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OCR for page 310
I~ Concluding Remarks
FEtANCINE D. BLAU
Employment segregation by sex is one of
the most persistent and pervasive charac-
teristics of the labor market. Ike papers in
this volume help us to understand the di-
mensions of such segregation, its funda-
mental causes, ant] its consequences for
women's economic status. They also shed
some light on the effectiveness of policy in-
terventions.
In Chapter 2, Andrea Beller gives us the
heartening news that, on the basis of anal-
ysis of Current Population Survey data, the
tendency of men and women to be segre-
gatec! by occupation declined noticeably over
the 1970s, particularly among younger
women. Moreover, this decline was at a rate
nearly three times that of the extremely small
decline that occurred during the 1960s. We
must remember, however, that the mag-
nitude of segregation remains high. Fur-
thermore, although women increased their
share of many traditionally male managerial
and professional occupations during the
1970s, this was not the case for heavily male
craft and operative jobs.
In Chapter 3 Bielby and Baron demon-
strate that estimates of the magnitude of sex
segregation in employment are extremely
310
sensitive to the level of aggregation of the
data. Even detailed (three-digit) census oc-
cupational categories group some typically
male and some typically female jobs into
apparently integrated categories. To the ex-
tent that men and women workers in the
same occupational categories are segregated
by firm, aggregation across firms will result
in an underestimate of the magnitude of sex
segregation in employment. Using estab-
lishment-leve! data and defining segregation
in terms of the employer's own job cate-
gories, Bielby and Baron find a striking pat-
tern of complete sex segregation by occu-
pation at the establishment level for a majority
of firms (including some single-sex enter-
prises) and an extremely high level of seg-
regation for the others. Their work raises
the question of whether estimates of trends
in the magnitude of occupational segrega-
tion based on such microdata might differ
from Beller's estimates on the basis of ag-
gregate data. Less than a quarter ofthe firms
in Bielby and Baron's longituclinal sample
experienced any declines in the degree of
occupational sex segregation during the late
1960s and early 1970s.
These are the contours of occupational
OCR for page 311
CONCLUDING REMARKS
311
segregation by sex in the U. S. labor market.
In assessing the significance of occupational
segregation, we must know more about its
causes ant! consequences. From a policy
perspective, an understanding of the con-
sequences is crucial for assessing how im-
portant a problem it is, while an analysis of
its causes helps us determine the most ef-
fective tools for attacking it.
The studies I reviewed in Chapter 7 sug-
gest that occupational segregation does re-
duce the earnings of women, although there
are considerable problems in precisely es-
timating the magnitude of this effect. A par-
ticular problem is that overcrowding in the
female sector may adversely affect women's
wages in the male sector as well. This im-
parts a downward bias to estimates of the
wage consequences of segregation based on
comparisons of women's wages in female and
male occupations. It is also important to point
out that the focus on earnings does not take
into account the possibly negative nonpe-
cuniary consequences of sex segregation in
employment for women. Intuitively one feels
that occupational segregation reinforces cul-
tural notions that men and women differ
fundamentally in capabilities, preferences,
and social and economic roles.
Our appraisal of the seriousness of the
problem of occupational segregation may
depend! in part on the ease with which women
are able to move between the male and fe-
male sectors. The studies in Chapters 4 and
10 do find some movement of women from
predominantly female to predominantly male
jobs and vice versa. In Chapter 4, Rosenfeld
found that such changes in the sex labels of
occupations were experienced by about one-
third of women job changers over a one-
year period, while in Chapter 10 Corcoran,
Duncan, and Ponza found that about one-
third of all employed women made such shifts
over a five-year period. These findings sug-
gest that the male and female sectors ought
not to be viewed as watertight compart-
ments, but they do not in my opinion greatly
mitigate our concern over the issue of oc-
cupational sex segregation. First, the mag-
nitude of movement is fairly small that is,
most women workers did not change the sex
label of their jobs over the periods analyzed.
Moreover, it is difficult to judge the mag-
nitude of the probability of such moves in
the abstract. We need} to know more about
the desire for such moves on the part of
workers and how easy it is for women rel-
ative to men to move out of (generally Tower-
paying) female jobs into (generally higher-
paying) male jobs. It is instructive in this
regard that both studies find the probability
of a man moving from a predominantly fe-
male to a predominantly male job to be con-
siderably higher than the probability of a
woman making such a move. Furthermore,
women whose previous jobs were predom-
inantly male were much more likely to change
the sex label of their jobs than women whose
previous jobs were predominantly female.
Second, Bielby and Baron's findings raise
the question of how much of what appear
to be shifts in the sex labels of jobs as mea-
sured by aggregate data actually entails
changes in the sex label of the individual's
job at the establishment level.
