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OCR for page 144
O Toward a General Theory of
Occupadonal Sex Segregation:
The Case of Public School Teaching
MYRA H. STROBER
Occupational sex segregation has several
interrelated dimensions. First, there is seg-
regation between paid occupations and those
that are unpaid—that is, the percentages of
women and men in paid employment are
unequal. In 1980 the civilian labor force par-
ticipation rate for women over age 20 was
51 percent; for men it was 79 percent
(Monthly Labor Review, 1981, 104:60~. Sec-
ond, there is segregation across occupations
within paid employment: labor market seg-
regation. The index of `dissimilarity indicates
that in 1977 about 64 percent of American
men (or women) would have had to change
their occupations in order to achieve equal-
ity in the gender distribution across occu-
pations (see Lloyd anti Niemi, 1979; Gross,
1968; Blau and Hendricks, 1979~. In few
occupations are women represented in ac-
cordance with their representation in the
labor force as a whole. Third, within any
single occupation, women and men are not
distributed equally across the occupational
hierarchy that is, there is occupational
stratification. Women are clustered at the
lower levels, men at the upper levels. And
this is often true even in occupations that
are overwhelmingly female, such as teach-
144
ing and librarianship. Also, men spend less
time on housework and child care than do
women, and men engage in fewer different
household tasks (Walker and Woods, 1976;
Robinson, 1977; Stafford and Duncan, 1977~.
Although this paper sometimes touches
on issues of women's participation in the
paid labor force and occupational stratif~-
cation, its focus is on the second type of
occupational segregation: segregation across
occupations within paid employment. A the-
ory of occupational segregation by gender
within the labor market must deal with three
central questions: (1) How does an occu-
pation become primarily male or female?
(2) Once an occupation is gender typed, what
forces help keep it that way? (3) How do
occupations change their gender designa-
tion?
TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF
OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
Extant sociological and economic theories
of occupational segregation by gender in the
labor market stem Tom remarkably diver-
gent world views and locate the causes of
segregation in a variety of different actors
OCR for page 145
TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
145
with diverse motivations. ~ Status attainment
theory in sociology and human capital the-
· . . . .
ory In economics pinpoint women s own ~e-
havior as the primary cause of their segre-
gation into occupations with low status and
low pay. Women's own values, behaviors,
aspirations, attitudes, sex-role expectations
(status attainment theory), educational cre-
dentials, and interrupted work histories (hu-
man capital theory) are seen as the causes
of their occupational designations and low
pay rates.
Ike view that women's own behavior is
central is clearly articulated by Matthaei
(1982:194), who argues that job segregation
exists because ". . . women wished to work
in jobs done by women." Employment in
women's work preserved women's sense of
their femininity. Kessler-Harris's book (1982)
on the history of wage-earning women in
the United States, while less exclusively
supply-side oriented, also stresses the role
of women's choices in producing occupa-
tional segregations.
Economic theories of discrimination and
statistical discrimination, on the other hand,
locate the source of inequality of earnings
and occupational distribution in employers
and their "taste" for discrimination (discrim-
ination theory) or their wish to minimize the
risk associated with employing women (sta-
tistical discrimination theory). Discrimina-
tion theory, however, recognizes that the
tastes of workers and customers may be im-
portant factors contributing to the formation
of employers' tastes. The "overcrowding"
explanation for occupational segregation
builds on the theory of discrimination and
points out that, as a result of employers'
operationalizing their tastes for exclusion,
women are crowded into certain occupa-
~ Sociological theories and those of Marxist econo-
mists and feminists are reviewed in Sokoloff (1980~;
economic theories are reviewed in Blau and Jusenius
(1976), Cain (1976), and Amsden (1980).
lions, and women's wages in those occu-
pations are thereby depressed.
Although the world view of the dual labor
market or internal labor market theories is
much less oriented toward individual choice
and market processes than is neoclassical
economics, these theories also locate the
source of occupational segregation in em-
ployer behavior. Employers create seg-
ments in the labor market, either to take
advantage of profit opportunities (the view
of the non-Marxist dual labor market theo-
rists) or to prevent the development of worker
solidarity (the view of the Marxists among
the dual labor market theorists).
Feminists have viewed all of these theo-
ries as inadequate, largely because the the-
ories have paid insufficient attention to the
centrality of gender relations in the society
at large. I have argued that, although the
profit motive may explain employers' de-
sires to augment the division of labor, it does
not explain why that division turns into one
based on gender (Strober and Best, 19791.2
Hartmann (1976:138) has argued that to ex-
plain job segregation by gender one must
examine patriarchy as well as capitalism.
