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Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job (1986)

Chapter: 3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace

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Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 39
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 40
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 42
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 44
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 50
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 51
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 52
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 53
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 54
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 55
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 56
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 57
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 58
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 59
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 60
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 61
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 62
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 63
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 64
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 65
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 66
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 67
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 68
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 69
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 70
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 71
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 72
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 73
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 74
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 75
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 76
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 77
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 78
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 79
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 80
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
Page 81
Suggested Citation:"3. Explaining Sex Segregation in the Workplace." National Research Council. 1986. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/610.
×
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- Explaining Sex Segregation In the Workplace In the committee's judgment, the causes of job segregation are multiple, interlocking, and deep-seated yet, as we show in Chap- ter 4, they are also amenable to policy in- tervention. In this chapter we discuss the factors we fee} to be the most important in accounting for the extreme degree of sex segregation of work observed in the United States. Intertwined with the social processes that contribute to job segregation are widely shared cultural assumptions about the sexes and their appropriate activities. For exam- ple, the belief of many people, including many women, that women should place the care oftheir families first in theirlives affects the way women are treated on the job when Hey do work. And such beliefs also interact with reality: many women today do indeed bear the greater share ofthe day-to-day work involved in family care. Similarly, it is often assumed that physical differences between the sexes make them suited or unsuited for certain types of work, anti there are average sex differences in size and stature that may be significant in some occupations. In this chapter we first examine the cul- tural beliefs that govern common attitudes about gentler and work. We next examine 37 barriers to employment, tracing how some beliefs became embodied in laws and judi- cial decisions that permitted or demancled that employers treat the sexes differently, and how they continue to provide ration- alizations for both intentional and uninten- tional labor market discrimination against women (and, less frequently, men). Third, we investigate the roles that women's own choices and preferences play in their work careers and examine the effects of sociali- zation and training. Assumptions about what kinds of work are appropriate for each gen- der, communicated through various social- ization and training processes, contribute to the development of sex-typed occupational preferences in individuals. Evidence sug- gests, however, that such sex-typed pref- erences are neither fixed for life nor fully deterministic of the sex type of workers' jobs. Fourth, we examine the role that family re- sponsibilities, actual or anticipated, play in shaping both women's choices and their op- portunities. Finally, we examine the thesis that the occupational opportunity structure plays a major role in perpetuating the con- centration of the sexes in different jobs. By the occupational opportunity structure we

38 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK mean the distribution of occupations that are available to members of each sex (and often certain racial and ethnic groups within each sex), a distribution that is seen to be limited by institutionalized and informal barriers Mat restrict workers' opportunities. Regarding the relative importance of these various factors, it is our judgment that wom- en's free occupational choices made in an open market explain only very incompletely their concentration in a small number of fe- male-dominated occupations. While work- ers' choices undoubtedly contribute to the observed occupational distributions of the sexes, their labor market outcomes depend heavily on the occupational opportunity structure, on various barriers, including em- ployers' and coworkers' preferences, and on institutionalized personnel procedures. In this chapter we look at the evidence in more detail. CULTURAL BELIEFS ABOUT GENDER AND WORK Beliefs about differences between the sexes, many of them taken as axiomatic, play an important role in the organization of so- cial life. These assumptions are often so much a part of our world view that we do not consciously think about them. As one an- thropologist put it, they are "referentially transparent" to us (Hutchins, 1980~. It is their transparency that gives them their force: because they are invisible, the underlying assumptions go unquestioned, and the be- liefs they entail seem natural to us. Even when we do question and revise certain of these beliefs for instance, when we realize that they are prejudicial to women the im- plicit assumptions that engendered them re- main intact and can serve as the foundation for future, perhaps somewhat altered, sex stereotypes. The cultural axioms that have been used to exclude women from the work- place, to restrict them to certain occupa- tions, or to condition their wage labor fall into three broad categories: those related to women s role in the home, those related to male-female relationships, and those related to innate differences between the sexes. Women's Role in the Home The first category consists of those as- sumptions that hold that women's "natural" place is in the home. This group of assump- tions underlies many specific attitudes about women and work held by employers, male workers, lawmakers, parents, husbands, and women themselves. It seeks to legitimate women's exclusion from the public sphere and hence the workplace and implies that a woman who is committed to her job is un- womanly. This axiom is neither universal nor timeless. It is an expression of cultural beliefs elaborated especially over the last two centuries and perhaps most filthy de- veloped and widely disseminated, through the popular media, in the contemporary United States. The assumption that wom- en's place is in the home follows from the premise that men support women, so women do not need to do wage work to earn a living. By implication, if women are employer!, it must be for extras or diversion from do- mestic life, so their concentration in low- paying, dead-end jobs is of little importance. The corollary to this set of assumptions, that men do not belong in the home during work- ing hours, also accounts for the almost totally segregated occupation of housewife and may help to explain the resilience of the tradi- tional sexual division of domestic work among couples in which both partners are em- ployed fills time. Historically as well as today, the notion that women's place is in the home has not reflected the actual behavior of large sectors of the population; hence it has been in fi~n- damental conflict with the reality of many women's lives. Women have worked to sup ~ This section on cultural beliefs relies heavily on di Leonexdo (1982).

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE port themselves and their families; they have worked because their labor was needed. Women have replaced men gone to war. They have done heavy labor on family farms when necessary. They have sought wage work when there was no means of support for them on the farm. They have taken in boarders and devised other ways to earn money at home. Women who are urban and minority, recent immigrants, and poor in genera] have done menial work for low wages, without the primacy of women's domestic role being invoked. And highly educated women, earning better salaries, have also worked as nurses, teachers, social workers, office workers, and businesswomen since late in the last century. As women from all parts of the social and economic spectrum have increased their labor force participation, the contradiction between the unclerlying belief about women's place and reality has become more visible. We can now see ways in which the belief system has been modified with changing cir- cumstances and ways in which reality has been reconciled to the belief system (di Leo- nardo, 19821. For example, those who insist that women should not work claim the in- oompatibility of paid employment with women's domestic roles, in that paid work interferes with proper child care. Those who wish to justify women's employment outside the home, by contrast, try to show that it is compatible with, even complements, their home roles. Ike latter justification permits or even promotes jobs for women that min- imize interference with child care through flexible scheduling (e.g., school teaching or part-time work), low demands on incum- bents (e.g., retail sales), or work that can be done at home (e.g., data processing, typing, sewing). Certain occupations (e.g., teaching home economics) that are believed to en- hance women's ability to carry out domestic duties later in their lives may be considered more acceptable than others. Other occu- pations (e.g., nursing, social work) have been acceptable because they have been defined 39 as an extension of women's domestic roles, a rationale that has been used to justify pay- ing workers in these jobs low wages (Kessler- Harris, 19821. Thus, despite the strong contradiction be- tween the notion of women's place and real- ity, the former continues to provide the foundation for beliefs about the conditions under which women should and should not do wage work. Most important for the pres- ent endeavor are beliefs as to which occu- pations are appropriate for them. Male-Female Relationships A second category of beliefs includes those about gender differences that are relevant in male-female relationships. For example, an ancient and pervasive belief in Western thought is that women lack reason and are governed by emotion (N. Davis, 197S; Jor- danova, 19801. This line of thought offers a logical basis for assuming "natural" male dominance and underlies social values that men should not be subordinate to women. Whenever the two sexes interact outside the family, women are viewed as subordinate, and when they enter the workplace, they are expected to fill subordinate occupational roles. Caplow (1954) elaborates this point, arguing that attitudes governing interper- sonal relationships in our culture sanction only a few working relationships between men and women and prohibit all others. He contends that according to these values, "in- timate groups, except those based on family or sexual ties, should be composed of either sex but not both" (p. 2381. Intimate work groups in which men and women have un- equal roles are sometimes allowed. I1ese norms of sexual segregation and male dom- inance have frequently guided employers' hiring decisions. Women are rarely hired in positions of authority (Wolf and Fligstein, 1979a, 1979b). Some employers explain that they defer to workers' preferences. Male managers surveyed one and two decades ago indicated that they felt both women and men

40 WOAlEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK would be uncomfortable working under a woman supervisor (Grinder, 1961; Bass et al., 19711. They also thought that women in supervisory roles have difficulty dealing with men in subordinate positions. In several recent studies, it is clear that attitudes about female supervisors have changed. Two-thirds of the respondents in a 1980 Roper survey said it made no differ- ence to them whether they worked for a man or a woman, and only 28 percent preferred a male supervisor (Barron and Yankelovich, 1980:Table 5~. A survey of 1,402 university employees revealed a preference for male bosses and professionals providing personal services (accountants, dentists, lawyers, physicians, realtors, and veterinarians), but it was weaker among women, the more ecI- ucated, and those who had had positive ex- periences with female bosses or professionals (Ferber et al., 1979~. A study of women in several traditionally male jobs in public util- ities found that most subordinates of both sexes held positive attitudes toward women managers (U. S. Department of Labor, Em- ployment and Training Administration, 1978~. Of particular interest is the admission by several men that they had been initially concerned but that their apprehensions dis- appeare(1 when they found that their su- pervisors performed effectively. More generally, this study revealed that attitudes changed quite rapidly with experience with female bosses, even when those bosses held jobs that traditional values label "very mas- culine" (p. 10~. The effects of education and experience suggest that we may expect con- tinue(1 change in employee attitudes toward women supervisors. For women's occupa- tional opportunities to increase, however, the behavior of those making employment decisions must also change. Sexual relations, as well as power rela- tions, are also relevant in the workplace, and fears of sexual relations particularly may con- tribute to occupational segregation. The folk theory that women unwittingly tempt men and that men, vulnerable to their provoca- tion, may be prompted to seduction has been used to justify excluding women from cer- tain occupations or work settings that are thought to heighten men's vulnerability to female sexuality. Examples include ship- board duty or jobs that involve travel with coworkers. Women have been denied cer- tain jobs because their presence may suggest the appearance of impropriety. MacKinnon (1979) cites the example of the South Car- olina Senate, which refused to hire women as pages in order to foster public confidence in Me Senate by protecting its members from appearing in a possibly damaging way. Not only men but women themselves may be depicted as the victims of their unwitting sexual provocation. Reformers around the turn of the century argued that permitting the sexes to work side by side would lead women to stray, either because their pres- ence tempts men or because corrupt men will exploit innocent and vulnerable women who have left the protection of their homes. This concern resects the belief in women's sexuality as an autonomous force over which neither they nor the men with whom they work have control. And it also reveals, once again, the assumption that women's primary place is in the home: for the consequence of women's employment alongside men feared by reformers was that these women, once having strayed sexually, would be for- ever disqualified from their domestic roles as wife and mother. Kessler-Harris quotes Robert McClelIand, Secretary of the Inte- rior, in the middle ofthe last century: 'here is such an obvious impropriety in the mixing of the sexes within the walls of a public once that I am determined to arrest the practice" (1982:100-1011. Such reasoning ultimately led several states to pass laws making it il- legal for women to hold a variety of occu- pations, including bartender, messenger, meter reader, and elevator operator, but it did not prevent women from entering offices in large numbers a Smith, 1974; Kessler- Harris, 19821. More recently, the stereotype of woman as sexual temptress has been invoked to ac- count for women's sexual harassment: sim

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE ply by entering the workplace, women subject men to their sexuality and invite ha- rassment. Sexual harassment is pervasive in male-dominated occupations that women have recently entered (Enarson, 1980; Mar- tin, 1980; Walshok, 1981a; Westley, 19821. Gruber and Bjorn (1982) suggest that men may use it to gain the upper hand in situ- ations in which men and women have similar jobs and earn equal wages, especially in un- skilled jobs in which male coworkers cannot punish entering women by denying them work-related information. The important point here is that the unquestioned as- sumptions about the sexuality of both men and women underlie the limiting of women's occupational choices. Innate Differences Between the Sexes A third category of beliefs that shape women's occupational outcomes are those that assume innate differences between the sexes. We have already seen that women are regarded as innately less rational and more emotional, a view that has been used to justify excluding them from positions of authority. In addition, women have var- iously been thought to lack aggressiveness, strength, endurance, and a capacity for ab- stract thought and to possess greater dex- terity, tolerance for tedium, and natural morality than men. A body of research re- viewed in Lueptow (1980) indicates that the public continues to hold many of these ster- eotypes about female and male "personaTi- ties." Some of these differences further justify women s greater responsibility for family care. For example, women's supposed nat- ural sense of morality suits them for raising children and bringing a civilizing influence to family life. Other stereotypes contribute directly to occupational segregation by asserting sex differences in what are alleged to be occu- pationaDy relevant traits. Women's dexter- ity is offered to explain their employment as clericals and sometimes as operatives; their supposed passivity and compliance have been ~. 41 seen as uniquely fitting them for clerical work (Grinder, 1961; Davies, 1975; Kessler-Har- ris, 1982) as well as other jobs involving bor- ing, repetitive tasks. One employer's explanation, offered in the 1960s, for pre- ferring women illustrates both points: "We fee} that jobs requiring manual dexterity call for women. Also this work is particularly tedious and painstaking~efinitely a wom- en's job" (G. Smith, 1964:241. Construction firms cite women's alleged weakness and in- tolerance of harsh working conditions as rea- sons for denying them jobs (U. S. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Admin- istration, 1981; WestIey, 1982~. The social expectations that women should uphold moral standards and care about the needy, perhaps because of their innate nurturance, limit their occupational opportunities. As Epstein (1981) notecl, women have been en- couraged to perform good works in service- oriented occupations such as social work an nursing, which, coincidentally, have often had poor career potential. And women have been believed to be "too good" for politics. They are also thought to be too sentimental and timid to enforce the law or serve in combat (Epstein, 1981~. Women's alleged emotionality may clisqualify them in many employers' minds for higher-level positions, especially those in law, medicine, or science that require rationality and tough-minded- ness (for a brief review, see Miller and Gar- rison, 1982~. Sex Stereotypes and Occupational Segregation Many of these beliefs about women's in- nate traits and their natural social roles per- sist, despite women's increasing participation in a large number of formerly male occu- pations, even among students training for professions (Quaclagno, 1976; Beattie and DiehT, 19791. A single woman worker who violates the stereotype can be explained as exceptionally when the behavior of many women clearly belies a particular stereo- type, a different one may emerge to main

42 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK fain the gender homogeneity with which members of an occupation have become comfortable. For example, women lawyers were dismissed in the 1960s as "too soft" for the courtroom. When they showed them- seIves to be competent in court, they were restereotyped by male lawyers as tough and unfeminine- and hence implicitly unsuited to their proper role as wife and mother (Ep- stein, 1981~. Stereotypes about appropriate and inap- propriate occupations for women and men encourage sex-typical occupational choices by affecting workers' aspirations, self-image, identity, and commitment. The stereotyped views that masculine men would not pursue certain occupations, nor feminine women others, for instance, is deterrent enough for most people. Their misgivings are realistic: the femininity or masculinity of individuals who are not so deterred is questioned (Bourne and Wilder, 1978), and they may experience ~lisapproval, especially from males (Nilson, 1976; Jacobs and PoweD, 1983~. The prospects of sexual harassment or of being prejudgecl as incompetent at one's work may also discourage those who might otherwise opt for sex-atypical occupations. Another way that assumed sex cli$erences affect the jobs women and men fill is that employers' beliefs that members of one sex do not want to do certain kinds of work in- Huence their personnel decisions. For ex- ample, individuals who made inning decisions for entry-level semiskilled jobs in several firms in one city commented to the re- searcher, "Women wouldn't like this," and "Men wouldn't like to see women (cowork- ers) this way." Another employer who hired primarily women said, "The work is clean and women like that" (Harkess, 1980~. Statistical Discrimination Economists (Arrow, 1972; Phelps, 1972) have termed one form of employers' re- {uctar~ce to hire certain persons "statistical discrimination," a concept that refers to de cision making about an individual on the basis of characteristics believecl to be typical of the group to which he or she belongs. The wide acceptance of assumptions of sex differences in characteristics related to pro- ductivity provides the basis for statistical dis- crimination by employers (e.g., Bass et al., 19711. According to this model, employers do not hire anyone who is a member of a group thought to have lower productivity; statistical discrimination serves for them as a cheap screening device. Statistical dis- crimination often rests on unquestioned as- sumptions about women's domestic roles. For example, employers may refuse to hire a woman in the childbearing years for certain jobs especially those that require on-the- job training because they assume that many young women will leave the labor force to have children, irrespective of any individual applicant's childbearing or labor market in- tentions. In a study of book publishing, Ca- plette (1981) discovered that women were automatically excluded from the primary route to upward mobility, the college trav- eler job, on the assumption that extensive traveling would conflict with their domestic responsibilities. According to this explana- tion of discrimination, employers practice statistical discrimination against women solely on economic grounds and presumably would ignore gender if they came to rec- ognize that their cheap screening device was too costly in terms of misapplied human re- sources. Employers might, for example, be- come convince{] that young men were equally likely to quit their jobs or take time off to share childbearing responsibilities or that many qualified women will not quit because of family responsibilities. Statistical discrimination contributes to sex segregation in two ways. First, employers, beliefs that the sexes differ on work-related traits may bias them to favor one or the other sex for particular occupations. Second, if they expect that women are more likely than men to drop out of the labor force, they will hire women only for jobs that require little or no

