physical strength (a masculine skill) increase with women’s representation in professional occupations because physical strength skills co-occur with substantially higher requirements for feminine skills that involve helping and caring for others. These results indicate that the sociocultural model, and more generally explanations for how gender norms drive occupational sex segregation, can be improved by examining patterns of gender-typed skill co-occurrence.

Understanding the Persistence of Occupational Sex Segregation in German Labour Markets: How Gender Attitudes Shape Young Women\u2019s Occupational Aspirations

The persistence of occupational sex segregation is a global phenomenon that relegates women into lower paid, lower status jobs. Understanding why young women apparently choose such jobs is integral to reversing decades of economic inequality related to employment. The strength of the association between the education system and labour market as well as high levels of occupational sex segregation makes Germany an interesting case to study. Using data from the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) Starting Cohort 4 data, I examine whether the occupational aspirations of female secondary school students are related to family characteristics and/or attitudes to gender roles. The results indicate that girls with fathers employed in male-dominated occupations hold more conservative gender attitudes than their peers with fathers employed in gender-neutral occupations. Girls with more conservative gender attitudes are more likely to hold aspirations for jobs in female-dominated occupations. These findings suggest that despite growth in gender-neutral knowledge-based industries, the socialisation of young women, particularly with regard to attitudes to appropriate roles for women, continues to influence occupational aspirations.

Why is the gender revolution uneven and stalled? Gender essentialism and men's movement into ‘women's work'

Men's limited movement into female occupations has been identified as a key barrier to future declines in occupational sex segregation and achieving greater gender equality. So why are men so reticent to enter jobs normatively regarded as female? Drawing from qualitative interviews with multiple stakeholders in four female‐dominated occupations in Australia, this article documents the processes that influence men's employment in gender‐atypical jobs. Gender essentialism is central to many processes that generate and/or stall changes in men's representation in female‐dominated occupations. While gender essentialism's role in producing and reproducing occupation sex segregation is well known, its role in reducing occupational sex segregation is a critical process which has previously received limited attention. The article details gender essentialism's integrative function.

Understanding and improving gender equity in conservation

ABSTRACTThis paper examines data from two AIC/FAIC compensation surveys to look at evidence for pay disparities between men and women in conservation. In addition to identifying widespread and pervasive gender-based gaps in earnings, it also highlights and discusses evidence for two additional types of inequity, the glass ceiling and glass escalator effects. To explain how these types of inequity are created and maintained, three decades of research in the fields of sociology, labor economics, and business management are summarized, and special attention is given to the mechanisms of gender discrimination in occupations dominated by women. To provide context for understanding the gender composition of conservation in the United States, the paper also explores how fields become sex-segregated and how the same biases that lead to occupational sex-segregation contribute to devaluing the work of women. To conclude, it summarizes evidence-based research into strategies for combatting gender inequities in workplaces.

Women in Blue: Structural and Individual Determinants of Sex Segregation in Blue-Collar Occupations

The number of women occupying male-dominated blue-collar jobs continues to be very low. This study examines segregation in the blue-collar trades, taking into consideration both structural and individual factors. Using nationally representative data for 25 countries, the study shows that segregation in the blue-collar sector does not vary with the strength of vocational education and training programs. At the individual level, findings reveal higher degrees of social reproduction among working-class families, but parental background alone does not fully account for the gender composition of the sector in which children end up working. Overall, the findings point to the existence of a socializing mechanism that entrenches horizontal segregation in the blue-collar sector. The study indicates that to reduce segregation in the blue-collar fields, policies must address this prior mechanism, both at the structural and individual level.

Relative Education and the Advantage of a College Degree.

What is the worth of a college degree when higher education expands? The relative education hypothesis posits that when college degrees are rare, individuals with more education have less competition to enter highly-skilled occupations. When college degrees are more common, there may not be enough highly-skilled jobs to go around; some college-educated workers lose out to others and are pushed into less-skilled jobs. Using new measurements of occupation-level verbal, quantitative, and analytic skills, this study tests the changing effect of education on skill utilization across 70 years of birth cohorts from 1971 to 2010, net of all other age, period, and cohort trends. Higher-education expansion erodes the value of a college degree, and college-educated workers are at greater risk for underemployment in less cognitively demanding occupations. This raises questions about the sources of rising income inequality, skill utilization across the working life course, occupational sex segregation, and how returns to education have changed across different life domains.

INDIAN PARADOX: RISING EDUCATION, DECLINING WOMENS' EMPLOYMENT.

Theories of human capital would suggest that with more education, women acquire greater skills and their earnings increase, resulting in higher labor force participation. However, it has been long known that in India, women's education has a U-shaped relationship with labor force participation. Part of the decline at moderate levels of education may be due to an income effect whereby women with more education marry into richer families that enable them to withdraw from the labor force. The paper uses the first comprehensive Indian income data to evaluate whether the other family income effect explains the negative relationship between moderate women's education and their labor force participation. Using two waves of the India Human Development Survey, a comprehensive measure of labor force participation is regressed on educational levels for currently married women, 25-59. We find a strong other family income effect that explains some but not all of the U-shape education relationship. Further analyses suggest the importance of a lack of suitable employment opportunities for moderately educated women. Other factors need to be identified to explain the paradoxical U-shape relationship. We suggest the importance of occupational sex segregation, which excludes moderately educated Indian women from clerical and sales jobs. This paper provides a more definitive test of the other family income effect and identifies new directions for future research that might explain the paradoxical U-curve relationship.