Hartmann defines patriarchy as "a set of so-
cial relations which has a material base and
in which there are hierarchical relations be-
tween men, and soliclarity among them,
which enable them to control women. Pa-
triarchy is thus the system of male oppres-
sion of women." In Hartmann's view, male
capitalists and male workers oppress women.
And Hartmann as well as Milkman (1980)
point to the role of male worker organiza-
tions (i.e., trade unions) in initiating and
2 Blau and Jusenius (1976) noted that "sex is an ob-
vious basis for differentiation, due to employers' dis-
taste for hiring women in male occupations and/or real
or perceived quality differences between male and fe-
male labor" (pp. 192-193~. But the unanswered ques-
tion remains: Why do employers have a distaste for
women, and why do they perceive them as being less
qualified, or why are women "less qualified"?
OCR for page 146
146
MYRA H. STROBER
maintaining occupational segregation by
gender.3
In addition to these more formal theories
of occupational segregation by gender, there
are numerous explanations that seek to ex-
plain the gender designation of a job in terms
of the job's characteristics. Oppenheimer
(1970) has hypothesized that women fill those
jobs that require relatively high levels of
prejob, as opposed to on-thejob, training,
such as nursing and teaching. There is also
a rich foDdore maintaining that women's jobs
are those requiring dexterity or those that
women traditionally performed in the home.
None ofthese explanations provides a strong
basis for a theory of gender segregation be-
cause for each hypothesis it is so easy to
point to counterexamples. Why are certain
occupations that require a great deal of pre-
job training, such as law and medicine, "re-
served," in the United States, for men? If
women are so dexterous, why are there so
few female brain surgeons? If jobs that used
to be, or are, performed in the home be-
come women's jobs in the market, why are
most chefs, bakers, and food servers men?
Moreover, the difficulty with putting forth
a theory of gender segregation based on the
inherent characteristics of a job is that the
analyst then finds it impossible to explain
shifts in gender assignments or differences
in the assignment of jobs in different coun-
tries. If the major reasons for a particular
job assignment are the job's inherent char-
acteristics, how can the gender assignment
change while the inherent characteristics re-
main the same? Or, how can an occupation
be assigned to one gender in one industrial-
ized country but to the other gender else-
where?
Neither the formal theories nor the ad hoc
explanations offered thus far can answer the
three major questions concerning the gen-
3 Rubery (1978), while not mainly interested in sex
segregation, has also noted the importance of unions
in perpetuating dual labor markets.
der designation of an occupation: its origin,
its maintenance, and its change, if any. Yet
each of the theories and many of the expla-
nations contain threads of truth. What I have
done is selected the strongest threads from
each and woven them into a new theory.
Orthodox adherents to various schools of
thought may be uncomfortable in finding
aspects of their theories woven into a new
fabric, but I have purposely borrowed in-
sights when their observations contributed
to the overall explanation, without too much
concern about the insights' ideological par-
entage. I call the theory "general" because
it may be used to explain the origins, main-
tenance, and changes in the gender assign-
ment of jobs in general, i.e., for all occu-
pations.
My theory has two central tenets. It in-
corporates the concept of patriarchy, al-
though I define patriarchy to make it ap-
plicable in a non-Marxist framework. My
theory maintains that decisions concerning
the gender assignment of jobs are made by
men. In particular, I argue that, within the
constraints laid down by race and class, it is
mate workers who decide which occupations
they will inhabit. Male employers set wages
and working conditions but, except when
the job explicitly or implicitly requires fe-
male characteristics, male employers allow
male workers to decide which jobs will be
theirs. The remaining jobs are offered to
women; if sufficient numbers of women do
not wish to work in the job, the employer
recruits immigrants. Sometimes new jobs
appear to be "designed" for women, that is,
it appears that men are not given "first dibs"
on these jobs. In such cases, employers de-
sign the jobs for women and do not offer
them to men first because they believe that
most men would deem the jobs undesirable
relative to existing ones.
The second key aspect of my theory is
that, in deciding which new jobs to claim
for themselves and which jobs to leave for
women, male workers (again within the im-
portant constraints laid down by race and
OCR for page 147
TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
147
class) attempt to maximize their economic
gain. They compare the wages, hours, and
working conditions of the new job with those
of existing jobs.4 If the new job is superior,
they claim it and move in; if not, the job
becomes women's work. Thus, whether a
particular job in a particular locale is initially
male or female is a function of when the job
came onto the market.