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE on-thejob training (e.g., retail sales) or in- volve skills whose training costs workers themselves assume (e.g., typing, hairdress- ing). Using data for 290 California establish- ments, Bielby and Baron (1986) examined whether employers seemed to reserve some jobs for men and others for women in a man- ner consistent with their perceptions of sex differences in sobs, turnover, costs, and work orientations. They found that employers as- signec! jobs involving nonrepetitive tasks, spatial skids, eye-hancI-foot coordination, and physical strength to men and those requiring finger dexterity to women. The concept of statistical discrimination also encompasses employers' favoring members of a group whose performance they believe they can predict more reliably. Even if the sexes were equally productive and performed equally weD on some valid employment test, if the test predicted women's performance less re- liably, employers would make fewer errors by hiring men (signer and Cain, 1977; Os- terman, 19781. For this type of statistical discrimination to help explain sex segrega- tion, employers must believe that women's performance is less reliably predicted than that of men, and so exclude them from some occupations. 2 Sex Labeling and Sex Typing In an influential 1968 study, Oppenhei- mer argued that the individual decisions of workers and employers are reinforced by a historical process through which most oc- cupations have come to be labeled as wom- en's work or men's work, and hence reserved for members of the appropriate sex. Op 2 One study offers evidence that this is the case. Although Osterman (1979) rejected less reliable pre- dictions of women's absenteeism as a basis for wage differentials, Kahn (1981) showed that he used the wrong indicator of predictability. Using the appropriate one, Kahn found that female absenteeism was predicted less reliably, a finding that could support statistical discnm- ination in wages. 43 penheimer contended that sex labeling re- flected employers' beliefs that certain occupations required attributes that were characteristic of one sex or the other or, for women, represented an extension of do- mestic nonwage work. To job seekers, oc- cupations take on the characteristics of current incumbents; custom then tends to make the sex labels stick. The related concept of sex typing implies both that an occupation employs a dispro- portionate number of workers of one sex and the normative expectation that this is as it should be (Merton, in Epstein, 1970a:1521. Manifest in language and the mass media, sex labels and the associated norms are learned through childhood and adult so- cialization by current and future workers and employers. An obvious example of sex typ- ing in the mass media is classified adver- tisements stipulating a particular sex or segregated by sex, now not permissible un- der Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some sex-specific occupational titles (e.g., "lineman,""stewardess") are still common, although most were eliminated in the new- est revision of the Dictionary of Occupa- tional Titles (`U.S. Department of Labor, 1977) and other government publications. Job descriptions often use sex-specific pro- nouns. Television, movies, magazines, and bilIboarcIs consistently depict occupational incumbents in stereotyped ways (Marini and Brinton, 19841. As we show below, these labels nuance the occupations to which people aspire, for which they prepare, and ultimately in which they seek employment. Influenced also are gatekeepers parents, educators, employers, friends, and neigh- bors who guide or control decisions re- garding training and hiring. The widespread acceptance ofthese cultural labels may affect even those who reject them. Applicants who ignore the labels are likely to encounter pro- spective employers who accept them im- plicitly. Nondiscriminating employers may at least initially have trouble finding appli- cants for sex-atypical jobs. Even if labels 1 AL _] _ · n . ~

44 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK deter neither employer nor prospective em- ployee, their acceptance by other employ- ees or by a prospective employee's family may deter her or him from taking and keep- ing a sex-atypical job (Walshok, 1981a). Contingent Stereotypes Despite the prevalence and force of sex stereotyping of occupations, it is clear that these stereotypes do change over time, often in response to changing economic condi- tions. As noted above, secretaries were once typically male and women thought to be un- suitable, yet the preponderance of women in clerical jobs was later rationalized by their supposed feminine virtues. Economic and technological factors often vary over time and space, and stereotypes of the same jobs often differ according to how these factors vary. Studies of the age and sex character- istics of workers in the textile industries of Japan and the southern United States (Sax- onhouse and WniEt, 1982) and France Dilly, 1979, 1982) in the first quarter of this cen- tury illustrate this point. In Japan, agricul- ture was a family enterprise in which girls and young women were the least valuable workers, so their families permitted them to work temporarily in the textile industry, as young women die] in New England in an earlier period (Dublin, 1979~. Single young women filled textile jobs, even in occupa- tions that were held elsewhere by men. In contrast, in the American South entire fam- ilies who lacked land tenure and access to well-developed labor markets worked in the textile industry, where jobs were assigned on the basis of sex and age. Only adult men had access to the most skilled jobs. The sit- uation in France was similar: mills hired en- tire impoverished rural families, but only boys and men could move up the job ladder to better-paying, more skilled jobs. These varied employment practices, a product of structured economic opportunity interact- ing with male and parental power and house- hold patterns of labor allocation, produced different patterns of sex segregation that persisted for some time. The effects on sex segregation of economic factors, cultural beliefs, and We law are cu- mulative and reciprocal, but, as we have seen, this reciprocity can contribute posi- tively to change. Bumpass (1982) found that the mothers of young children who worked between 1970 and 1975 were substantially less likely to agree that young children suffer if their mothers work than they had been in 1970. American cultural values about the sexes have changed since World War II (Ma- son et al., 1976; Cherlin and Walters, 1981; Thornton et al., 1983), at least partly in re- sponse to the women's movement. During this period women have entered occupa- tions that were formerly closed to ~em. New laws and administrative regulations, such as the interpretation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to proscribe sexual harass- ment as discriminatory, help to weaken the link between traditional cultural stereotypes and employment practices. As these changes become apparent and are supported by changes in social values-especially those embodied in statutes outlawing discrimi- nation-they transmit to fixture workers and employers the message that society gives 44 . . .. women permission to pursue a groat er range of jobs. Women's movement into oc- cupations from which they once were ex- cluded will also contribute to exposing the discrepancy between reality and many of our cultural assumptions about the sexes. With growing awareness that these beliefs are du- bious and the traits to which they apply al- terable, women's occupational aspirations and opportunities should expand accord- ingly. BARRIERS TO EMPLOYMENT A variety of barriers make it difficult for women to hold certain jobs or exclude them altogether, thus contributing to their pre- ponderance in traditionally female occupa- tions. Evidence suggests that employers

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE 45 sometimes deny women certain jobs be- cause of their sex, by discriminating inten- tionally, by doing so unintentionally, or by deferring to the discriminatory preferences of employees or customers. Studies of em- ployment practices before the passage of the Civil Rights Act reveal extensive sex seg- regation and the payment of Tower wages to women; often these practices were explicitly codified in rules (Newman, 19761. Until re- cently, many state laws prohibited employ- ers from hiring women for certain occupations or prescribed the conditions un- der which they could work. Some occupa- tions (positions on combat ships in the {J. S. Navy and on combat planes in the U. S. Air Force, for example) are still closed to women by law. Practices that have the effect of re- stricting women's access to some jobs, such as certain kinds of seniority systems or vet- erans' preference, are often institutionalized in formal personnel procedures. Others re- side in informal aspects of the organization of work. Although it is impossible to assess the relative importance of these barriers in preventing women from entering and pro- gressing in traditionally male-dominated jobs, it is essential to examine how they op- erate in order to propose and assess reme- dies. Legal Barriers Legal barriers that limit women's free oc- cupational choice are of two types: those unposed by law or public regulation anct those instituted by employers that the law en- courages, permits, or does not effectively prevent.3 As CIauss (1982) points out, prior to Me late 1800s tradition and prejudice were usually sufficient to keep women in the few occupations deemed appropriate for them, but when necessary the authority of the law was invoked to contain women's nontradi 31his section draws heavily on Clauss (1982) and Boos and Reskin (1984~. tional aspirations. For example, Justice Bradley s opinion in Bradwell v. Illinois (83 U.S., 16 Wall., 130, 141-42, 1872), in which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a chal- lenge to an Illinois law prohibiting women's admission to the bar, reflects the contem porary view of women: The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of Wings, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and Unctions of womanhood. The first protective labor law was enacted in 1874. Although a large literature debates the motivations of the working men and women, reformers (many ofthem feminists), and union leaders who supported protective labor legislation for women (Freeman, 1971; Hartmann, 1976; Steinberg, 1982), their long-run elect unquestionably was to re- strict women's occupational opportunities (Beer, 19781. They prohibited women from doing tasks required by many occupations such as lifting more than a maximum weight, working more than a certain number of hours, or working at night. Some states specifically prohibited women from holding certain oc- cupations, including some that supposedly could corrupt women morally (e.g., bar- tending) and others (mining, smelting, me- ter reading, pin setting in bowling alleys, crossing watchmen, jitney driving, freight handling or trucking) for which the rationale is less clear (CIauss, 19821. The legacy of such laws cannot be overemphasized. Rail- roads, for example, used the California hour and weight-liPcing restrictions to justify not haling women as telegraphers (CIauss, 1982~. An Illinois company used an 8-hour law for women to justify paying women operatives for only 8 hours when they were working 8~/2 hours. Not until the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed and litigation occurred were these laws invalidated. Those that remain

46 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK on the books are unenforceable. But even in the 1960s and 1970s, manufacturers sur- veyed by the California State Employment Service often cited weight-icing restric- tions to justify not hiring women (Bielby and Baron, 1984~. In Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) the Supreme Court inter- preted Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit nonjob-related requirements that disproportionately exclude members of pro- tected groups. This ruling opened some oc- cupations to women. For example, it invalidated requirements of height and physical agility that largely barred women from being officers in the San Francisco Po- lice Department (Gates, 1976~. Yet many police (lepartments still maintain such re- quirements, preventing women from be- coming police officers (Martin, 1980:47~. The prohibition against using sex as an employment criterion under Title VII is not absolute. Employers may refuse to hire ap- plicants of one sex if they can show that sex is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) reasonably necessary to their nor- mal operation (Section 703te]~. Although the occupations in which sex is a bona fide qual- ification typically cited are wet nurse and sperm donor, employers have succeeded in using the BFOQ provision to justify exclud- ing women from such jobs as prison chap- lains or guards (Long v. California State Personnel Board, 41 Cal. App. 3d 1000, 116 Cal. Rptr. 562, 1974; Dothar~v. Rawlinson, 433 U. S. 321, 1977) because their sexuality might provoke the passions of violent male inmates and as international oil executives because that job involves dealing with al- legedly sex-prejudiced Latin Americans (Fernan~z v. Wynn 0d, 20 FEP 1162 [C.D. Cal.l, 1979~. Laws and regulations stipulating that pref- erence be given to veterans- legal under the Supreme Court's decision in Personnel Administrators of Massachusetts v. Feeny, 99 S.C. 2282 (1979 - reduce women's ac- cess to certain jobs. For example, 65 percent of all government agencies and 57 percent of municipal agencies preferred veterans when selecting police officers (Eisenberg et al., cited in Martin, 1980:47~. Veterans'pref- erence rules also apply to layoffs and con- tributed to the higher layoffrates that female federal government employees in grades above GS 12 (in which women are under- represented) experienced in the federal per- sonne! cuts of 1981 (Federal Government Service Task Force, 19811. The policy of giv- inz veterans an advantage was formally incorporated into criteria for the Compre- hensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) trainees in 1978, contributing to women's underrepresentation in certain programs relative to their proportion in the eligible population (Wolf, 19811. The policy by some employers of exclud- inz women in their childbearing years from jobs that might expose them to substances that are potentially toxic to fetuses has de- monstrable segregative consequences. Fed- eral officials have estimated that such policies close at least 100,000 jobs to women.4 These jobs are concentrated in industries that have historically excluded women (CIauss, 1982), and some observers (Bell, 1979; Wright, 1979) have pointed out that employers use this policy to exclude women from better- paying male jobs, while ignoring hazards in predominantly female occupations.5 In two Title VII challenges, Me courts recently ruled that employers may not penalize women employees under the guise of protecting them from reproductive hazards (Wright v. Olin Corporation, 697 F.2d 1192 Pith Cir. 19821; Zuniga v. Klebert County Hospital, 692 F.2d 986 Pith Cir. 19821~. Until 1978 4 This estimate does not include the number of mil- itary jobs closed to women because of policies that do not permit women to occupy jobs that are related to combat (Boos and Reskin, 1984). 5 Such hazards include the exposure of operating room nurses to waste anesthetic gases, of beauticians to hydrocarbon hair spray propellants, and of clerical workers to photoduplicating fluid.

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE 47 employers could exclude pregnant women from certain jobs, even when it meant that they lost accumulated seniority. Then, in response to extensive lobbying by women's groups following the Supreme Court's de- cision in General Electric v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125 (1976), which held that discrimi- nation against the condition of pregnancy in employment benefits such as disability in- surance is not illegal sex discrimination, Congress amended Title VII to prohibit ctis- cnmination against pregnant women. Title VII, provisions of Title IX of the Educational Amendment Act, and other laws provide recourse for women who are dis- criminated against in various conditions of employment. Yet, private litigation, which is expensive and lengthy, is seldom a viable option for many women, and enforcement agencies and legal rights organizations must limit the number of cases they pursue Trough the courts. Satisfactory redress of many of these cases, even of relatively overt discrimination, is not therefore easily at- tained. Discriminatory Acts and Behavior Most economic theories of labor market discrimination were constructed to explain wage discrimination rather than restrictions on access to jobs. Nevertheless, we review them briefly, concentrating on their impli- cations for segregation in labor markets (for more extensive discussions, see Treiman and Hartmann, 1981; Blau, 1984a, 1984b). Gary Becker's (1957) theory of race discrimination presumes a "taste" for distance from blacks, on the part of employers, employees, or cus- tomers. If employers discriminate, they pay for that taste by bidding up the wage for white workers above what would be nec- essary if they hired blacks. A discriminating employer would hire blacks only if they were wiring to work at a wage low enough to compensate the employer for the "distaste." Economic considerations could motivate even unprejudiced employers to discrimi nate, however. If white employees have a taste for distance from blacks, they will work in an integrated workplace only if they are paid a premium for doing so. Employers will then lower the wage of blacks in order to compensate for the higher wage that they must pay whites when blacks are hired. Likewise, if customers have discriminatory tastes, prices will have to be lowered in or- der to prevent the loss of those customers to firms employing only whites. Again, the employer will hire blacks only at a lower wage in order to compensate for the loss in revenue from the lower sale price. Very few efforts have been made to test empirically any of Becker's hypotheses (Cain, 19841. However, customer discrimination has been suggested by Allison (1976) with respect to the higher wages earned by male than fe- male beauticians, and Epstein (1981) found that many law firms attributed their reluct- ance to hire female attorneys to an antici- pated loss of clients who they believed pre- fer maTes.6 Indulging discriminatory tastes could pro- duce segregation across occupations or es- tablishments (Blau, 1984b). Assuming that employers differ in their taste for discrimi- nation or in their willingness to pay to in- dulge that taste, the victims of discrimina- tion, blacks or women, would be totally absent from some establishments and con- centrated in others at lower wages (Berg- mann, 1971, 19741. If employers were more adverse to hiring women for some jobs than others (or if male workers in different oc- cupations expressed different amounts of op- position), then occupational segregation would result. Understanding the reasons for discrimi- natory tastes might explain why employers' aversion to hiring women varies across oc- cupations and why they prefer women for 6 They also cited other reasons, ranging from prob- lems in providing separate rest rooms to their own wives' opposition (Epstein, 1981).