The causes of occupational segregation are
often classified in terms of supply- versus
demand-side factors. The major supply-side
explanations considered in this volume are
sex-role socialization and the human capital
model. In Chapter 11, Marini and Brinton
describe how the socialization process influ-
ences the occupational orientation of men
and women as well as the role they see mar-
ket work playing in their lives. It is the latter
difference between men and women that is
emphasized by the human capital explana-
tion critiqued by Corcoran et al. According
to this view, because women anticipate
shorter and less continuous work lives than
men, it wit! be in their economic self-inter-
est to choose female occupations, which re-
quire smaller human capital investments and
have lower wage penalties for time spent
OCR for page 312
312
FRANCINE D. BLAU
out of the labor force. Their own research
and that of others summarized by Corcoran
et al. does not tend to support the human
capital model. In particular, women with
discontinuous work careers appear to be no
more likely to work at female jobs than
women with more continuous work expe-
rience. Nor did their findings suggest that
the selection of female jobs is consistent with
a strategy of maximizing lifetime income,
given shorter, more disrupted work lives.
On the demand side, I point out in Chap-
ter 7 that employers may be motivated to
exclude women from particular jobs because
of the belief that they would be less stable
or productive workers than men. Even if
not initially correct, such views can become
self-fulfi~ling prophesies if women are then
given fewer incentives than men to become
stable, productive workers. Boos and Reskin
in Chapter 13 emphasize institutional fac-
tors in their review of a variety of barriers
to female employment in traditionally male
jobs at four points in the job allocation pro-
cess: pre-employment training, access anal
assignment to jobs, mobility, and retention.
The operation ofthese barriers does not rely
on conscious, overt discriminatory acts on
the part of employers. Rather, the everyday
operation of the system works against female
employment in traditionally male jobs. A
clearer unclerstanding of the functions these
institutional mechanisms serve is of long-
run importance in devising effective strat-
egies to remove these obstacles to women's
advancement.
While the papers in this volume do not
endeavor to fully evaluate the impact offed-
eral government intervention in this area,
an interesting view emerges of what such
an evaluation would entail. A variety of ways
in which the government potentially influ-
ences women's economic status are identi-
fied. Some of these effects are positive and
some are negative. An overall assessment of
the government's impact would necessitate
identifying the net effect of all its many pol-
icies and programs. This point may be il-
lustrated by a discussion of the impact of a
few government policies. On one hand, as
Boos and Reskin point out, governmental
income tax and social security policy tend
to discourage female labor force participa-
tion. To the extent that the human capital
explanation has merit, the resulting de-
crease in women's work lives would increase
the likelihood of their entering traditionally
female jobs. Furthermore, while govern-
ment training programs provide an oppor-
tunity for intervention to reduce segregation
by training individuals for sex-atypical jobs,
Waite and Berryman's research suggests in
Chapter 16 that occupational training under
the Comprehensive Employment and
Training Act (CETA) is sex segregated to a
great extent.
On the other hand, of course, the gov-
ernment administers an impressive array of
antidiscrimination legislation and regula-
tions. There is some debate over the effec-
tiveness of these activities, and it is un-
doubte~y difficult to measure governmental
impact in this area. But it is significant that
O'Farrell and Harlan report in Chapter 15
that governmental pressure was an impor-
tant factor promoting change within some
firms. They also find that the employment
growth of firms provides opportunities for
integration and thus also facilitates change.
The government's macroeconomic policies
and their impact on overall business con-
ditions are therefore another way in which
government may have an effect on the em-
ployment opportunities of women the
quality of jobs obtained as well as the prob-
ability of finding a job at all.
While all movements toward occupational
integration should be welcome, it is impor-
tant to realize that the movement of women
into male jobs does not always bring women
significantly closer to economic parity with
men. For one thing, occupational sex seg-
regation may be replaced by female en-
cIaves at the lower levels of male job lad-
ders a process O'Farrell and Harlan term
resegregation. For another, O'Farrell and
OCR for page 313
CONCLUDING REMARKS
313
Harlan note that women may gain access to
male jobs just as they are becoming tech-
nologicallyobsolete. Indeed, Strober argues
in Chapter 8 that, in general, women are
restricted to the leftovers, the jobs that men
do not want.
Sex segregation in employment remains
a pervasive feature of the labor market and
a major cause of women's lower earnings.
While sex differences in socialization and
the voluntary choices that women make in
their selection of jobs may play a role in
producing sex segregation in employment,
labor market discrimination is undoubtedly
also a major factor. Such discrimination is
deeply entrenched: Within the workplace,
a myriad of institutional mechanisms work
to perpetuate segregation of work along sex
lines without requiring overt, conscious acts
of discrimination on the part of employers.
While some government policies work to
reduce sex segregation in employment, others
actually help perpetuate it. Thus, change
will not be easy yet such change is essen-
tial if we are to move substantially closer to
the goal of economic parity between women
and men in the labor market.
OCR for page 314
Representative terms from entire chapter:
male jobs