Suppose a technological or organizational
change occurs and a new job develops. New
plant and equipment are put into place and
workers are to be hired. In the short run,
in accordance with neoclassical assump-
tions, technology and capital are fixed. The
employer estimates the product or service
demand and determines the need for labor.
Based on the existing wage structure of the
firm or industry and the wages for similar
jobs in the local labor market, he assigns a
wage rate to the job and proceeds to ad-
vertise for workers. s If "qualified" men show
up, they are hired. Qualifications, of course,
may well be based on racial and class char-
acteristics as well as on objective criteria.
Let's take up the caseks) where an insuf-
ficient number of men apply for the job. But
first let's ask why male capitalists and/or
managers give male workers first dibs on
jobs. Why should employers use male work-
ers for a particular job when they could hire
female workers at a lower wage rate? Neo-
cIassical theorists such as Arrow (1973) have
responded to this question by citing various
market rigidities that prevent profit max-
imization. Marxist dual labor market theo-
rists such as Reich et al. (1973) have im-
plicitly argued that capitalists are willing to
sacrifice short-term profits for a long-run
4 Blau (1977) points out that within an occupation,
men tend to work in high-wage firms and women in
low-wage firms. She argues that the high-wage em-
ployers are thus able to hire preferred workers men.
5 In this paper I refer to an employer as "he" because
I believe that this designation reflects reality and, for
purposes of explicating this theory, it is important to
consider the gender of employers.
strategy that guards against the develop-
ment of worker solidarity.
I have argued elsewhere (Strober,
1976:295) that ideology, i.e., "social, legal,
cultural and economic conventions," includ-
ing "subtle pressures from family, employ-
ees, customers and 'the community'," have
enforced certain hiring taboos preventing
employers from attempting to maximize
profits. We need to move further and briefly
define the concept of patriarchy, for it is
patriarchy that is the source of these con-
ventions and pressures. Based on Hart-
mann's work, I define patriarchy as a set of
personal, social, and economic relationships
that enable men to have power over women
and the services they provide. This is a pre-
liminary definition, and I am aware that it
needs specificity and refinement.6
One reason for discussing the concept of
patriarchy here is to demonstrate that male
employers are not simply profit maximizers.
They are simultaneously pursuing profit
maximization and the maintenance of male
privilege; that is, there is a tension between
patriarchy and profit maximization. This
tension is often latent; indeed, employers
may not even be conscious of it. But the fact
is that employers permit male workers to
choose their jobs because employers want
to maintain patriarchy. They recognize that
if male privilege is threatened in the work-
ing class or among professionals or lower-
leve] managers (by allowing women to have
jobs that men want), upper-level managers,
entrepreneurs, and capitalists would soon
6 It may be, as Whitehead (1979) has suggested, that
patriarchy is not the best term to use to describe wom-
en's subordination in gender relations. Whitehead ar-
gues that the term patriarchy connotes the power of
a husband over his wived, children, and property and
is only one specific form of male dominance. She has
also suggested that the term implies an unchanging,
historically constant form of subordination. I use the
term here mainly because it has been used in earlier
work and do not mean for it to refer only to the rela-
tional aspects of gender, nor do I assume it to be his-
torically constant.
OCR for page 148
148
MYRA H. STROBER
find their own male privileges under siege.
Male employers believe that they benefit
from keeping women subordinate to and de-
pendent on men in all classes of society, so
that women need to be married to men and
so that, because of their dependence, women
will continue to provide children as well as
domestic services for men. Male employers
(as well as male workers) recognize that pa-
triarchal relations must be maintained at the
workplace if they are to remain unthrea-
tened in the household. Thus, male man-
agers are willing to sacrifice some potential
profits by allowing men to choose the jobs
they wish. Male managers are wiping to trade
offsome profit opportunities to maintain the
system of patriarchy.
Let us move to the question of how jobs
are allocated by gender when an insufficient
number of men apply for positions in a new
occupation. The employer has several op-
tions: (1) raise the wage rate ant] try to at-
tract (more) men; (2) hire women who apply
andlor encourage (more) women to apply at
the existing wage rate; (3) recruit male or
female immigrants and hire them at the ex-
isting wage rate.7
The option exercised will depend first on
how many men have already been hired. If,
for example, a "significant" number of the
positions have been filled by men, employ-
ers may prefer the first option: raising wages
and attracting more men, for employers are
unlikely to hire women to fill the remaining
jobs in an occupation that men have claimed,
even if men haven't filled all the job va-
cancies. To do so would erode the principles
of patriarchy and male privilege. It might also
violate societal taboos about the two sexes
working together on certain jobs and/or might
7 Of course, to options 2 and 3 could be added options
specifying that the wage rate be lowered when re-
cruiting women or immigrants. One could argue that
during certain periods of our history the decision to
recruit blacks was made on grounds similar to the de-
cision to recruit immigrants.
interfere with male bonding.8 However, some
women might be hired, with the explicit or
implicit understanding of both employer and
employees that although hired they are none-
theless not full members of the "group." A
sense of marginality might tee conveyed Trough
lower pay, ineligibility for promotion, or in-
eligibility for membership in the relevant
union.