48 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK some. Hiring decisions in prestigious profes- sional and managerial occupations often in- volve subjective appraisals of whether an applicant will "fit in," since the potential consequences of an error are greater given the higher levels of uncertainty and indi- vidual control over the work process in those occupations (Kanter, 19771. For some oc- cupations, employers prefer female work- ers. A 1961 survey by the National Office Management Association (Grinder, 1961) of 1,900 commercial and service organizations found that 28 percent indicated that sex ap- peal was a qualification for some office jobs. Since most men live intimately with women and men often work closely with women in lower-status jobs, clearly any taste for avoid- ing associating with women is situation-spe .^ cmc. Theories that focus on patriarchy (Hart- mann, 1976; Strober, 1984) contend that men's desire to keep women socially and economically depenclent contributes to sex segregation and other limitations of equal employment opportunity for women. This would explain men balking at working with women as equals, while accepting female coworkers in subordinate jobs. Bergmann and Darity (1981) have argued that a few prejudiced workers can disrupt the work- place; they suggest that employers may de- fer to a few prejudiced employees in order to maintain harmony on the job. An alter- native explanation for exclusionary behavior rests on the social perception of status. If the evaluation of some group as lower in social status is in general currency, then es- tablishments or occupations that fail to hon- or it by including more than a token number of members of the lower-status group taint themselves (Touhey, 1974) and jeopardize the claim for deference they can make on others. Thus, a law firm with more than one or two blacks or women risks being labeled an ~ ~ ,' `` ~ ', ret ~ a olaclc or women s firm and a concom- itant loss of prestige. Another explanation of the segregation of women and blacks into low-paying occupa- tions rests on the potential profitability of that arrangement. While many economists have argued that the inefficient use of labor resources on the part of discriminating em- ployers will diminish employer profits (Ar- row, 1972; Becker, 1957; Bergmann, 1971), others have pointed to the circumstances under which segregation actually increases profitability. In neoclassical economic the- ory, if an employer holds some monopsony power (either because the employer hires a large portion of the available workers in a particular area or because employees in a firm have low levels of mobility) and if the supply of labor is more elastic for women and blacks, then segregating those groups from white men and paying them a lower wage will increase profitability (Madden, 1975; Robinson, 19361. The extent to which these conditions persist in the labor market is a matter of some dispute, however (Cain, 1984), and one preliminary study that looks at the relationship between the propensity to hire women and profitability concludes that discrimination does impose a cost, though relatively small, on employers (Stol- zenberg, 1982~. A class analysis of discrimination posits that employers segregate workers into groups that are then paid differentially in order to prevent the development of a cohesive working class. Since a unified work force is seen as holding more power to bargain over wages, segregation lowers the wage of all subgroups of labor (though some more than others), thus enhancing employer profit- ability. This hypothesis has been tested with respect to race but not to sex (Reich, 1981~. Until the late 1960s or early 1970s sex discrimination by unions contributed to oc- cupational segregation in several ways. Some unions openly excluded women by policy or maintained sex-segregated bargaining units; others pursued practices Hat effectively kept women out (Simmons et al., 1975; Kessler- Harris, 1975; Hartmann, 19761. 7 Nepotism ~ Union behavior has been seen as largely protec- tionist, but Hartmann (1976) argues that patriarchal

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE and sexism in the distribution of appren- ticeships ensured women's virtual exclusion from the crafts; opportunities to learn a trade typically went to members' male relatives (Simmons et al., 19751. Collective bargain- ing agreements between unions ant! man- agement were often openly discriminatory. For example, they frequently identified jobs as "male" or"female" and specified sex-seg- regated promotion and transfer tacklers and separate lines of layoffand rehiring priorities for the sexes. On occasion women and men were even assigned to different locals, but this practice was ultimately found to be a violation of Title VII (Simmons et al., 1975~. Because Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts and other laws and regulations prohibit many forms of sex discrimination in em- ployment, obtaining evidence of discrimi- nation is now often difficult. Employers are unlikely to admit discriminatory hiring prac- tices that they might have admitted in the past. Survey data, case studies, and exper- iments suggest, however, that discrimina- tion has been an important factor in excluding women from a variety of occupations. Throughout most of this century women have faced open discrimination in employment or wages in many occupations. For example, one-third of the business and service organ- izations that responded to a 1961 survey by the National Office Management Associa- tion admitted a double standard of pay for female and male office employees, and two- thirds were admittedly reluctant to appoint women to supervisory jobs (Grinder, 19611. considerations have also been a factor. If the unions only goal was simply to limit competition, sex need not have been the significant factor. Why were young men but not young women encouraged to enter trades? Why were male workers organized by unions, but not female workers? Hartmann argues that men had self-interest in maintaining women's subordinate position in the labor market so that women would continue to be eco- nomically dependent on men and perfonn household services. Many statements by union leaders during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries indicate Heir strong support for keeping women at home. s 49 Until quite recently, law firms openly dis- criminated in hiring and job assignment. Epstein (1981) recounts incidents of women lawyers being offered jobs as legal secre- taries, and Rossiter (1982) tells of women scientists with advanced degrees employed as chemical librarians and scientific secre- tanes. Female physicians (Walsh, 1977) were commonly denied jobs for which they were qualified. Prior to 1964, employers were of- ten candid regarding the preferred sex and race of their employees (see, for ex~nple, Grinder, 19611. A survey published by the Harvard Law Record in 1963 indicated that in evaluating applicants law finns rated being female more negatively than all other char- acteristics, including being at the bottom of one's class (Epstein, 1981~. Nonprofessional occupations have been subject to less in- vestigation, but the firing of women from craft jobs at the end of World War II to provide jobs for returning male veterans is well documentecl (Milkman, 19801. A com- ment by a female worker in a large industrial plant illustrates what is believed by many (Newman and Wilson, 1981) to be extensive discrimination in job assignments (O'£ar- rell, 1980:35~: I do the same work on the bench lathes as the men who do work on the big lathes.... We do the same thing to the pieces.... We have the same equign~ent and the same training. Ad1 the women welders went to welding school [run by the company] the same as the men. We passed the same tests to be certified as welders.... The only difference is that when we got through training, they sent all the women to be welders at a rate 14, while all the men went to a rate of 18. The women work on smaller pieces than the men, but we have to have the same skill and do the same welding work.... In fact, our work used to be part of the men's welding job, but the men didn't like it.... So [management] broke that part of the job off and put women on it, at a lower rate. Employment practices in the geld Tele- phone System prior to the 1973 consent de- cree illustrate the importance of occupational assignment: all formal recruiting was sex

50 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK specific, and it was impossible for applicants to pursue jobs that the company had decided were sex-inappropriate (Laws, 19761. CasseD and Doctors (1972) used personnel records and interviews with managers and employees to examine the job grades for 2,300 workers in three manufacturing firms. hey found that two of the firms discrimi- nated in assigning job grades to women when they were hired ant! that this assignment tended to affect both grade and wage pro- gression as long as the women remained with the firm.8 They also found that firms were less likely to promote women to higher grades. Company representatives claimed that women clid not want promotions be- cause it would entail more responsibility ant! mean leaving their friends. Generally none of the workers, male or female, was well informed about promotion opportunities (in one of the companies, openings were posted for only two days), making it difficult for anyone to pursue them independently with- out official encouragement. A recent study of 3,500 employees at three large fiduciary institutions revealed similar results (Cabral et al., 19811. The researchers found that men tended to be placed in higher job categories than women with comparable education and were more likely to be promoted compared with women in similar entry positions, when seniority anct previous experience were con- troDed. MaDcie! and Malkiel (1973) found that female professionals in a large organi- zation were assigned to lower-level jobs than similarly qualified men. Halaby (1979a) ar- nved at similar conclusions for managerial employees in a California public utility: while differences in experience and education translated into promotion to higher ranks for men, women remained concentrated in lower managerial ranks in which returns to in- creases in human capital were restricted. A recent study of how several manufac 8 The data for the third firm were not adequate to draw conclusions about discnmination. turing firms in a southern city fillet] vacan- cies (Harkess, 1980) suggests that most of the employers explicitly considered gender in cleciding whether to hire applicants for entry-level semiskilled positions, although they too explained that women would not want certain jobs. Recent field studies of the construction industry in which hiring quotas are in effect (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, 1981; Westley, 1982) confirmed contractors' resistance to hiring women, even though they admitted that women were competent and indeed more dependable than men. Some cited objections by other employees as motivating their refusal to hire women. A growing body of experimental research, some on employers or persons in training for managenal positions, also shows that em- ployers favor men over equally or sometimes more qualified women (Fidel!, 1970; Lewin and Duchan, 1971; Levinson, 1975; Du- beck, 19791. Although, taken singly, the generalizability of some of these studies is questionable, as a group they confirm the findings of surveys and statistical studies, case studies, and the accounts of women workers. The unexpectedly large number of com- plaints of sex discrimination in hiring, job assignment, and promotion decisions that have been filed with federal antidiscrimi- nation regulatory agencies since the passage of Title VII and other legislation provides evidence that women workers believe that they have been discriminated against. Ike number of charges filed with the Equal Em- ployment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) increased from 2,053 in 1966 to almost 55,000 in 1983 (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1984) or about one complaint for every 900 women in the labor force. Institutionalized Barriers in the Workplace Some of the bamers that exclude women from certain male occupations are embed

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE deaf in the formal structure of establish- ments: their personnel practices, job descriptions, mobility ladders, and the or- ganization of tasks. These institutionalized barriers may have had their origin in prej- udice or may be the by-products of admin- istrative rules and procedures that were established for other reasons (such as sen- iority systems). However, once they are in- corporated in an organization's structure they persist regardless of the lack of any discrim- inatory intent, unless they are altered.9 Most individuals looking for work approach an employer within a broad and vaguely de- fined category (Blau and Jusenius, 1976~. Employers play an active role in the labor market; they decide whether to hire appli- cants as well as for what job. The set of occupations to which any worker has access is generally quite small. Once workers get jobs, the job ladders that comprise their em- ployers' internal labor markets (Doeringer and Piore, 1971) govern the occupations open to them. Of course, management decides who among alternative candidates should be promoted to fib vacancies and how quickly (see, for an example, Harlan and O'Farrell, 1982~. As a result, sex differences in the aBocation of workers to entry-level jobs greatly narrow the number of jobs available to women workers and perpetuate sex seg- regation throughout all jobs in an establish- ment (Blau and Jusenius, 19761. Most large employers have internal labor markets with highly structured recruiting practices. Depending on the characteristics they seek in workers, employers use em- ployment services, advertise directly to par- ticular labor pools, or use employee referrals. The common practice of relying on informal referrals reflects employers' assumptions that a homogeneous work force will facilitate on- thejob training (Stevenson, 1977) and re- duce the uncertainty inherent in hiring de 9 This section draws heavily on Roos and Reskin (1984~. 51 cisions (Kanter, 19771. For example, none of the employers Harkess (1980) surveyed used classified advertisements. Even if they did not actively discriminate in hiring, their reliance on employee referrals and walk-ins was likely to discourage applications from people unlike those already working there. The people to whom employees pass on job possibilities are part of their personal net- works. Not only are such networks sex-seg- regated as a rule, but women are less likely than men to find their jobs through such informal methods (fort and Bones, 1980; Granovetter, 1981; Roos and Reskin, 19841. Even if asked, workers might hesitate to recommenc! persons of the "wrong" sex or race, in the belief that they are less likely to satisfy their employer (Harkess, 19801. Antinepotism rules provide one example of an employment policy that, while sex- neutral in theory, in practice works against women more often than men. By precluding spouses from working in the same depart- ment or company, they have tended to ex- clude wives who have similar background and training as their husbands but may be slightly behind in their cancers. Although such rules are no longer the impediment they were for female academics prior to the 1970s (Simon et ad., 1966; Dolan and Davis, 1960), many large companies continue to have policies against employing spouses. in is Recent evidence regarding nepotism rules comes from the popular media and is unsystematic. It does indicate, however, that nepotism rules persist in some firms. A 1978 New York Times article (May 8) on nep- otism referred to a policy that was only two years old at the University of New Orleans. A similar article that appeared in the Louisville Courter Journal (May 14, 1978) mentioned a recent unsuccessful suit challenging the nepotism rule at Libbey-Owens-Ford. In fall 1982 Newsweek (October 11, 1982:94) quoted a statement by Edward Hennessy, chairman of the board at Allied Corporation: "We have a policy at this company that we don't hire wives," which he later amended in a letter to the editor (November 29, 1982:6) to say that Allied's policy is not to hire the spouses of corporate officers

52 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK Most institutional barriers to promotion within firms reside in rules about seniority, job bidding, eligibility for promotion, and so forth that govern the operation of their internal labor markets. Because these prac- tices are often codified (in collective bar- gaining agreements or civil service rules, for example), they are more visible than the barriers to being hired that women face. Best documented, perhaps, are the segre- gative effects of seniority systems that link workers' promotion prospects to their length of employment, particularly when they are not plantwide (Kelley, 1982; Roos and Re- skin, 19841. In large firms, seniority to de- termine eligibility for promotion is often accrued only within a department or job group, and having substantial seniority in one group does not help one attain pro- motion opportunities in a new group. In ef- fect, one loses seniority by transfernug. Since many entry-level positions and their asso- ciated job ladders are sex-segregated, nar- rowly constituted seniority units hamper women's opportunity to transfer to jobs held by men that may have greater promotional opportunities. Even women with consid- erable experience are electively limited in then access to maTe-dominated jobs in other units (Kelley, 1982~. When legal action opens such jobs to women, many have been re- luctant to sacrifice their seniority and risk future layoffs by transferring to male jobs (O'Farrell, 19821. Seniority is consequential even when jobs are secure, since it open determines shift, overtime, and vacation as- signments (Steinberg and Cook, 1981~. Plantwide seniority systems that provide bumping rights in case of rayons (in which . ~ cc ~ more senior employees sump ess senior ones, moving into their jobs, while the jun- ior employees are laid oR) may facilitate women's movement into sex-atypical em- ployment. Some courts have addressed this nor to permit married couples to work in the same department or supervise each other. problem (e.g., Quaries v. PhiZlip Morris, 279 F Supp. 505, 516, E.D. Va., 1968) by invalidating clepartmentwide seniority sys- tems in firms in which departments were segregated (in this case, by race). However, a subsequent decision (Teamsters v. United States et al., 45 LW 4514, 1977) denied rem- edies unless employees could show that the disparate impact of a bona fide seniority sys- tem was the result of intentional discrimi- nation. In a recent decision (Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts, 104 S. Ct. 2576 [19841) the Supreme Court held that the city of Memphis could apply its bona fide seniority system rather than lay offmore senior white workers while retaining mi- nority workers with less seniority to pre- serve the minority percentage of the work force. The Court, in striking down a lower court's injunction against the city's use of its seniority system, reasoned that the minor- ities who were protected from layoff were not the actual victims of previous discrimi- nation by the city. Redressing problems of seniority can be difficult, since altering sen- iority systems, which generally have the force of tradition behind them, can generate op- position from those whose elective seniority is reduced by the remedy. For example, Northrup and Larson (1979) found that the seniority overrides required in the AT&T- EEOC consent decree engendered male hostility. Practices of job posting (O'Farrell, 1980) have also impaired women's access to sex- atypical jobs in their plants. Job posting is seldom plantwide, so women do not learn of openings in other divisions (Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979; O'Farrell, 19801. A survey of corporations revealed that improved job posting facilitated women's movement into sex-atypical blue-collar jobs in nonunionized firms in which seniority was not binding (Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979~. Information about openings is not sufficient, however. Many establishments have rules about who can apply for a transfer or a promotion, and in some firms bidding rights do not extend