Integrating occupations: Changing occupational sex segregation in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014

Background: Declining occupational sex segregation in the late 20th century helped to usher in unprecedented occupational and economic advancement for women. As the 21st century dawned, that advancement stalled.

PROTOCOL: The effects of road infrastructure, and transport and logistics services interventions on women's participation in informal and formal labour markets in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

PROTOCOL: The effects of road infrastructure, and transport and logistics services interventions on women's participation in informal and formal labour markets in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

Understanding the gendered coaching workforce in Spanish sport

The present study focuses on the demographic and labor characteristics of coaches in Spain. Kanter’s theory on occupational sex segregation will be used as a guiding framework. The study was conducted with 1685 coaches (82.3% men and 17.7% women) from different sports and performance domains. The results show that there is an underrepresentation of women as coaches in Spain and data highlight that coaches’ gender is related to three structural factors: opportunity, power, and proportion. The present data reveal that women are younger, less likely to be in a marriage-like relationship, less likely to have children, and more likely to have competed at a high level as an athlete when compared to their male counterparts. However, fewer women than men access and participate in coach education in Catalonia and the working status of women was different to that of men. To expand, women worked less hours, were more likely to be assistant coaches, and had less years of coaching experience. Understanding of how gender influences women’s access, progression, and retention in coaching in Spain illustrates the need for gender sport policies and practices in sport organizations. This approach can benefit not only women, but the diversity and enrichment of the coaching system.

Work in Sweden 1974–2010

This article traces work-life evolution in Sweden during recent decades against the backdrop of long-run structural change tied to class and gender. We examine the development of four key labor market features: (a) occupational sex segregation, (b) gender gaps in job quality, (c) skill upgrading and mismatch, and (d) youth employment. While occupational and educational upgrading is beneficial for most people, some groups face waning work-life prospects. Maintaining social inclusion is the great challenge for the future.

Gendered segmented assimilation: earnings trajectories of African immigrant women and men

ABSTRACTRacial stratification in immigrant earnings has been widely influential in theories of immigrant socioeconomic assimilation, but discussions of how racial stratification might differ by gender are underdeveloped. Segmented assimilation theory attempts to explain the underlying mechanisms that cause racial disparities, but it fails to incorporate gendered dynamics like occupational sex segregation and the feminization of particular labour flows. In this paper, we address that gap. Using data from the 1990 decennial census and the American Community Survey in 2009–11, we compare the earnings of black and white African migrants to US-born blacks and whites separately by gender. Our findings indicate that black African migrant women experience no racial disadvantage in their earnings, but black African migrant men do. Our results highlight the importance of examining racial differences in immigrant earnings interacting with gender.

Promoted Up But Also Out? The Unintended Consequences of Increasing Women’s Representation in Managerial Roles in Engineering

Engineering remains one of the most highly and persistently sex segregated occupations in the United States. Though extant literature submits that women’s increased access to managerial positions in male-dominated occupations should represent an important strategy for addressing sex segregation, my analysis of 61 interviews with industry engineers suggests that increasing women’s disproportionate representation in managerial roles in engineering may promote the very sex segregation it is attempting to mitigate. The analysis highlights how organizations reinforce female engineers’ movement into managerial roles and foster a form of intraoccupational sex segregation with unintended consequences for women. These consequences include fostering mixed identification with engineering, reinforcing stereotypes about women’s suitability for technical work, and increasing work–life balance tensions. The findings further suggest that an inverted role hierarchy in engineering may explain these gendered career patterns and their unintended consequences. By inverted role hierarchy I mean the valuing of technical over managerial roles. Implications for the literatures on occupational sex segregation, women’s representation in managerial roles, and the experience of women in male-dominated occupations are discussed. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1132 .

Adult men and the post-industrial ‘turn’: Breadwinning gender norms, masculine occupational tasks and midlife school trajectories

Post-1970s restructuring exacerbated occupational skill and occupational sex-segregation divides by reducing jobs in male-dominated occupations requiring less than college. Economic precarity might have motivated men to extend postsecondary careers into adulthood due to economic interests. However, men’s gender socialization as “breadwinners” and familiarity with performance of stereotypically masculine occupational tasks might have discouraged postsecondary attainment in adulthood. Using National Survey of Families and Households data (1987–2003), event history and multinomial methods, we find that adult men’s postsecondary entry and completion of baccalaureate and higher degrees was strongly motivated by economic factors, including market precarity. However, traditional gender role attitudes and exposure to masculine task performance, as countervailing forces, significantly constrained men's potential educational gains. We briefly address policies that might reduce adult men’s barriers to attainment.