Suppose, however, that few men apply
for the new jobs at the existing wage rate.
If the employer believes that an adequate
supply of native male labor can be attracted
from other industries or other parts of the
country, he may raise the wage rate slightly
to attract men. The employer will be more
likely to do this if he believes that women
may not be interested in holding the job,
e.g., because holding such a job might vi-
olate existing norms and/or if he believes
that native men would perform the job sig-
nificantly better than either women or for-
eign workers. On the other hand, if financial
constraints prevent him from raising wages,
and he thinks women can perform the job
adequately, he might try to hire women. If
having women perform the job in question
violates existing societal norms about which
jobs are acceptable for women of a particular
race or class, so that few women apply, the
employer might engage in a campaign to
alter those norms. If women's employment
in the new occupation violates norms only
moderately, the employer's efforts to change
the norms would probably be successful and
8 The issue of taboos against the sexes working to-
gether needs further investigation. For a discussion of
male bonding, see Bradford et al. (1975~.
9 Meyers (1980) has detailed the exclusion of women
from the teachers' union in France during the 1890s,
when women were a minority of teachers. However,
once women became the majority of teachers, the men
remaining in the profession saw the need for gender
cooperation and permitted women to join the union.
Other examples of women's exclusion from unions are
given in Hartmann (1976) and Milkman (1980~.
OCR for page 149
TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
149
women would be hired. Norms clearly can
be changed, but, except during wartime or
times of social revolution, they change fairly
slowly. Thus, if according to existing norms
a job is considered flagrantly unsuitable for
women it is likely that, in the short run,
ordinary campaigns to alter these norms
would not bring forth an adequate supply of
women workers. In such a situation the em-
ployer would begin to recruit workers from
abroad. A
This discussion can be summarized by
noting the conditions under which foreign
men, or perhaps men from a native racial
minority, would be recruited to fill a new
occupation: (1) enough native majority men
did not apply to fill an occupation; (2) financial
constraints prevented the employer from
raising the wage and/or the employer did
not believe that native majority men would
perform the job any better than women or
foreign or minority men; and (3) employment
of women in the occupation flagrantly vio-
lated existing norms. (A discussion of con-
ditions under which foreign or minority
women might be recruited goes beyond the
scope of this initial sketch of the theory.)
Next comes the question of the devel-
opment of the wage differential between
women's and men's jobs. I have arguer! thus
far that, if men do not apply for a new job
at an existing wage rate and if employers do
not decide to raise the wage rate in an effort
to attract men from other areas in the nation
or from other jobs, employers will offer the
job to women at the same rate at which it
was offered to men. Suppose then that a
sufficient number of women apply and that
all ofthe new job slots are filled at the posted
wage rate. At this point, if we compare the
wage rate earned by women in this job to
the wage rate earned by the men who con-
sidered taking the job but decided not to,
it Alternatively, the employer might turn to a native
racial minority.
we will find a wage differential, with men
earning higher wages than women. After all,
one of the reasons why the men declines!
the job in question was probably its low rel-
ative wage. Thus, within race and class cat-
egories, the fact Mat men have the first choice
of occupations leads not only to occupational
sex segregation but also to a gender wage
differential. Patriarchy combined with men's
desire to maximize their economic gain leads
to higher relative wages for men.
As time passes and an occupation be-
comes solidly female, employers may lower
the wage rate relative to others or fad! to
increase it as fast as others, thereby further
increasing the gender wage differential. As
noted earlier, when a wage rate is first set
for a new occupation when employers think
that men will enter We occupation the wage
rate is set in accordance with the firm's or
industry's internal wage structure and in ac-
cordance with wages for similar jobs in the
local labor market. However, we may hy-
pothesize that, once an occupation becomes
a female occupation, employers will often
lower its wage rate. First, the original wage
rate, which was set in comparison to existing
male wages, will be too high in comparison
to the wages for other female jobs in the
firm and in the local labor market. ii Second,
employers will see no reason to pay women
male rates: women do not "need" the money
as much as men, only men require a"family
wage" women need only enough income
to support themselves—and women, be-
cause they are often geographically immo-
bile and/or excluded from other higher-pay-
ing occupations have a less wage-elastic
supply curve than men and therefore can
be retained at a lower wage.