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE across all units. In one such company the O'Farrell (1980) studied, regulations against cross-plant bidding served to keep women segregated in predominantly female jobs in the smaller of two plants. A body of research on the New York State Civil Service system documents the segre- gative effect of formal promotion systems within structured job sequences (New York State Commission on Management and Pro- ductivity in the Public Sector, 1977; Peter- son-Hardt and Periman, 1979; C. Smith, 1979; Ratner, 1981; Haignere et al., 19811. Job ladders were typically sex-segregated with women concentrated in the lowest-level jobs within ladders. The "female" ladders were both shorter and more difficult to climb because of more stringent educational and experience requirements (Peterson-Hardt and Periman, 19791. Given the stipulated limits on He number of candidates who could compete for a vacancy and women's under- representation in the eligible pools, wom- en's chances for promotion were necessarily lower than those of men (Haignere et al., 1981; Ratner, 1981~. Using supervisors' rec- ommendations to identify candidates for promotion can also undermine the promo- tion opportunities of women in supportive roles. Although supervisors may be reluc- tant to recommend able assistants of either sex for promotion (Kanter, 1977; Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979), women suffer more be- cause they are more apt to hold such jobs. Design aspects of the work or the tools used can influence women's performance and hence their retention in historically male blue-collar jobs. Although women can learn to use unfamiliar tools, most machinery has been clesigned to accommodate men, so small women may not be able to operate existing machinery as efficiently or as safely as men (Walshok, 1981a). AT&T's experience is il- lustrative: women in outdoor jobs had high- er accident rates than men until lighter- weight and more mobile equipment was in- troduced. Although it is unlikely that the intent to exclude women consciously influ 53 enced decisions about machine design or equipment, the decisions may nonetheless be exclusionary in effect. Women's lack of familiarity with tools and techniques may also restrict their interest in or access to a variety of blue-collar occupations, but re- meclial programs have also been effective in bringing women's skill level to a par with that of male job entrants (Walshok, 1981b). Informal Barriers in the Workplace Exclusion also occurs subtly through a va- riety of processes that steer people away from work that has been culturally defined as inappropriate for their sex. Here we ex- amine how informal processes in the work- place contribute to sex segregation either because an uncomfortable work climate leads women to withdraw from customarily Mae occupations or because it interferes with their ability to learn and perform their job. Occupations that have been defined as male often provide an inhospitable context for women. Women who enter them in violation of their sex labels are regarcled as deviant ant] may face suspicion regarding their motives, hostility, or other sanctions (Age, 1984~. Men who are unaccustomed to working with women simply may be uncer- tain about how to behave. When work groups are integrated, gender becomes salient for the male occupants, who may subject the women to remarks calculated to put them in their place by emphasizing their deviant gender status (Kanter, 1977). These may take the form of profanity, off-color jokes, anec- ~lotes about their own sexual prowess, gossip about the women's personal lives, and un- warranted intimacy toward them (Kanter, 1977; Martin, 19801. Kanter's analysis sug ~ Of course, the same has been true among men of different racial groups, and Kessler-Harris (1982) de- scribes how prejudice by white female coworkers kept black women out of certain occupations and relegated them to others.

54 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK gests that male coworkers also assign women one of a small set of stereotyped nonprofes- sional personalities (mom, kid sister), which tend to prevent the women from partici- pating in the group as fuD members. Women may respond to male hostility whether di- rect or masked-with aloofness or defen- siveness, which in turn makes interaction more difficult. Reskin (1978) has shown how role stereotyping limits the integration of women into the scientific community and impairs their performance. Ilese processes are especially likely in occupations that have a strong subculture, such as the police force (Martin, 1980) or occupations in which workers spend many hours together during slack periods. Fire- fighters represent such a group, as do crews that travel together (of! crews, merchant ma- rines) or construction workers who may sit around the job site waiting out bact weather. To the extent that the work group resembles a social group, newcomers of a different sex (or race) may be viewed as intruders. Such occupations, too, may require a high degree of interdependence. Ike amount of inter- dependence in the work process can affect women's chance of success in sex-atypical jobs (Epstein, 1970a). When women are an unwelcome minority, whether they work autonomously or depend on others to ac- complish their job makes a big difference in their performance. Several women pioneers in blue-collar occupations indicated Mat male coworkers' refusal to help them in the same way they would assist similar male workers hampered their ability to do their jobs (Wal- shok, 1981a; U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, 19781. Hostility sometimes takes the form of men sabotaging women's performance (Wal- shok, 1981a). In contrast, when work is or- ganized so that women can work alone or with female partners, their retention in jobs dominated by men increases (Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979; Walshok, 1981a). It is prob- ably not coincidental that several male-dom- inated occupations in which women's par ticipation has increased do not involve working closely with others, e.g., bus driv- ers, real estate agents, dispatchers, mad! car- riers, office machine repairers (Remick, 1982~. At the extreme, women in male-domi- natecl jobs face overt harassment (Nieva and Gutek, 1981; Walshok, 1981a). Sexual ha- rassment is now recognized to be pervasive (FarIey, 1978; MacKinnon, 1979; U. S. Sys- tems Protection Board, 1981) and has been clocumented in construction (U.S. Depart- ment of Labor, Employment Standartls Administration, 1981; Westley, 1982), craft jobs (Walshok 1981a), the automobile in- dustry (Gruber and Bjorn, 1982), and for- estry (Enarson, 19801. There is, however, no evidence that women entering occupa- tions defined as male are more likely to be sexually harassed than those who work in traditionally female jobs. Some women find superficial acceptance in predominantly male occupations but are excluded in subtle ways that impair their ability to do their jobs. Often their exclusion is not deliberate; men may be unaware of or indifferent to the process, and women reluctant to speak up(Epstein, 1970a). Since male domination of top positions is a struc- tural phenomenon, however, the same pro- cesses that tend to strengthen the fraternity of men reinforce the exclusion of women. In the past many professional associations and unions barred women Tom membership (Epstein, 1970b; Simmons et al., 19754. Even today, some elite professional clubs in which important contacts are nurtured do not ac- cept women as members, and women at- tending meetings there must literally use the back stairs (Schafran, 1981~. More prob- lematic because it is a daily affair is women's exclusion from informal networks. Kanter (1976:415) points out that"organizations . comprise a network of power relations out- side of the authority vested in formal posi- tions...." Although some have observed that women lack access to these networks (Campbell, 1973; Welch and Lewis, 1980; . .

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE McPherson and Smith-Lovin, 1982), the ac- tual processes through which access is lim- ited are difficult to pinpoint, because of the subtle ways that discnmination occurs in network systems and the difficulty of quan- ~ing the kinds of resources being distrib- uted (Miller et al., 1981~. Women's exclusion from informal net- works in which inflation is shared and alliances develop has implications for their learning and performing their jobs and their chances for advancement (for an example, see U.S. Department of Labor, Employ- ment ant! Training Administration, 19781. Women are particularly apt to be excluded Mom activities that occur outside work hours (Kanter, 1977; Epstein, 1981), and, unsure of their reception, they may be reluctant to intrude (Martin, 19801. Martin (1978), for example, describes women police officers' exclusion from off-hours activities in which opportunities for desirable work assign- ments were discussed. In some occupations in which practitioners are self-employed (for example, physicians), collegial networks are indispensable for getting business. Yet women seem to be stuck in sex-segregated networks (Kaufman, 1977; Epstein, 1981) that put them at a professional disadvantage. Successful occupational performance is not always sufficient to gain admission to infor- mal networks. In a case study offem~e school administrators, Ortiz and Cove} (1978) found that even women who used formal networks electively were barred from informal net- works. Determining the consequences of women's exclusion from networks is diffi- cult, but some findings are suggestive of del- eterious effects. KauEnan's (1977) study of Only a few studies compared women and sex differences in faculty use of networks men. Women physicians were less likely Man found that female faculty participated in less men to have had a sponsor in setting us beneficial networks: they included fewer colleagues of higher rank and were judged to be less important than men judged their networks. Miller et al. (1981) found that be- longing to a network enhanced the access of social service personnel to resources. It is frequently arguer! that in order to 55 advance, one must have active support from an individual who is established in one's field (Hochschild, 1975; Shapiro et al., 1978; Speizer, 19811. Sponsorship is common in the upper echelons of almost ad professions (Epstein, 1970a; White, 1970; Zuckerman, 1977) as well as in some blue-collar occu- pations (Walshok, 1981a). Sponsors provide introductions through which an individual becomes established in the profession (Ep- stein, 1970a; Lorber, 1981), socialize their proteges to the values and behavior that are appropriate to the work culture (Caplow, 1954), and often provide vital instruction in the technical aspects ofthe job. As outsiders, women may need male endorsement to be taken seriously (Walsh, 1977) and thus may rely more than men on having a sponsor for advancement (Ortiz and Covel, 1978; Speiz- er, 19811. Because men hold a dispropor- tionate number of positions of influence and few women in male-dominated fields hold high enough status to be effective as spon- sors, most available potential sponsors are men. But men may hesitate to take on fe- male proteges because they question their commitment, fear adverse reactions from wives and colleagues, or are unaware of their promise (Epstein, 1970a). The evidence regarding the access of men and women to sponsors is scanty (Speizer, 1981), but what there is suggests that both professional and blue-collar women expe- rience difficulty in finding sponsors (Roe, 1966; Epstein, 1970a; Walshok, 1981a). For example, most female truck drivers who said they had sponsors named their husbands or boyfriends (Lembright and Riemer, 19821. _ ~ O ~ practice (Lorber, 19811. Martin (1980) ob- served the expected sex difference in spon- sorship among patrol officers, but her sample was small and unsystematic. Strober's (1982) survey of graduates of Stanford University's School of Business revealed Mat women were slightly more likely to have a mentor in their

56 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK current job, but the sexes did not differ ac- corcling to type of mentoring. Research on sex differences in the effectiveness of spon- sorship is also limited. For Strober's busi- ness graduates, having a mentor was not correlated with salary and was negatively related to job satisfaction for both sexes. A study of elementary school teachers con- cluded that sponsorship was necessary for advancement into male-dominated school administration but was more beneficial to men than women (Poll, 19781. Lorber (1981) compared the impact of sponsorship on the careers of female and male physicians in ac- ademic, institutional, and clinical settings. She found that women benefited from spon- sorship in their postgraduate training but were less often sponsored for leadership po- sitions. In contrast, 1,250 senior executives (of whom fewer than 1 percent were female) reportedly had mentors but denied that their mentors were important for their own suc- cess (Roche, 19791. The journeyman-apprenticeship relation- ship can resemble the mentor-protege re- lationship, except that apprentices may be assigned to journeymen who are indifferent or hostile (Walshok, 1981a). For this reason, women are particularly vulnerable in ap- prenticeship programs that lack classroom instruction, in which their training depends entirely on a single journeyman. One source of joumeymen's hostility may be their per- ception that standards were reduced for fe- male apprentices. Walshok (1981b) reports that a competency-based testing program at General Motors alleviated this problem by reassuring the journeymen while providing the apprentices with feedback on expecta- tions and their performance. Doing a good job does not necessarily mean getting credit, and what counts in a career is getting credit for doing good work (Hochschild, 1975~. In some male-dominat- ed work settings, women succeed only if their work is visible and can be assessed by an objective standard such as quantity of sales. Women's concentration in less visible positions (e. g., library work in law; Epstein, 1970b) or in jobs that deal with lower-status clients or customers may contribute to their invisibility and the underevaluation of their work. Women sell cheaper goods (or serve cheaper meals) than men do and their cus- tomers are often other women (Talbert and Bose, 19771. Ironically, when women hold male jobs, it is their gentler and not their performance that is highly visible (Kanter, 1977~. Kanter has outlined other ways in which women's minority status interferes with their performance and hence their eval- uation, and evidence for female law students supports her thesis (Spangler et al., 19781. Any propensity to ignore or undervalue women's contributions not only reduces their personal chances for career advancement but also may justify not hiring additional wom- en. Conclusion In sum, women are excluded from many occupations because of the effects of past practices, remaining legal barriers, discrim- ination by employers and sometimes by unions and coworkers, institutionalized per- sonne! practices, and informal barriers in the workplace that make many jobs uncomfort- able for them or impair their performance. These barriers demonstrably contribute to the persistence of sex segregation in the workplace. Next we consider how and to what extent workers' occupational choices, socialization, education, and training also help to maintain a segregated work force. SOCIALIZATION AND EDUCATION Many approach sex segregation in the workplace with the assumption that it results from women's and men's choices. If women choose to work with other women and men with other men, the consequences of seg- regation, even though often negative for women, might not be seen as an appropriate matter for policy intervention. In consid

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE erring why women might choose different occupations than men choose, several rea- sons have been noted (Treiman and EIart- mann, 19811. Sex-specific socialization can influence women's and men's occupational choices in a variety of ways. First, sex-spe- cific socialization may lead women to prefer occupations that are generally viewer! as ap- propnate for them. Second, women's pre- market education and training may restrict the jobs for which they qualify. Third, wom- en's beliefs that certain jobs are unavailable may deter them from trying to pursue them. Fourth, women's choices may reflect their ignorance of available options. A fifth sig- nificant factor, that women's anticipated family obligations may affect their choice of occupations, is discussed in the next section. One view of occupational choice focuses on the clifferential socialization of the sexes to different personality characteristics, sobs, and preferences. In brief, it holds that sex- role socialization contributes to sex segre- gation by creating in each sex preferences for occupations that have been defined as appropriate to that sex, at the same time leaving them disinclined, ignorant of, or pessimistic regarding their chances to pur- sue most other occupations. Some also point to the role of socialization in limiting the kinds of occupationally relevant training that women acquire. In recent years, sex-role socinJi7~tion theory has become widely re- garded as incomplete and is in the process of being reconceptualized. Socialization is now more commonly regarded as an ongoing process, rather than something that occurs in early childhood with results that remain fixed for life. Resocialization can and does occur, and adults also experience socializa- tion in various contexts. In the following discussion of how social- ization shapes preferences, several caveats about occupational choice and sex-role so- ciali7~tion should be kept in mind. First, the notion of a chosen career may be mis- leading for many workers, at least early in their work histories. Young workers of both ton (1984). 57 sexes display considerable movement within the labor force. For example, about 6 per- cent of the young men in the National Lon- gitudinal Survey changed jobs every month (Hall and Kasten, 1976), and a considerable number changed occupations (Spilerman, 1977), even broadly defined occupational categories (Rosenfeld and Sorenson, 19791. Second, there are a large number of unIa- beled occupations, and occasionally men and women perform the same occupation in dif- ferent parts of the country, so that sex-role socialization could never provide a complete explanation of occupational choice. Third, the effect of workers' perceptions of avail- able occupational options and the extent to which women may settle for sex-typical oc- cupations only after being discouraged from pursuing sex-atypical occupations are often underestimated by those who regarc] choice as the major determining factor in one's work life. Finally, it should be kept in mind that sex-role socialization also contributes to sex segregation by influencing the preferences and behavior of people who make decisions about training or hiring workers or who oc- cupy positions that can affect women's pros- pects for success in sex-atypical jobs. As we noted above, employers' and other gate- keepers' normative expectations regarding the sex-ty~ ping of jobs as well as attitudes about the sexes contribute to sex segrega- tion. Sex-Role Socialization Sex-role socialization refers to the lifelong process through which expectations about how each gender should behave are trans- mitted through the family, the educational system, and the mass media. 12 While strong- Ty influenced by cultural standards, these expectations vary by race, ethnicity, and class. Sex-role soci~li~hon can generate sex i2 Otis discussion relies heady on Marini and Brin

58 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK typical occupational outcomes directly by creating sex-typed occupational aspirations or indirectly by developing in males and females tastes and characteristics that are compatible with occupations that have been labeled appropriate for their sex. Sociali- zation occurs in two ways. Socialization agents can convey the impression that dif- ferent attributes and behaviors are appro- pmate for females and males. They can also expose boys and girls to clifFerent experi- ences that produce different adult attri- butes. Both occur in mostfamilies. Children observe that adult men and women typically do <different work inside and outside the home and that their interests and personal-social characteristics diner; they then infer what are expected behaviors for adult women and men. In addition, parents treat their male and female children differently in ways that may produce sex differences in certain char- acteristics (Huston, 1983~. This has been demonstrated in recent research on activi- ties and interests. Experimental studies that observe adults' reactions to the saTne be- havior when only the adults' belief of the ch0d's gender was varied have shown that We laker influenced their judgments about and behavior toward the child (e.g., Meyer and Sobiezek, 1972; Gurwitz and Dodge, 1975; Condry and Condry, 19761. In exper- imental studies adults made sex-typed toy choices for children and encouraged phys- ical play for male children and interpersonal play activity and dependent, affectionate be- havior for females. Because parents typically limit their daughters' freedom more than that of their sons, girls are exposed to fewer sources of socialization outside the family and may experience greater pressure to con- fonn to parental values (Newson and New- son, 1976; Huston, 19831. Regarding parental behavior Mat may be more closely linked to children's occupa- tional attainment, parents harbor higher ex- pectations for their sons' than their daugh- ters' adult achievements (\laccoby and Jacklin, 1974; Hoffinan, 1977; Marini, 19781. This is especially true with respect to math- ematics (Fennema and Sherman, 1977; Fox et al., 1979; Marini and Brinton, 1984, pro- vide a detailecl review). The sex-typicality of their parents' occupations influences the typicality of the occupation to which chil- dren aspire, with the same-sex parent ex- ercising a stronger effect (Hofferth, 1980a). Children of employed mothers hold less tra- ditional sex-role attitudes (Huston,~ 1983), and, among daughters, their mother's em- ployment is important to their career choice (Beardslee and O'Dowcl, 1962; lIartley, 1966; White, 1967; Almquist and Angrist, 1971; D. Bielby, 1978b). The research is incon- clusive, however, on whether these daugh- ters are more likely to enter typically male occupations (D. Bielby, 1978a; Brito and Ju- senius, 1978; but see also AImquist and Angrist, 1970; Tangri, 1972; Klemmack and Edwards, 1973; Almquist, 19741 Researchers have documented the exis- tence of sex-typing in the occupational as- pirations of children and young people. At relatively young ages, boys and girls are aware that adult sex roles differ and express interests in and prefer activities that the cul- ture defines as appropriate to their sex (Blakemore et al., 1979; Carter and Patter- son, 1979; Edelbrock and Sugawara, 1978; Faulkender, 1980; Schau et al., 19801. Pre- schoo! and elementary schoolchildren know the more obvious sex-typed adult occupa- tions (Tibbetts, 1975; Garrett et al., 1977; Nemerowicz, 1979; see Ruble and Ruble, 1980, for a hill review), and their knowledge of these stereotypes increases through ad- olescence (Stein, 1971~. In keening with this knowledge, pre- SChOOi children express sex-typed occupa- tional preferences and expectations, al- though some (e.g., ballerina, cowboy) are not realistic possibilities. By mid- to late a(lolescence occupational aspirations are al- most as sex-typed as the workplace itself. The index of segregation computed for the occupations that 14- to 22-year-olds wanted to hold at age 35 was 61, only 8 percent less

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE than the index measuring the actual level of segregation for the same occupational cat- egories (Marini and Bnnton, 1984~. We young women aspired to fewer occupations, but the young men's aspirations were sub- stantiaDy more sex-typed. These patterns are quite stable from ages 14 to 22 (Gottfiedson, 1978; Holders, 1980a; Marini and Brinton, 1984), although some evidence from the 1960s indicates that some women's occu- pational choices became more sex-stereo- typed during college a Davis, 1965; Astin and Panos, 1969; Hind and Wirth, 1969~. Along with a general liberalization of sex- role attitudes and increasing support for women's equality of opportunity spurred on by the women's movement (Mason et al., 1976; Spitze and Huber, 1980; Cherlin and Walters, 1981; Thornton et al., 1983), the extent of sex-typing of young women's oc- cupational aspirations has declined (Gam- son, 1979; Herzog, 19821. i3 In 19~ only one in eight of the young women questioned in the National Longitudinal Survey expected to be employed in professional, technical, or managerial occupations when they were 35; by 1979 this proportion had increased to two in five (National Commission for Em- ployment Policy, 1980:60~. Lueptow (1981) also observed a marked drop in women's preferences for several traditionally female occupations, although males showed no commensurate increase in their preference for occupations defined as female. Among black female college students who expected to be employed at age 35, between 1968 and 1973 Me proportion who thought they would work in sex-atypical occupations jumped Dom 14 to 21 percent; for whites the gain was only 2 percentage points, to 25 percent (Bn . ... i3 A concomitant change is the decline in the number of young women who aspire to be exclusively home- makers. In the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of young women, only one-fourth expected to devote themselves exclusively to homemaking at age 35, com- pared with more than 60 percent of the respondents in 1968. 59 to and Jusenius, 1978:701. For both races, one component of the change was the de- clining proportion who expected to be teach- ers. Douglas (1980) also reported that during approximately the same period the propor- tion of women entering college who ex- pected to become elementary or secondary school teachers dropped from 35 to 10 per- cent. Interest among college women in professional careers in fields defined as male has increased sharply. For example, in 1968 only 3.3 percent of women surveyed by the American Council on Education planned to become businesswomen, compared with 20.4 percent in 1978 (Hornig, 19801. (During this period the proportion of men expecting to go into business increased Tom 17.5 to 23.3 percent.) Sex-role socialization also may lead to sex differences in skills ant! knowledge that may affect occupational access. After the onset of adolescence, males tend to do beKer at mathematical reasoning and spatial sldlIs, and women at verbal skills (Terman and Tyler, 1954; Dwyer, 1973; Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974; Sheridan and Fennema, 1977; Brush, 1979; Richmond, 1980; Liben, 1978; Thom- as and lamison, 1975), but these differences are very small relative to within-gender dif- ferences (Huston, 19831. Limited evidence shows sex differences in some personality characteristics that may be relevant for some occupations. There is some evidence that boys are more physically active, aggressive, competitive, and domi- nant in their peer groups than girls; and Hat girls are more anxious, timid, and compliant with adults (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974; Block, 1976; and Frieze et al., 1978, present relevant reviews). The evidence as to whether males and females differ in the value they place on dimensions of work is mixed. Boys are more likely to value financial rewards, status, and freedom from supervision; girls are more likely to value working with people, helping others, using their abilities, and being cre- ative (Witty and Lehman, 1930; Singer and

60 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK Stefflre, 192;4; O'Hara, 1962; Lueptow, 1980; Herzog, 1982~. These differences may not hold for black high school students (Brief and Aldag, 1975~. Nieva and Gutek (1981) cite several studies that failed to find sex differences in orientation toward specific ex- t~insic and intrinsic rewards to working. They suggest that other investigators' failure to control for workers' occupation may account for some of the sex differences observed among employed persons. MiDer and Gar- rison (1982) also found consensus among women and men on the importance of var- ious working conditions, although they ob- se~ved differences in some of the criteria women and men use for judging work. It is not clear whether these differences in atti- tudes and orientation have declined in keep- ing with changing occupational aspirations. Several recent studies (Brenner and Tomkiewicz, 1979; Lueptow, 1980; Peng et al., 1981; Tittle, 1981; Herzog, 1982) found no change, but national surveys of college Freshmen show considerable convergence in several occupationally related attitudes (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 1980; February 17, 19821. The evidence taken together suggests that many young women and men enter the work force with attributes and aspirations con- sistent with the segregation of the sexes in different jobs. Recent changes, however, suggest a trend toward convergence in at- titudes and aspirations. Moreover, the ques- tion of causation is complex. We can illu- niinate it by attempting to answer several questions. First, does socialization produce observed pre-employment sex differences in occupational aspirations, attitudes, and ex- pectations? Second, to what extent do pre- employment sex differences contribute to occupational segregation? Third, can and should we try to reduce occupational seg- regation by intervening in socialization prac- tices? Although several researchers have ob- served a link between individuals' sex role orientations and women's employment as pirations (reviewed in Miller and Garrison, 1982), the extent to which sex-role sociali- zation produces pre-employment sex differ- ences is not established. We have seen that young women and men do differ on several attitudes and on a few abilities and person- ality traits (Marini and Brinton, 1984) and that young people's expressed occupational preferences are definitely sex-typed, al- though females' preferences have become less so over the past several years. The evi- dence reviewed indicates that parents treat children differently, depending on their gender, and below we review evidence that teachers also do so. It seems likely, then, that socialization contributes to the ob- served differences in abilities and values. With respect to occupational aspirations, however, our understanding of their for- mation is still quite limited (Laws, 1976; Miller and Garrison, 1982~. Considerable evidence suggests that vis- ible occupational sex segregation contrib- utes to the formation of sex-typed occu- pational preferences in young people. First, knowledge of the sex-segregated nature of the workplace may lead young people, from an early age, to prepare themselves for ca- reers in which they believe they would be welcome. Second, sex segregation may af- feet preemployment aspirations and skilds by restricting the ability of parents and other adults to serve as models for nontraditional occupations. Limited empirical evidence (reviewed in Marini and Brinton, 1984) sug- gests that same-sex role models may influ- ence college students' educational and ca- reer choices (Fox, 1974; Goldstein, 19791. For example, Douvan (1976) offers anec- dotal evidence of the value to successful women of having a prominent same-sex role model, and Basow and Howe (1979) report that college seniors' career choices were af- fected to a significantly greater degree by same-sex than by opposite-sex role models. Ibird, growing up in a world in which ed- ucational materials and the mass media show men and women performing different roles

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE . may influence girls' and boys' expectations about the jobs they should fill. Television programs and commercials, projecting cul- tural ideals, depict women in fewer occu- pational roles than men (DeFIeur, 1964; Women on Words and Images, 1975), and most of them are female occupations (Kan- inga et al., 1974; Tuchman et al., 1978; Eng- land and Gardner, 1983~. Ibe impact oftele- vision viewing on occupational aspirations has not been demonstrated, although ele- mentary schooIchildren's identification with traditional sex roles is correlated with the amount of television they watch (Frueh and McGhee, 19751. Both direct and indirect evidence points to the influence of young people's percep- tions of occupational opportunities on their preemployment aspirations. Marini and Greenberger (1978) found that the sex com- position of occupations influenced the de- gree to which white girls but not boys- expected to realize their aspirations. Heil- man (1979) found that high school students' occupational interests were a Unction of their perceptions of occupations as viable career choices, given their sex compositions. Re- search on the disparity between young peo- ple's aspirations and the occupations they expect to pursue is particularly instructive, because the latter are more likely to reflect the effect of constraints-including the sex labeling ofthe preferred occupations or mar- ket discrimination based on sex (Marini and Brinton, 19841. Girls, in particular, expect to be in more sex-typed occupations than the ones they prefer (Marini and Brinton, 19841. That young people's expectations are more sex-typed than their aspirations pre- sumably reflects their perceptions of their actual options. Direct evidence for this pre- sumption is provided by a study of the rea- sons for discrepancies between high school girls' expectations and aspirations. More than half of those whose expectations differed Dom dleir aspirations explained that the occu- pations to which they aspired were "inap- propriate for females" (Burlin, 19761. In ad 61 - dition, almost one-third of the female high school students in a national sample (but only one-tenth of the males) thought that their gender wouIct to some degree prevent them from getting the kind of work they would like (Bachman et al., 1980~. Taken together these studies provide rather strong evidence that the existence of segregation contributes to the development of sex-typed occupational preferences. Our second question is whether preem- ployment sex differences in aspirations, at- titudes, and expectations lead to sex-typical occupational choices. Again we must distin- guish values and traits from occupational preferences. Regarding the former, we quote from Marini and Bnnton's (1984:208) review of sex typing in occupational socialization: Although it is possible that sex differences, par- ticularly in physical characteristics, may form the basis for some occupational sorting by sex, the relevance of most stereotypically ascribed sex dif- ferences in personality and ability, including physical differences, to occupational performance remains unknown.... It seems likely that the extent to which one sex is better suited to perform sex-typed jobs has been greatly exaggerated. Be- cause sex differences in personality traits and abilities are bow smaller than they are stereo- typically ascribed to be and of questionable rel- evance to the perforce of most jobs, their role in . . . [producing] sex segregation . . . is likely to be minimal. Additional research is clearly necessary to determine to what extent links exist be- tween sex-typed characteristics and values and sex-typical occupational outcomes. We also need to know more about the actual skill requirements of jobs and their effect on sex segregation, since differences in aspi- rations may lead to differences in the skills men and women acquire. The evidence regarding the association between people's preemployment occupa- tional aspirations and the occupations in which they end up is mixed. Marini and Brinton (1984) identify five studies, all done before 1971, that examined the congruence

62 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK between high school aspirations and sub- sequent occupational attainment. The esti- mates ranged from 15 to 25 percent agree- ment for respondents reinterviewed 10 years abler high school (Kohout and Rothney, 1964; KuvIesky and Bealer, 1967) to between 50 and 80 percent among a group sampled six months after high school graduation (Porter, 1954; Schmidt and Rothney, 195S). Ob- viously these findings are sensitive to the number and fineness of the occupational cat- egories the researchers used. We have un- covered no evidence linking the strength of children's sex-role socialization and the sex typicality of their occupational outcomes. One study (Spitze and Waite, 1980) found that although young women's career com- mitments were associated with the sex typ- icality of their first post-college jobs, their sex-role attitudes had no effect. Still, per- haps because of the general lack of longi- tudinal data, there is surprisingly little re- search on the connection between aspirations and outcomes. It is not impossible that ap- propriate studies would show a link between the sex-typing of one's aspirations and pref- erences (or traditional attitudes and values on sex-roles generally) and the sex-typing of one's occupational outcomes. It would be more to the point to discover whether hav- ing traditional attitudes or preferences tends to be correlated with being in female-dom- inated occupations in general, and not whether aspiring to a specific occupation leads to entering that specific occupation. To conclude, the differential socialization of the sexes probably contributes to occu- pational segregation to some degree, both through the formation of sex-typed prefer- ences in workers and the formation of pref- erences for workers of a particular gender among employers. Prospective studies of the saline individuals over time are badly needed for a clearer understanding of the way in which socialization contributes to segrega- tion through influencing preferences com- pared with its effect through influencing awareness of opportunities. At this time some preliminary conclusions can be stated. We have learned that the effects of preemploy- ment socialization are far from immutable. Socialization is a lifelong process that con- tinues after one enters the labor force. Ac- counts of the experiences of women who entered heavily male occupations subse- quent to their first work experience (Wal- shok, 1981a) reveal the women's resocial- ization. It is not clear, however, whether interventions in childhood socialization would alter perceptions or attitudes, but some studies suggest that they can. Exper- imental research indicates that children who were exposed to media presentations show- ing men and women performing nontradi- tional work tended to express views Mat were less sex-typed about adult occupations than children who saw neutral or traditional sex- role portrayals (Atkin, 1975; FIerx et al., 1976; Davidson et al., 1979~. Children who for a semester watched a television series ("Freestyle") designed to show men and women performing nontraditional activities and occupations displayed less stereotyped beliefs and attitudes about adults' occupa- tional and domestic roles nine months later. Evaluations of programs designed to in- crease college women's participation in sci- ence (discussed in the following chapter) in- dicate that attempts to resocialize women to different career interests can be successful. It is important to recognize that high school curricula including vocational education constitute interventions that usually en- courage occupational preparation consistent with sex-typed cultural values. In the next section, we trace the implications of edu- cation and training for sex-segregated oc- cupational choices. Education People's labor market outcomes are af- fected by the amount and kinc! of education they acquire as well as through more subtle processes within the educational system. On average, black women and men attain about