In the theory I have proposed, women's
ii For a discussion of how firms' internal wage struc-
tures differ by gender and how job evaluation tech-
niques cement these differences, see Treiman and
Hartmann (1981~.
OCR for page 150
150
MYRA H. STROBER
job choices play a rather insignificant role.
By and large, women move into only those
jobs that men leave for them. Turning to
the issues of stability and change in the gen-
der assignment of occupations, we find that
women's opportunities for choice are again
overshadowed by men's actions. I do not
want to argue that women make no choices
at all. They do, and it is interesting to in-
vestigate their constrained! choices and the
circumstances under which some women are
able to contribute to a modest breakdown
of occupational segregation. However, like
the origin of occupational segregation, the
stability and change in that segregation is
determined overwhelmingly by men's choices
and men's behavior. In recent times, of
course, equal employment opportunity leg-
islation and affirmative action orders have
served to increase women's choices and de-
crease the scope of men's exclusionary be-
havior. The following discussion, however,
examines the dynamics of occupational seg-
regation in the absence of legislation and
executive and court orders.
Once a job has been inhabited by one
gender or another, it becomes "typed" as
male or female, and strong forces act to
maintain its gender assignment. If men oc-
cupy an occupation, they might actively and
collectively seek to keep women out, fearing
that if women enter they will lower the earn-
ings of the job by accepting lower wage rates
or, if they are paid the same as men, di-
minish patriarchal hegemony. For although
men act as individual maximizers in choos-
ing their occupations, once they begin to
work in an occupation and identify with it,
they act collectively to maintain its gender
designation. It is true, of course, that women
will rarely choose to enter a male-typed oc-
cupation, fearing a diminution of their per-
ceived femininity and thus a reduction of
their prospects for marriage, which until re-
cently was their primary avenue to eco-
nomic gain. Women behave in this way pri-
marily because they fear negative sanctions
from men not because they have free choice
and are rejecting male occupations. When
these negative sanctions disappear, e.g.,
during wartime, women more readily, and
often enthusiastically, enter the higher-paid
male occupations.
If an occupation is occupied by women,
the barrier to integration is largely male be-
havior. Women put up no resistance to men
entering "their" occupations, for they know
that if more men enter both the prestige
and earnings of the occupation are likely to
rise. But men are reluctant to enter female
occupations, primarily because of their low
wages but also because they fear ridicule by
other men and aspersions on their mascu-
linity if they do.
If both genders initially take part in an
occupation, call it X, eventually one of the
two will come to dominate. Which gender
achieves primacy in X depends on the at-
tractiveness of alternative occupations for
men. If, as time goes on, X is cleskilled (i. e.,
requires lower skills) and wages fall, or if
new occupations are created that men find
more attractive economically, men wile move
out of X. On the other hand, if new and
existing occupations come to be seen as less
attractive economically than X, men will
move into X. It is also possible that women
will move to other occupations, in which
case X may become an occupation for which
foreign labor is recruited. One observes that,
in the musical chairs of occupational shifts,
there is a clear hierarchy of players: men
get first choice of job opportunities. One is
also impressed with the interdependence of
occupational gender assignments. Whether
a particular occupation remains gender typed
or changes its gender assignment depends
not only on its wages and working conditions
but also on those in alternative occupations.
It seems to be that as occupations shift
from one gender designation to another there
are important "tipping" points. Once an oc-
cupation becomes significantly male (or fe-
male), it quickly tips and fairly soon there-
after becomes overwhelmingly male (or
female). Just what percentage constitutes this
OCR for page 151
TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
151
tipping point probably varies by occupation
and historical period.
The reasons for the existence of a tipping
point are evident from our discussion of the
forces that maintain the stability of an oc-
cupation's gender designation. Once it is clear
that an occupation is significantly male, men
actively prevent women from entering and
women become reluctant to apply. By the
same token, once it is clear that an occu-
pation is significantly female, it will be
shunned by men. In other words, the ex-
pectation that occupations will not be mixed
but will be either male or female helps bring
about the fulfillment of that expectation.