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE . 63 the same amount of schooling, while His- panic and white men have a slight edge over Hispanic and white women. However, men are overrepresented at the lower and higher levels of education. Level of education is linked to the kinds of jobs women and men obtain. For example, of women in the labor force in 1981, those who were high school dropouts were much more likely than grad- uates to work as operatives, laborers, private household workers, and other service work- ers. Of women in professional anti technical occupations, 60 percent had completed four or more years of college (U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, 1983:116~. Al- though historically men have been more likely to attend college and attain higher educational levels than women, recent cIata show that the enrollment rates of men and women have converged (Heyns and Bird, 1982). Given the different historical experience of women and men with public education and the wide acceptance of beliefs about sex differences in both character traits and abil- ities, persistent sex differences in educa- tional processes within the schools are not surprising. We discuss here two kinds of differences that are relevant for sex segre- gation: (1) sex-stereotyped educational ma- terials and (2) teachers' and counselors' sex stereotypes and differential treatment of the sexes. Sex bias in educational materials and those used for career counseling has been well documented. (See Marini and Brinton, 1984, for a detailed review.) As a rule, textbooks stereotype occupations as male or female (Vetter et al., cited in Evenson and O Neill 1978~. To illustrate, in 134 elementary school readers examined in one study, women were portrayed in only 26 occupations (all but one of which were stereotypic female), com- pared with almost 150 occupations for men (Women on Words and Images, 1975~. Sim- ilar stereotyping has been found in foreign language and mathematics texts. The effects of sex-stereotyped educational materials on children's occupational aspirations have not been determined, although Kimme! (1970) ant! Wirtenberg (cited in National Commis- sion on Employment Policy, 1980) found at least short-run effects of children's books on stereotyped attitudes toward minorities. An intriguing study (reported in Bem and Bem, 1973) revealed that females showed no in- terest in jobs labeled "draftsman" but ex- pressed interest in jobs labeled "ciraftswom- an." Similarly, males were not attracted to telephone operator jobs when the accom- panying text used the female pronoun but were interested when male pronouns were employed. Nilsen (1977) observed a direct correlation between children's exposure to a sex-stereotyped reading program and their propensity to classify activities as belonging to male and female domains. However, we still know very little about the effects of books and other teaching materials on children's occupational choices. Differential treatment of girls and boys by teachers seems to reinforce sex stereotypical attitudes and behaviors (see Brenner, 19811. Many teachers are aware of concerns re- garding sex stereotyping, but they also per- ceive boys and girls as radically different and believe that they want to be treated differ- ently (Guttentag and Bray, cited in Evenson and O'Neill, 19781. According to Guttentag and Bray's findings, teachers see their role as meeting rawer than shaping their stu- dents needs. Teachers' education texts themselves continue to present stereotyped portrayals of females (Sacker and Sadker, cited in Brenner, 19811. Marini and Brinton's (1984) review of the literature confirms sex bias in high school career counseling that is consistent with sex- typical occupational choices. High school counselors have tended to hoIcl traditional attitudes about the appropriate occupations for female and male students, to discourage nontraditional aspirations, and to be igno- rant of issues related to women's employ- ment (Thomas and Stewart, 1971; gingham and House, 1973; Convene and Collins,

64 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK 1976; Ka~picke, 19801. In sum, the literature reveals considerable bias by counselors re- garding the appropriateness of various oc- cupational aspirations for women, and in- variably recommends that school counselors be trained to provide women students with less biased counseling. Although the impact of counseling on students' aspirations has not been generally demonstrated (Marini and Brinton, 1984), a recent stucly by the Amer- ican Institutes for Research (Harrison et al., 1979) revealed the effect of counselors on student curricular choices: 25 percent of the female students and 14 percent of the male students taking courses unusual for their sex had been advised against enrolling in them. Of those who entered traditional areas, 14 percent of the girls and 8 percent of the boys said that they had been dissuaded by coun- selors from enrobing in nontraditional areas. Others found that counselors were more likely to discourage than encourage women Mom enrobing in math and science courses (Levine, 1976; Casserly, 19791. Because it is highly segregated by sex, the public school system offers students few role models for sex-atypical occupations. Ele- mentary schoolchildren are Free times more likely to be taught by women than by men (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Me Census, 1983b), which may account in part for girls' preferences for teaching ca- reers. In view of the lack of valid evidence regarding the stability of individuals' occu- pational preferences and the large numbers of factors that intervene between early school experiences and adult career choices, how- ever, it is difficult to draw conclusions about any segregative effect. Secondary school teachers are somewhat more likely to be male, and men teach math, science, and social science courses disproportionately. They are even more likely to outnumber women in the various administrative roles visible to students principal, assistant principal, and school superintendent (How- ard, cited in Brenner, 1981~. However, as is true for sex stereotyping in teaching ma terials and for teachers' and counselors' at- titudes and behavior, the impact, if any, of same-sex role models has not been estab- lished. The tracking of students into different cur- ricula or specific subjects ant! away from oth- ers is common in many high schools, al- though it is often so subtle that students are unaware that it is occurring (Marini and Brinton, 19841. Teachers and counselors may recommend that female students avoid cer- tain college preparatory courses, with the effect of restricting their subsequent occu- pational options (Marini and Brinton, 19841. This process has been documented most fi~- ly with respect to math and science. GirIs have been underrepresented in mathemat- ics and science classes in secondary school, although recently they have begun to enroll in these classes in greater proportions (Na- tional Commission for Employment Policy, 19801. Women undergraduate mathematics majors were more likely than men to report that their teachers had discouraged their pursuing math careers, although female mathematicians also often referred to a teacher's encouragement as important to their career decision (Luchins and Luchins, 1980~. Researchers (Marini and Brinton, 1984; Fennema, 1983) have concluded that sex differences in mathematics and science training stem not from differences in ability or (for mathematics) in liking for the subject, but Tom the labeling of these subjects as male and perceptions of their utility (Wise et al., 1979; Armstrong, in National Com- mission for Employment Policy, 1980; for a contrasting view see Benbow and Stanley, 1983~. For whatever reason, young women take fewer mathematics courses beyond al- gebra in high school and college. The im- plications for women's subsequent oppor- tunities have been examined in several studies. In some schools math and science courses are prerequisites for some sex-atyp- ical vocational courses (e.g., electronics- League of Women's Voters Education Fund, 19821. Moreover, students who fail to take

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION THE WORKPLACE 65 high school mathematics tend to avoid re- medial mathematics courses later (Brenner, 1981~. Lack of high school preparation also seriously restricts the majors for which col- lege students qualify (SelIs, 1973~. For ex- ample, of a random sample of freshmen at the University of California at Berkeley, al- most 60 percent of the men but only 8 per- cent of the women had enough high school math to take the course that was required to major in every field except the humani- ties, social sciences, librarianship, social welfare, and education (Sells, 19731. Failing to take college mathematics ultimately af- fected women's employment options. Sells (1979) found that only 16 percent of com- panies planning to recruit employees at the University of Maryland in 1978 would con- sider job candidates without a calculus back- ground. 14 Sex differences in college majors also con- tribute to job segregation, inasmuch as some college education is directly occupationally relevant. Unto recently women were heav- ily concentrated in education, the humani- ties, arts, and behavioral sciences; and men in business, engineering, physical and cer- tain social sciences, and preprofessional training (Polachek, 1978; National Center for Education Statistics, 1981~. But recent data show decreasing sex differentiation across college majors (Heyns and Bird, 1982; Beller, 1984~. Between 1971 and 1979 the index of segregation computed for college majors for a national sample of college stu- dents declined from 46 to 36 (National Cen- ter for Education Statistics, 1981), parallel- ing declines in sex segregation in professional occupations among members of young co- horts of workers (Belier, 19841. During the |4 Maw mumes or abminess majorette not, however, always necessary to perform the jobs that require them. Some corporations have increased employment oppor- tunities for women by eliminating educational require- ments that did not prove to be necessary for job per- fonnance (Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979~. 1970s the proportion of women baccalau- reates who took their degrees in education decreased by half, while those in business and health professions increased substan- tially. Women's enrollments in law, medi- cine, business administration, and engi- neering all increased sharply over the past decade (U. S. Department of Education, 19811. As a result, the proportion of law de- grees awarded to women between 1970 and 1980 increased Dom 8 to over 40 percent; the comparable gains for medical degrees and masters of business administration are from 10 to 33 percent and from 3 to 21 per- cent, respectively. In the last decade women earned an increasing share of degrees in such quantitatively based disciplines as biologi- cal, physical, and computer sciences, at every degree level (Berryman, 1983~. In engi- neering, over 13 percent of bachelor's de- grees awarded in 1983 were to women, com- pared with less than 1 percent a decade earlier (Vetter and Babco, 1984; U.S. De- par~nent of Education, 1981~. These changes probably reflect efforts to improve sex eq- uity in education as well as women's re- sponsiveness to improved opportunities in these male-dominated professional occupa- tions. Vocational Education Unlike most general education in the pub- lic schools, vocational education early re- ceivecl federal money and federal policy di- rechon. Consequently it has been a particular target of change (see the following chapter for a fills discussion of sex equity efforts). Vocational education programs have been sex-segregated since their inception in the late 1800s. In recent years, between 20 and 44 percent of high school senior women were enrolled in vocational courses (Grasso, 1980; HarnischLeger and Wiley, 1980; Hofferth, 1980b). Males and females have been dif- ferentially distributed across vocational courses, with females predominantly in health, home economics, and office and

66 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK business programs, and males in technical preparation, the trades, and agriculture (Harnischleger and Wiley, 19801. In fact, as recently as 1979, almost half the vocational programs in 10,584 public schools and col- leges were still exclusively of one sex (Ma- eroff, 19821.~5 Whether training should be available to women anc! what kinds have Tong been sub- ject to debate (Kessler-EIarris, 1982~. Im- plicidy assuming that women's domestic role is paramount, advocates argued that training women would make them better homemak- ers. This rationale ultimately led to state laws requiring domestic science (home eco- nomics) courses for girls in publicly funded programs. The 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, which initiated federal funding for vocation- al education, made sex-segregated vocation- al education a matter of national policy by subsidizing training for female secondary students in domestic science but not in com- mercial office skills. World War I opened some publicly financed industrial training courses to female students, but by 1920 these had largely disappeared, and the sex-seg- regated nature of vocational education was firmly established (Kessler-Harris, 1982~. Occupational training eventually became available to high school girls, but primarily for occupations already perceived as female. EIence, female students predominated in health and clerical programs, and males in the trades, agriculture, and technical pro- g~rns (Harruschieger and Wiley, 19801. Only i5 A subsume prounion of ~ v~tion~ edum~on enrollments in secondary schools is in nonoccupation- ally specific programs; that is, programs that do not attempt to prepare students for specific jobs (Golladay and Wulfsberg, 1981~. Home economics is a prime ex- ample: in 1978 only 11 percent of the enrollments in home economics and homemaking classes were clas- sified as employment-related, according to Me U.S. Office of Education. Of all secondary vocational en- rollments in 1978, 43 percent were in these courses (Brenner, 1981:Table 5). retail sales has attracted students of both sexes in any numbers. It is not clear to what extent sex differ- ences across vocational education courses reflect tracking by the schools, students' choices, and parent and peer influences (Brenner, 19811. Kane and Frazee (1978) found that mothers are particularly influ- ential in the type of vocational program women take, and young women in tradi- tional vocational education training were more likely than those in nontraditional pro- grams to cite their mother as a very impor- tant influence in program choice. Senior 0th school personnel reportedly influenced women's decisions to select their training less than half as often as parents. Young women may be especially loath to deviate from sex-role norms during adolescence when most vocational education takes place, and the same peer pressures that deter them from taking math and science may dissuade them from enrolling in shop or technical courses (Gaskell, 1985). Ike attitudes of male classmates deterred some adolescent girls from taking classes judged to be inappro- priate for them, according to a study by En- twisle arid Greenberger (1972). In their study of adult women who entered postsecondary vocational training, Kane and Frazee (1979) found that women who had already been in the labor force were more likely to consider mixed and nontraditional occupations, 16 ap- parently in response to their firsthand knowledge of the disadvantages of predom- inantly female jobs. In contrast, women who had been out of the labor force and who were insecure about reentering sought training for sex-typical occupations. For whatever reason, vocational educa- tion programs are substantially sex-segre i6 We researchers classified programs in which 0-~ percent of the national enrollments are women as "non- traditional," those win 25 75 percent women as "mixed," and those with more than 75 percent women as "tra- ditional."

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE 67 gated, and the evidence, although some- what weak, suggests that enrollment in such programs does affect one's subsequent em- ployment. 17 The of vocational curriculum is apparently linked to later occupation (Brenner, 1981; Goliaday and Wulfsberg, 1981~. A recent cross-sectional analysis of 1,539 workers ages 20-34 indicates that vo- cational courses are linked with being em- ployed in related occupations (Mertens and Gardner, 1981~. The evidence does not per- mit conclusions about causality, however. On one hand, students' occupational knowI- edge and preferences may dictate their choice of vocational courses; on the other hand, the vocational curricula open to them may in turn influence both their aspirations and their knowledge of available jobs (Most and Moore, 1976; Kohen and Breinich, 1975), and hence affect the kinds of jobs they con- siderwhen they enter the labor market. Per- sons in postsecondary vocational training are considerably more likely than those in sec- ondary school programs to enroll in em- ployment-related programs (Brenner, 1981), so type of postseconciary vocational educa- tion is especially likely to be linked to sub- sequent occupation. Assessment of the actual impact of voca- tional training on the sex typicality of stu- dents' subsequent jobs is hampered by data limitations. The federal Vocational Educa- tion Data System (VEDS), for example, in- cludes job placement data only for students who either completed occupationally spe i7 Free major lon~dinal studies by Grasso and Shea (1979), HoBerth (1980b), and Harnischfeger and Wiley (1980) investigated whether vocational education improves the labor market outcomes of participants. These studies suggest that male participants fared no better than young men who had not been in vocational courses, net of other factors (see also Grasso, 1980). With respect to female students, Grasso and Shea found that those who were in vocational education courses were more likely to finish high school and earned higher wages than Hose in general education courses. Ibe former were enrolled primarily in clerical programs that presumably led to clerical employment. cific vocational programs and were available for placement or had terminated their train- ing to take fi~-time jobs in the fields for which they were trained (Golladay and Wulfsberg, 19811. Thus, VEDS data exclude students who dropped out of the programs as well as those students enrolled in pro- grams not considered vocationally specific, e.g., home economics and industrial arts. The National Longitudinal Survey data are of higher quality but omit some variables necessary to assess the effects of vocational education on labor market outcomes (Bren- ner, 19811. These data show that young women who had enrolled in commercial pro- grams were more likely than those in other vocational courses to hold sex-typical jobs four years later. In contrast, young women who had taken other than white-colIar cler- ical vocational courses were less likely than female students in general, or those in col- lege preparatory or other vocational courses, to hold sex-typed jobs (Grasso, 1980). Hof- ferth (1980b) observed the same pattern aPr- er 10 years. Moreover, for both sexes, Valuating from a trade or industrial program was associated with subsequent participation in and com- pletion of an apprenticeship (Mertens and Gardner, 19811. Apprenticeship is the pri- mary avenue into many skilled blue-collar occupations, and women have been almost totally excluded. In 1978 they constituted only 2.6 percent of the more than 250,000 registered apprentices ant! were thus un- derrepresented even relative to their pres- ence (5.6 percent) in craft jobs (UlIman and Deaux, 19811. Several barriers contribute to women's underrepresentation in appren- ticeship programs. They are less likely to learn about programs, to qualify, and to be selected (Waite and Hudis, 19811. An upper age limit of 24-27 years in many trades pre- sents a significant obstacle to women who have children during their twenties. More- over, many women who have spent several years in traditionally female jobs (Kane and Miller, 1981; Waite and Hudis, 1981;

68 O'Farre0, 1982) do not consider skilled blue- colIar work until divorce or other economic pressures prompt them to seek better-pay- ing work. Large application and union in- duction fees may be beyond the budgets of the very women motivated by economic need to consider male occupations. Conclusion In sum, women's labor market opportun- ities are affected by the vocational educa- tion, general education, and other social- ization and training influences to which they are exposed. The link to employment is most plausible for vocational education, which teaches job-specific skills needed in the la- bor market, but some connection is un- doubtedly present for the other types of ex- periences reviewed above as well. While we have focused on the effect of socialization processes on aspirations and learned per- sonality traits, the differential treatment and exposure of boys and girls in general edu- cation, and the sex segregation of occupa- tionaDy specific programs in vocational ed- ucation, a general outcome of the soci~li7~tion and education process is to restrict infor- mation about job options that are most typ- ical of the opposite sex. For example, Gann Watson testified before the Committee on Education and Labor of the House of Rep- resentatives (U. S. 1982:343-344) that WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK the Department of Labor illustrate this point. Before they had contact with a referral agen- cy, the women were unaware of career op- portunities in construction (U.S. Depart- ment of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, 19811. .. ~.. .. Congress, House, ~t seems provable teat occupational knowledge affects occupational outcomes. Parnes and Kohen (1975) have shown that this is the case for young black and white men, although knowledge of what workers in 10 occupations did was associated with only fairly small increases on the Duncan SKI score associated with their subsequent jobs. A similar study for young women (Most and Moore, 1976) showed no effect of oc- cupational knowledge on the prestige of their subsequent jobs. The 10 occupations on which the young women were questioned, however, were typically helcl by women, so we can draw no conclusions from this study about the effect of knowledge of a broad range of occupations on women's occupa- tional choices or outcomes. Providing students with information about sex-atypical occupations is probably not suf- ficient, however, to yield significant changes in their aspirations, in view of the impor- tance of cultural norms and peer group and family pressures. For example, Verheyden- Hilliard (National Commission for Employ- ment Policy, 19803 described a study in which a counselor provided a small group of girls with information regarding jobs not custom- arily held by women over an extended pe- riod. Although their awareness of the range of jobs open to women was enhanced, these subjects were not more likely to aspire to nontraditional occupations. Nevertheless, improved information is certainly a neces- sary, if not sufficient, step in ensuring equal opportunity in the labor market. Most vocational students, particularly young women, opt for programs that are familiar to them. They do not know about . . . courses in areas consistent with their capabilities . . . which can lead to excellent employment opportunities. They choose to enroll in such courses as consumer and homemaking, industrial sewing and cosmetology because they conceive of Hem as women's pro- grams and because they know what people in these jobs do. They do not know what machinists do, they do not know what industrial electricians do, so they go into cosmetology programs. Interviews with female construction work- ers in a study of the industry sponsored by FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES We noted at the outset ofthis chapter that deep-seated cultural beliefs about appro- priate activities for men and women un

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE doubtecIly have a strong influence on both workers themselves and employers in their attitudes about appropriate work for men and women. One of the most long-standing of these beliefs is that women belong at home raising children and caring for their families. And we noted that, in fact, women more than men undertake the cluties associated with chilcI, family, and home care- both be- cause they do so within marriage and be- cause, if single, they are much more likely than men to have children living with them. These family care activities are done by women whether or not they also work for wages. Despite the increasing participation of mothers of even very young children in the labor force in recent years, a substantial proportion of mothers do withdraw from the labor market to care for young children. It is not unreasonable to suppose that women's family responsibilities do affect their labor market behavior, and several theorists have argued that women choose to enter and work in occupations that accommodate their ac- tual or anticipated family responsibilities and that such choices, in the aggregate, contrib- ute to job segregation by sex. There are other ways, too, that women may be influenced by their families in their work lives. Husbands, and possibly fathers, may have definite ideas about the appro- priate type, hours, and location of work for the women in their families. For example, Wei] (1961) reports that 69.3 percent of the husbands of women who work part time ob- ject to full-time employment for women. While the pervasiveness of this attitude has probably undergone some change since 1961, 29.2 percent of married women who were employed in 1983 worked part time (U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, 19831; and women who work part time are between 3.8 and 4.4 times less likely to be employed in male occupations (Belier, 1982b). Since there is a correlation between part-time work and the likelihood of being employed in a sex-segregated occupation, to the degree that part-time work is more ac 69 ceptable to the husbands of married women in the labor force, this attitude may con- tribute to occupational sex segregation. Women may be constrained by their hus- bancis' attitudes, not only about the number of hours they work but also about how much money it is appropriate for them to earn. Thirty percent of magazine readers sur- veyed in 1978 responded that they thought they would turn down a job that paid more than their husbands earned (Bird, 19791. Ax- elson (1970) found that 25.7 percent of white men and 38.8 percent of black men agree or strongly agree that a husband should fee} inadequate if his wife earns more than he does, and 10.9 percent of white men and 24.2 percent of black men agree or strongly agree that a wife should refuse a salary larger than that of her husband. These findings suggest that husbands' attitudes may con- strain wives' labor market choices. Women may be constrained by additional aspects of familial responsibility. Many ca- reers require a willingness to relocate as new opportunities arise. Bird (1979) fount] that corporate officers find relocating difficult be- cause of family responsibilities and that the husband's career may take precedence. In a study of the careers of academic men and women, Marwell et al. (1979) cite evidence that 49 percent of married women, com- pared with 4 percent of married men, viewed their spouses' jobs as a major deterrent to considering positions in other geographic areas. It is likely, then, that the requirement of mobility in certain careers restricts wom- en more so than it does men and contributes to occupational segregation by sex. Ironi- cally, husband's careers may not only con 18 These findings raise the intriguing question of whether low wages contribute to job segregation (rather than the other way around), if wives seek low-paying jobs because they fear their husbands, objections. Re- cent data reveal, however, that in 12 percent of all couples wives earn more than their husbands (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1983c).

70 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK strain wives' choices but may also directly benefit Tom their wives' contributions. Ben- ham (1975) concludes that a woman's college education does more to raise the income of her husband than it does to increase the income she can earn herself. And given the household division of labor, it is likely that jobs that seem to require spouses to serve in a support role, such as those in the upper of corporate, political, or academic life, are more easily filled by men than women (Bird, 1979; Ranter, 1977~. In a survey of marries] male college graduates (Mortimer, 1976) only 14 percent replied that their wives had no involvement in their careers, and 19 percent said their wives had participated di- rectly in job tasks. Fully 91 percent of min- isters' wives said they were involved in church-related work, but only 18 percent thought they would be equally involved if their husbands were not ministers (Taylor and Hartley, 1975~. The significance of all aspects offamilies- including pregnancy, childbirth, casing for children, housework, and husbands' atti- tudes-is undoubtedly large for many as- pects of womens' work lives, but, as we have seen, the theory and the evidence concern- ing their implications for job segregation by sex is much more limited. We want to cau- tion, too, against the common tendency in social science research to assume that family responsibilities are important only to wom- en s work lives and not to those of men. As Feldberg and Glenn (1979) have pointed out, ad too often women at work are studied as though family was all that mattered for their behavior (overIooking the influence of such factors as working conditions, wages, and promotion opportunities) and men at home or in their communities are studied as though work was aD that mattered (while connec- tions of family and community concerns to work-related issues are ignored). While the available research focuses on the effects of women's family responsibilities on their workplace behavior, we want to stress the necessity for considering all the permuta- tions of work-family interactions, for men as well as women. Human Capital Theory Mincer and Polachek (1974, 1978) and Po- lachek (1976, 1978, 1979, 1981a, 1981b) have argued that women's actual or expected fam- ily obligations dictate the choice of predom- inantly female occupations. ILis argument is derived from human capital theory and is based on the assumption that people make choices to invest in training or to pursue certain occupations with an eye toward max- imizing their lifetime earnings. Women's ex- pectations that they will interrupt their labor force participation to have children are thought to affect their decisions about ed- ucation, training, and occupational choice in several ways. First, because women who do not plan continuous employment expect less return from any job-related investment in education or training, they might select fe- male-dominated occupations, which are be- lieved to require less investment in training. Second, women who anticipate a short pe- riod of employment might try to maximize their starting salaries by selecting female- dominated occupations, which hypotheti- cally start at higher wage levels but yield lower long-run returns to experience than predominantly male occupations (which hy- pothetically pay less to start because they provide on-thejob training and advance- ment opportunity ZelIner, 19751. Third, women who anticipate intermittent em- ployment might choose occupations requir- ing skills that do not depreciate rapidly with disuse or that do not penalize the deprecia- tion. Another possibility is that the household rather than the individual is the maximizing unit that allocates the time of its members according to their talents to realize the great- est economic benefit (Becker, 1974; Moore

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE and SawhiD, 19761. i9 Regardless of their so- cialization, women's poorer earning pros- pects relative to their husbands-either be- cause they plan discontinuous employment, have less education or experience, or be- cause of sex discrimination in the labor mar- ket would lead them to specialize in do- mestic work while their husbands specialize in market work. Wives would retain re- sponsibility for child care and domestic work even when employed Fin time, because their primary orientation wouIcI be toward the family. They might then prefer jobs that do not require overtime, unanticipated work effort, travel, or geographic mobility or that permit flexibility and time oh in domestic emergencies, all hypothetically character- istics of some predominantly female occu- pations.20 Unfortunately, we have few clata either about women's preferences or the degree to which female-dominated occupations might accommodate them, but, before turning to the available empirical literature that at- tempts to test several variants of the human capital thesis, let us note several theoretical objections. First, even if women do seek jobs that require less training, there is no reason to expect them to cluster particularb in female-dominated jobs, since many male- dominated jobs also require little skill or training (Blau and Jusenius, 19761. Second, it Is difficult to establish the direction of causation between labor force intermittence i9 11e idea that the family is a utility maximizing unit has been criticized by feminist theorists (Folbre, 1982; McCrate, 1984~. As Folbre points out, the po- tential for conflict of interest within the family is cir- cumvented by the human capital approach. Much of [emimst scholarship on the family has been devoted to reconceptualizing it Mom the separate vantage points of women and men rather than treating it as an undif- ferentiated unit (Har~nann, 1981; Bapp et al., 1979). 201Nhe sexes do dilier in the average distance they travel to work and their willingness to accept a job in another area (Niemi, 1974; Madden, 1978, 19811. 71 and occupations with low wage growth bleach, cited in Marini and Brinton, 1984) have women in such occupations chosen them, or have they simply accepted what was offered? In general, is constraint a more accurate description of women's behavior than preference or choice? We now turn to the research results. The human capital account of segregation has generated considerable research but conflicting findings. Mincer and Polachek (1974, 1978) attributed the observed rela- tionship between women's work experi- ence, home time, and wages to the depre- ciation of their skills while out of the labor force.2i More recently, Polachek (1981b) cit- ed the link between women's marital status and occupation as indirect evidence. He not- ed Andrea Beller's (1981) finding that being single increased women's probability of working in a male~ominated occupation and interpreted the different distributions of ever-married and never-married women in professional, technical, and administrative jobs in several industrialized nations in Roos's (1983) study as consistent with his thesis. Beller's own interpretation ofthese findings, however, is that single women had only a slightly greater probability (1 percent) of being employed in a nontraditional occu- pation (Belier, 1982b). Boos (1983) contends that the mantal status differences are both 21 The human capital approach has been criticized for failing to take into account the ways in which the attributes of jobs (rather than filmily responsibilities) affect women7s behavior. Low wages (and discrimina- tion) can affect the experience women (or men) choose to accumulate. And women, as well as men, may quit because of undesirable job features, such as lack of opportunities for promotion. On the effect of earnings on experience see Kahn (1980) and the exchange be- tween Sandell and Shapiro (1978) and Mincer and Po- lachek (1978). For evidence of women's quitting, see Blau and Kahn (1981b) and Viscusi (1980); recent stud- ies generally indicate that controlling for pay, occu- pation, industry, and personal productivity char- acteristics, men are as likely to quit as women.

72 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK minimal and inconsistent with the human capital explanation, and England (1982) found that single, childless white women were no more likely than other white women to be employed in sex-atypical occupations. A more direct test examines the relation- ship between discontinuous participation and employment in a female-dominated occu- pation. Polachek (1981a) showed that years out of the labor force increased women's probability of working in female-dominatec! major occupational categories. In a simula- tion he also showed that if all women work- ers were employed continuously, their rep- resentation would increase in broad census categories for professional, managerial, and technical occupations and decrease in the operative and clerical categories. But Cor- coran et al. (1984) pointed out that even under the assumption of continuous em- ployment in Polachek's simulation, the in- dex of segregation would decline by only two points. Contrary to the human capital precliction, wombats actual employment continuity does not appear to be related to holding a female- typed occupation. England's (1982) analysis of 3,754 mature women ages 30 44 in the National Longitudinal Survey found that the percentage of time they had been employed since completing school did not vary with the sex composition of their first or most recent occupation. Nor was the sex com- position of their first occupation correlated with the proportion of (presurvey) years women eventually spent in the labor force (England, 19821. Moreover, the rates at which the earnings of women in predomi- nantly female occupations appreciated with experience did not differ from those for women in less segregated occupations. Eng- land (1984) replicated these findings in a similar analysis of workers surveyed in the University of Michigan's Pane] Study of In- come Dynamics. If the human capital ex- planation is correct, the negative elect of tune out of the labor force on earnings should have been greater in male-dominated oc cupations, but the sizes ofthe effect for more and less male occupations Ridered slightly or not at all. Polachek (1979) has demon- strated that time out of the labor force is positively correlated with wage loss, but not the crucial point that women's human capital depreciates less in predominantly female oc- cupations. In sum, Polachek's thesis has lit- tle support. There is no clear evidence that female occupations penalize intermittence less than male occupations, nor is there much evidence that women who spend more time at home or expect to do so are apt to choose such occupations (England, 1984~. Mincer and Ofek (1982) have refined the human capital approach to women's labor market behavior to encompass the premise that workers recover skills that depreciatecl during a period out of the labor force more rapidly than they accumulate them from scratch. This implies that wage losses fol- lowing a career interruption should be fol- lowed by a period of rapid wage growth. Corcoran et al. (1984) confirmed this for em- ployed wives and female heads of house- holds whose labor market behavior was ob- served over a 13-year period. These women displayed both the hypothesized wage loss after being out of the labor force and the hypothesized period of rapid recovery upon reentry, so that their net loss of wages was small. As Corcoran et al. point out, this re- bound effect has important implications for the human capital explanation of segrega- tion. If depreciation is quickly repaired, it is not economically rational for intermittent workers either to choose minimal invest- ments or to postpone investing in job train- ing until they have returned to the labor force on a permanent basis. And even if fe- male-dominated occupations penalized women less than male-dominated occupa- tions for dropping out, the long-run penal- ties are too small to support the inference that it is economically rational for women to choose such occupations, given their lower wages and lesser return to experience. In fact, England (1984) found that women in