HOW TEACHING BECAME A FEMALE
OCCUPATION
To what extent can my theory be applied
to the case of public school teaching in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries? Statistics for the nation as a whole on
the percentage of women teachers are un-
available for the years prior to 1870. In Mas-
sachusetts, which was at the vanguard of the
movement of women into teaching, women
made up 56 percent of the public school
personnel in 1834 and 78 percent in 1860
(Vinovskis and Bernard, 1978~. In Ohio, a
more typical state with respect to women in
teaching, women made up 39 percent of the
teachers in 1840 and 46 percent in 1850
(Woody, 1929~. For the United States as a
whole, about 60 percent of all teachers were
women in 1870. By 1900 the figure was up
to 70 percent, and by 1920 it had reached
a peak of 86 percent (U.S. Office of Edu-
cation's Biennial Survey of Education for
1870, 1900, 19201.~2
These figures conceal considerable vari-
ability by geographic region and ruraVurban
}2 We Ho major sources of statistics on teachers by
gender are the annual and biennial reports of the U. S.
Commissioner of Education and the decennial census
reports.
location. For example, in 1870, when women
constituted 60 percent of all teachers na-
tionwide, women made up less than half the
teacher population in 26 states. In Wash-
ington, D.C., women made up 92 percent
of the teachers in 1870, but in neighboring
Virginia women filled only 35 percent of the
teaching jobs.
Why did women come to constitute an
increasingly larger percentage of teachers in
the period from the mid-nineteenth century
to the end of World War I? In the context
of my theory outlined earlier, the question
should be rephrased to read: why did men
choose to leave the teaching profession dur-
ing that period? We can begin by noting
that the latter half of the nineteenth century
witnessed a substantial increase in the de-
mand for teachers as a result of population
growth, increased commitment to universal
education, and a desired decrease in the
typical number of students in each class. For
teaching to have remained a male profes-
sion, the percentage of all male workers en-
gaged in teaching would have had to be in-
creased.
Nonetheless, although demand for teach-
ers was increasing, school boards were not
willing to raise wages to attract male teach-
ers. In fact, teachers, especially in rural areas,
were paid very low wages, often on a par
with those of common laborers. This may
have resulted from a disinclination to set
high tax rates and/or an ideological deval-
uation of education and teachers' roles. On
the one hand, the educational requirements
(literacy and a working knowledge of the
three Rs) demanded of teachers at that time
were modest by modern standards. On the
other hand, school boards required a native-
born middle-class appearance and behavior
and good moral character. Nevertheless, it
was virtually impossible to support a family
with middIe-ciass standards on a teacher's
salary. Most men who taught school did so
as a stepping stone to another career or on
a part-time basis while pursuing other work.
Most women who taught school were young
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MYRA H. STROBER
and single with few financial responsibilities
for others. Men often taught cluring the win-
ter term, when the older boys were in at-
tendance, while women were more likely to
teach during the summer term.
During the latter half of the nineteenth
century, although starting somewhat earlier
in Massachusetts, teaching began to undergo
a revolution in the organization of schools
and schooling. The revolution began in ur-
ban areas anti spread to the countryside.
Schools became more formalized in three
important ways. First, as schools grew in
size, classes became graded, i.e., children
were taught in groups divided by age. Sec-
ond, once schools were large and graded,
they were bureaucratized. A curriculum was
developed for each grade, and a large num-
ber of school management functions were
required. Third, as a result of a knowledge
explosion, the growth of the middle class,
and the increasing complexity of work, the
high school evolved. Moreover, states be-
gan to regulate education, lengthening school
terms and formally credentialling teach-
ers. Teachers were often required to at-
tend summer institutes to maintain their cre-
dentials.
These changes tended to make teaching
less attractive to men. When teaching was
a relatively casual occupation that could be
engaged in for fairly short periods of time,
it was attractive to men in a variety of cir-
cumstances. A farmer could easily combine
teaching in the winter with caring for his
farm during the rest of the year. A potential
minister, politician, shopkeeper, or lawyer
could teach for a short period of time to gain
visibility within the community. However,
once standards were raised for teacher cer-
tification and school terms were lengthened
and combined into a continuous year, men
began to drop out of teaching (Morain, 19741.
In urban areas, where teaching was first for-
malized, and later in rural areas, most men
found that the opportunity cost of teaching
was simply too great. Even though annual
salaries were higher once standards were
raised and the school term lengthened, the
average teaching salary remained inade-
quate to support a family. Men also disliked
losing their former classroom autonomy. And
at the same time, and perhaps most impor-
tantly, attractive job opportunities were de-
veloping for men in business and in other
~ -
protesslons.
As men left teaching, school boards turned
more and more toward women. For a va-
riety of reasons, women were ready to move
into teaching. First, many young women
possessed the required education. By the
middle of the nineteenth century, women
and men had virtually the same literacy rates,
and girls were almost as likely to be attend-
ing school as were boys.~3 Second, young
girls were moving increasingly into the paid
workforce. As the production of many goods
and services moved out of the home and
began to be supplied through the market,
the domestic services of young women were
less frequently needed by their parents. At
first, young women did piecework in their
own homes. They also worked as domestics
in other people's homes. Finally, when New
England mill owners sought young women
to work in their factories, young women
moved into these positions. But most other
jobs were closed to women. Thus, although
men were moving out of teaching because
i3 Lockridge (1974), using the ability to sign one's
name on one's will as a measure of literacy, found that
by 1850, except in the South, both men and women
over the age of 20 were almost universally literate.
The causes of this silent revolution in girls' school
attendance is an interesting topic in its own right, for
in colonial times girls were generally excluded from
district schools. Vinovskis and Bernard (1978) noted
that in 1850 in New England about 80 percent of white
males and about 75 percent of white females ages 5 to
19 attended school. Attendance rates for 1850 for both
sexes and the ratio of female/male school attendance
descends, however, as we move through the Middle
Atlantic, North Central, South Central, and South At-
lantic regions, respectively. In the South Atlantic, about
41 percent of white males and about 35 percent of white
females ages 5 to 19 attended school.
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TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
153
the opportunity cost of remaining was too
high, single young women with middie-cIass
backgrounds found teaching an attractive al-
ternative to other paid work or to remaining
at home and assisting with domestic chores.
Young women might weD have moved into
teaching without any assistance from ideo-
logical campaigns. But perhaps to ensure
women's interest in teaching or to make their
entry more palatable to their parents, future
husbands, and pupils, a major ideological
crusade was waged in favor of women's entry
into teaching. Advocates of women as teach-
ers, such as Catharine Beecher, Mary Lyon,
Zilpah Grant, Horace Mann, and Henry
Barnard, argued that not only were women
the ideal teachers of young children (be-
cause of their patience and nurturant qual-
ities) but also that teaching was ideal prep-
aration for motherhood. They also proclaimed
the virtues of women's willingness to teach
at lower wages than those required by men.
Indeed the arguments in favor of women
teaching were so compelling that one won-
ders how it was that any men remained in
teaching. But a few did remain and at higher
wages than those paid to women (Strober
and Best, 19791.
Why didn't teaching become a completely
female occupation? And why were the men
who remained in teaching paid higher wages
than women teachers? It is useful to answer
these questions by looking separately at ru-
ral and urban labor markets.
In rural areas, one-room schoolhouses often
persisted even after school terms were
lengthened and credentialling was formal-
ized at the state level. Women and men
tended to do the same job, and the gender
wage differential tended to be small, al-
though invariably in men's favor. As already
noted, prior to the lengthening of the school
term, there had generally been two separate
short terms, one in the winter and one in
the summer. Men tended to teach in the
winter term and had the older boys in their
class. During the summer term, when men
and older boys were engaged in farming,
women were generally the teachers. A myth
grew that women had more difficulty than
men in "handling" the older boys. Thus, it
may be that in rural schools men received
a pay premium for their supposed discipli-
nary abilities. It may also be that on the
whole men had more experience in teaching
and received a return on that experience.
In urban markets, however, the men who
remained in teaching did not perform the
same jobs as their female counterparts. The
labor market for teachers in urban areas was
highly stratified, and men had the higher-
paying, more prestigious jobs: principals,
vice-principals, and high school teachers.
That management jobs were reserved for
men even in an occupation that was over-
whelmingly female is an important obser-
vation. It may be that school boards, which
perceived women as impermanent mem-
bers of the work force, believed they could
decrease their management training costs
by training only men for managerial posi-
tions. However, the fact is that even when
women did maintain their attachment to the
work force they were rarely trained or hired
for management positions, thus suggesting
that other considerations beyond training
costs were operative in school boards' de-
cisions. No doubt a desire for patriarchical
hegemony at the local level was a factor in
school boards' decision to hire male man-
agers for schools and especially for the su-
perintendency, a post that brought its in-
cumbent into frequent contact with local male
leaders in business and politics.
What quantitative evidence exists to sup-
port this theory? As any cliometrician has
by now ascertained, it is not possible to pro-
vide a definitive empirical testing of the the-
ory put forth here. The required data on
alternative wage rates simply do not exist.
There is, however, econometric evidence
consistent with this theory.
In regressions designed to explain the
cross-sectional variance in the percentage of
women teachers in a sample of counties for
1850 and 1880, Strober and Lanford (1981)
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154
MYRA H. STROBER
found that the length of the school year and
the number of teachers per school both
measures of the relative formalization of
school were positive and significant de-
terminants of the percentage of female
teachers. At the same time, the femaTe/male
salary differential was found to be lower the
greater the percentage of women in teach-
ing (Strober and Lanford, 1981~. In pooled
cross-sectional regressions for the period
1870-1970, Lanford (as cited in Gordon, 1980)
found support for the hypothesis that greater
formalization of the educational system in-
creased the proportion of female teachers.
In a case study of school personnel in San
Francisco in 1879, Strober and Best (1979)
described their results as follows (p. 2341:
Holding education and experience constant, sex
played a significant role in determining the po-
sition and type of school of employment. We also
concluded that education and experience were
less important than position and type of school
in explaining salary variation by sex and that,
holding constant education, experience and po-
sition, a greater percentage of the F/M salary
ratio stemmed from sex differentials in pay across
types of schools than from sex differentials within
types of schools.
Margo and RotelIa (1981) found for the
Houston school system in the 1892-1923 pe-
riod that "although some of the prevalence
of males in administrative posts and some
of the size of the female/male salary differ-
ential is explained by differences in expe-
rience and education, maleness itself was a
valued attribute in school personnel" (p. 20~.
In the post-WorId War II period, teach-
ing has maintained its gender designation,
but the percentage of men in the profession
has increased markedly. Moreover, women
in teaching are no longer primarily young
and unmarried. In 1978 about one-third of
all teachers, elementary and secondary com-
bined, were men. In high schools in 1978,
men constituted slightly more than half of
all teachers (54 percent), an increase of about
18 percentage points from the 1945-1946 fig-
ure of 36 percent. In elementary schools in
1978, men constituted about 17 percent of
all teachers, an increase of about 11 per-
centage points from the 1945-1946 figure of
6 percent. The detailed reasons for this
change remain to be explored (for a brief
discussion, see Tyack and Strober, 1981~.
However, my theory suggests that men in-
creasingly saw teaching as economically at-
tractive (increased unionization has perhaps
helped in this regard) and that, in accord-
ance with the principle that men should have
first choice in job opportunities, those re-
sponsible for teacher hiring were happy to
readmit them to the profession.
CONCLUSION
In this paper I have sought to outline a
new, general theory of occupational sex seg-
regation. The theory suggests that occupa-
tional sex segregation as well as the female/
male wage differential results from two ma-
jor principles. First, although male employ-
ers set wages and working conditions, within
the constraints set down by race and class,
male employers allow male workers to de-
cide which occupations they will inhabit.
Second, in deciding which jobs to claim for
themselves and which to leave for women,
male workers, again within the constraints
laid down by race and class, attempt to max-
imize their economic gain by comparing the
economic package presented by any partic-
ular occupation with the economic packages
offered by other occupations. Thus, occu-
pations become male or female not because
of their inherent characteristics but because
of the interaction of patriarchy and male
workers' utility maximization.
I have also used this general theory as a
framework for explaining the changes in the
gender composition of the teaching profes-
sion in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth century. Stated most simply, teaching
became a female occupation largely because
men moved out of it. As schools and school-
ing became more formalized, teaching be-
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TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX SEGREGATION
155
came less attractive to men while at the same
time more lucrative job opportunities were
developing for men in business and in other
professions. Although the quantitative evi-
dence summarized in the paper is consistent
with the theory, it is difficult to obtain his-
torical data that would provide a definitive
test of the theory.
As notes! earlier, recent changes in equal
employment opportunity legislation and af-
firmative action orders have complicated the
dynamics of occupational sex segregation.
Clearly, future theoretical work will need
to look carefully at these interventions. Based
on what we have learned here, however, we
predict that, in order to be successful in
changing the gender assignment of jobs, any
intervention strategy (such as equal em-
ployment opportunity efforts) would have to
do more than merely attack hiring and pro-
motion rules. It would have to concern itself
with gender relations in society as a whole,
because patriarchal ideology and supply ant!
demand factors in the labor market are inex-
tricably interwoven. It would appear that,
unless there is widespread agreement on
the virtues of breaking down patriarchal re-
lations, mate employers and male workers
will find ample opportunities for frustrating
the goals of governmental interventions in
the job market.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following people provided helpful
comments on the first craft of this paper:
Alice Amsden, Francine Blau, Martin Car-
noy, Regina Cordna, Heidi Hartmann, Henry -
Levin, Karen Oppenheim Mason, Aline
Quester, Judith Steihm, Joan Talbert, Deb-
orah Thresher, ant! David Tyack.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
labor market