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE male-dominated occupations have higher Onetime earnings than women in female- dominated ones, suggesting that it is not economically rational to choose predomi- nantly female occupations to maximize life- time earnings. The ability of the human capital approach to explain sex segregation ultimately de- pends on determining what women believe is true and how they make labor market decisions. Unfortunately, we know very lit- tle about the beliefs women hold with re- spect to their own investments in human capital or the extent to which their occu- pational choices conform to the mode! of economic rationality. In general, when be- havior is subject to such strong structural and cultural constraints as women's work is, there is less reason to expect a theory that assumes economic optimization to hold. While fumier research on women's own views of the trade-offs between investments in training, wage gains, and time spent with children might illuminate some of the as- sumptions of this approach, the lack of em- pirical confirmation suggests that if women choose female-dominated occupations, they probably do not clo so because they think such occupations will maximize their life- tune earnings. Though the empirical evi- dence is limited, women may choose to limit their work commitment because of familial arrangements. It is even more likely that such a choice is subject to considerable con- straint, as we examine below with regard to child care. Child Care and Occupational Segregation The custom of assigning primary respon- sibility for child care to women has histor- ically restricted their participation in the work force and in education and training programs. To a lesser degree it continues to do so. This can be seen in the differential labor force participation rates of women by the presence and age of their chilclren. For e&ample, in March 1982 half the women with 73 children under age six were in the labor force compared with two-thirds of those with school-age children (U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, 1982b). The belief that young children whose mothers work suffer has contributed to the deterrent effect of having young children on women's em- ployment, although the proportion of work- ing mothers who believe that their em- ployment will harm their children has declined markedly during the past decade (Bumpass, 19821. Recent reviews ofresearch (Kamerman and Hayes, 1982; Hayes and Ka- merman, 1983) indicate that the children of working mothers super no discernible ill ef- fects from their mothers' employment (to the contrary, the added income demons- trably improves the lives of some children), that both wage-working and at-home moth- ers behave similarly toward their children (in such areas as school visits, for example), and that the children of both wage-working and at-home mothers also spend their time similarly (in play, homework, sports, tele- vision viewing, etc.~. Evidence also suggests, however, that the lack of adequate, affordable, and convenient child care prevents some women from par- ticipating in the labor force and limits others to jobs that they believe will accommodate their child care responsibilities. Estimates indicate that one in every five to six nonem- ployed women is not in the labor force be- cause she cannot find satisfactory child care (Shortlidge, 1977; Presser and Baldwin, 19801. National Longitudinal Survey data from 1971 for mothers with children under age six suggest that these figures may be even higher for black women: 26 percent of black mothers surveyed reportedly were constrained from employment by the lack of adequate day care compared with only 5 percent of the white mothers, and 47 per- cent of the nonemployed black and 13 per- cent of white mothers said that they would look for jobs immediately if Dee day care were available (U. S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, 19751.

74 WOMEN,S WOW, MEN'S WORK lke absence of flexible child care alter- natives may also restrict some women to jobs with certain hours, those that do not require overtime or weekend work, and those that permit time off for children's illnesses. Ibe U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1981b) reviews several studies indicating that the unavailability of adequate child care pre- vents women from increasing their hours of employment. The 1977 Current Population Survey on child care indicated that 16 per- cent of employed women would work more hours if they could locate suitable child care (Presser and Baldwin, 19801. Limiting their work hours can in turn reduce women's prospects for promotion, restrict them to jobs for which they are overqualified, or make it impossible for them to take courses that would improve their job options. Survey data confirm the problem child care presents for many employed women (Astir, 1969; Na- tional Commission on Working Women, 1979~. One in 12 of the employed women surveyed In the 1977 special Current Pop- ulation Survey on child care cared for their children while they were at work (U. S. De- partnent of Commerce, Bureau of Me Cen- sus, 1982:61. One in eight women in blue- coDar and service occupations clid so, many of whom managed by working in their own homes (U. S. Department of Commerce, Bu- reau of the Census, 1982:26~. It seems likely that most of these women were restricted to low-paying, pre(lominantly female occu- pations like direct mail or telephone sales. Ike U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1981b) details the ways in which the lack of child care restricts women's ability ancl, in the case of the Work Incentive Program (17VIN), their legal right to take advantage of important federal job training programs. Al- though they discovered no estimates as to the number of women who are denied access to programs because they lack child care, the commission reports that since 1972 fed- eral regulations have required that child care be available before a women is referral for employment or training and describes a 1977 study that identified the lack of adequate child care as one of two primary reasons why women WIN registrants were less likely than men to be assigned to either training or a job. Employed women vary widely in the type of child care they both use (U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1982) and prefer (Presser and Baldwin, 19803. Many women prefer family-based care to group care (U.S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, 1975), although working women surveyed by Paskoff pre- ferred day care at the workplace (cited in U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bu- reau, 1982b). Moreover, as Presser and Baldwin (1980) have shown, it is often the most disadvantaged women young, un- married, minority, and low-income moth- ers who are least likely to locate satisfac- tory arrangements that they can afford. Full- time blue-collar and service workers are less than half as likely as mothers in white-colIar occupations to use group child care and more likely to depend on their children's fathers (U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1982), probably through ar- ranging for parents to work different shifts (Presser, 19801. And finally, some parents do not find any arrangements. Sandra Hof- ferth (1979) estimated that 32,000 pre- schoolers were caring for themselves in 1975. The 1977 Current Population Survey (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1982:42) revealed self-care for .3 percent of the children under five whose mothers worked fillI-time and .5 percent of the children of mothers employed part-dine. Unfortunately, none of the available stud- ies tells us how many employed women might be able to work in less sex-typed oc- cupations if they were not constrained by their need for child care, but the constraints on employment opportunities that inade- quate child care presents for some women are indisputable. It is also important not to lose sight of the fact that some employers may make hiring decisions based on their

EXPLAINING SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE beliefs about individual women's need for child care and the probable reliability of that care. Employers may sometimes be reluc- tant to hire or promote mothers, even those who have secured adequate child care, for certain jobs because they question whether their child care is adequate. We also noted above that male workers may attempt to reinforce women's sense of responsibility for housework and chilct care through their own behavior on the job and at home. Such be- havior would also contribute to job segre- gation. Conclusion In sum, although the research evidence does not enable us to say that women's great- er responsibility for child care, housework, and family care necessarily contributes to sex segregation in the workplace, it almost certainly plays an important role in limiting their employment opportunities in general. Some women (and men) may of course freely choose to place rainily responsibilities first in their lives and employment and work ca- reers second or lower. Whenever women's choices and opportunities are constrained, however, as they most certainly are by fam- ilial responsibilities and the lack of alter- native social arrangements for family care, we must be concerned. For some women, familial responsibilities are clearly not cho- sen but are a burden thrust on them. For others, especially those for whom economic need is greatest, family responsibilities con- tribute all the more to their need for equal opportunity and equitable pay in the work- place. Yet others may feel compelled to bear the greater share of home and family care because their own earning ability is limited compared with their husbands or other male providers. Finally, for most if not ah women, the powerful cultural beliefs regarding wom- en's "natural" responsibility for children, men, and homes enter the workplace un- bidden, conditioning many aspects of their employment. 75 THE OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE AND SEX SEGREGATION We have reviewed evidence indicating that many factors on both the demand and the supply sicles affect labor market outcomes for men and women. We have separately examined the influence of deeply ingrained cultural beliefs, of barriers to employment, of education and socialization, and of family responsibilities on the extent and persis- tence of the sex segregation of jobs. Such an approach runs the risk of losing sight of the interrelationship between opportunities and decisions that occurs within the labor mar- ket. Workers' occupational decisions are of- ten influenced by what they find in the labor market. The labor market presents workers with an occupational opportunity structure that is affected not so much by the actions of any one employer but is rather the cu- mulated effect of the actions of many. Over time, of course, opportunity structures change, at least partly as employers respond to changes in workers' behavior. In this sec- tion we examine evidence regarding the role of the occupational opportunity structure in shaping workers' preferences, knowledge, and occupational outcomes, and thereby contributing to the perpetuation of sex seg- regation. Lloyd Reynolds (1951), in a major con- tribution to the analysis of labor markets, noted that the vacancies to which people have access when they enter the labor mar- ket strongly affect the occupations in which they end up. Reynolds characterized the job mobility Drocess as involving a job search (often based on tips from friends and rela- tives) that typically culminates in a worker taking the first acceptable job offered.22 Be- cause jobs are filled rapidly, workers are seldom in the position to choose among al ~ See Kahn (1978), Sandell (1980)' and Gera and Hasan (1982) for further discussion of He job search process.

76 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN,S WORK ternatives. Reynolds concluded that changes In demand induce the adaptation of the labor supply: opportunity must precede move- ment. Sociologists, too (White, 1970; So- rensen, 1975, 1977; Spilerman, 1977; Konda and Stewman, 1980), have stressed the im- portance of opportunities in determining workers' occupational outcomes. In this scheme, workers' personal characteristics are important primarily as a basis for rationing vacancies in better jobs among the supply of potential applicants, an idea further de- veloped by Thurow (1975~. When gender is used systematically by employers as the ba- sis for selecting workers for certain occu- pations, sex segregation results. Ihis emphasis on opportunities is con- sistent with research on labor market be- havior. Workers frequently do not make ca- reer plans until they have left school and entered the labor market. For example, more than half the workers that Lipset and his aoDeagues (Bendix et al., 1954) surveyed had no specific job plans while in school, and members of a national sample of college stu- dents who did have career plans changed them often (Davis, 1965~. Once in the labor market, many young workers move from job to job seeking work that suits them through trial and error (Folk, 1968; Hall and Kasten, 1976; Sorensen, 1977; Rosenfeld, 1979), be- fore settling into semipermanent posi- tions.23 Examining mobility data from the 1970 census, Rosenfeld and Sorensen (1979) found that young (ages 20-31) anti, to a small- er degree, older (ages 32-41) workers of both sexes frequently changed occupations. Dur- ing the previous five years, 35 percent of young men and 29 percent of young women moved Tom one to another of the 11 broad occupational categories, and 22 percent of older workers did so. More than one in nine people over age 18 who were employed in January 1977 worked in a different detailed 23 Rosenfeld (1984) reviews these and other theories of labor market mobility for young male workers. Occupational category a year later (Rosen- feld, 19791. Jacobs (1983) found that 55 per- cent of women ages 30-44 in 1967 worked in a different three-digit occupation 10 years later. Spilerman (1977) revealed similar re- sults for male construction workers, truck drivers, and mail carriers: between 33 and 43 percent of workers in their twenties changed occupations during a five-year pe- riod, as did between 13 and 27 percent of those in their thirties. Such mobility sug- gests that career decisions made prior to entering the labor force are important for only a minority of workers. It is rather that their labor market careers are likely to be shaped by the opportunities they find. Unfortunately, most systematic research on the effect of job openings on occupational attainment has been limited to men (Rosen- feld, 1982), so evidence of the effect of op- portunities on women's labor market be- havior is largely indirect. The evidence is of three types. The first shows women's re- sponsiveness to labor market conditions and the actual availability of jobs regardless of prior sex labeling. The second shows that the opportunity structure is highly differ- entiated by sex. The third demonstrates flex- ibility in workers' preferences and aspi- rations. Substantial evidence suggests that wom- en's response to labor market conditions and job availability is strong. Cain (1966), Min- cer (1962a), and others have demonstrated that the unprecedented influx of women into the labor force since World War II was a response to increases in wage rates offered. Oppenheimer (1970) has argued that be- cause many of the new jobs created since the mid-194Os were in occupations consid- ered to be "women's work," the rise in fe- male labor force participation can be under- stood as a response to job opportunities that had not previously existed for women. Moreover, once in the labor force, the de- cisions of women to move from one job to another are as strongly influenced as those of men by the wage rate in the current job

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE and by the long-run earning prospects of- fered by ajob change (Blau and Kahn, 1981b). Furthermore, women are responsive to particular occupational openings. When oc- cupations have become open, women have responded by moving into them ---regard- iess of their prior sex label. For example, within a 20-year period, the proportion of clerical workers who were women increased from less than 5 percent in 1880 to over 30 percent in 1900; 20 years later, women made up half of all clerical workers (Rotelia, 19811. During World War II, when employers wel- comed applications from women, their num- bers in such jobs as welding that were for- merly almost exclusively male increased tremendously. 24 Black women's rapid move- ment out of domestic service and into cler- ical occupations (Malveaux, 1982b) that opened to them during the 1960s and 1970s provides another example of women's re- sponsiveness to the availability of occupa- tions. During the 1970s, sharp increases oc- curred in We proportions of women obtaining professional degrees in fields such as law and medicine, which have been dominated by men. We rapid increase in the number of women mining coal (HaD, 1981; CIauss, 1982) indicates that nonprofessional and physically arduous occupations also attract women when they believe they have a chance at jobs. In 1972, no women applied for mining jobs at Peabody Coal Company in Kentucky, the nation's largest coal producer; by 1978, after it had become known Mat women were being hired, 1,131 women applied for mining jobs 24 Milan (1980:103) quotes a 1943 billboard "What Job is mine on the Victory Line?" If you've sewed on buttons, or made but- tonholes, on a machine, you can learn to do spot welding on airplane parts. If you've used an electric mixer in your kitchen, you can learn to run a drill press. If you've followed recipes exactly in mak- ing calces, you can learn to load shell. 77 (Working Women, 19811. A similar growth occurred in applications by women for jobs in shipbuilding yards, when the Maritime Administration began requiring the ship- building contractors to establish goals and timetables for the increased employment of women. The shipbuilding contractors found that as more women were hired, more wom- en applied. Unquestionably, the key reason for the increase of women in this case was goals and timetables (Federal Register 42, No. 158:41379-80), but while equal em- ployment opportunity policies played a role in many of these examples, their effect is hard to document. A more systematic effort is left for the next chapter.25 This is not to say that large pools of women are available for all male-dominated occu- pations. Employers sometimes claim that they cannot comply with federally mandated affirmative action requirements because the pool of eligible women is too small (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Stan- dards Administration, 19811. But shortages are probably most common in occupations that require preemployment training. Of course, women may lack enthusiasm for oc- cupations in which they believe they will encounter hostility or other clifficulties or those in which their femininity might be questioned (Strober, 1984). As Wolf (1981) 25 Several researchers have attempted to assess the impact of equal employment opportunity laws on the labor market outcomes of minorities or women (Ash- enfelter and Heckman, 1976; Goldstein and Smith, 1976; Heckman and Wolpin, 1976; Belier, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982a, 1982b; Flanagan, 1976; Butler and Heckman, 1977; Brown, 1982; Osterman, 1982; Leonard, 1984a,b,c). We discuss their conclusions in the next chapter. Here it is sufficient to mention the difficulty involved in demonstrating the impact of the passage of equal employment laws and regulations on the actual availability of opportunities. The dramatic effect of the passage and enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on voting by blacks (U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1981a) provides some evidence of the impact on peo- ple's behavior of legal changes that open up opportun- ities.

78 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK - notes, young women, for whom norms about appropriate female behavior are salient, may be especially reluctant to take jobs labeled male. After their middle twenties, however, women are less likely to be deterred by the possibility that they may appear unfeminine and more likely to be influenced by the fact that predominantly male jobs are better paid. Chat women have generally responded to opportunities as they became available does not mean that they are not also constrained in their behavior and does not belie the basic sex-differentiated structure of opportuni- ties. For example, as noted above, family obligations may constrain women's re- sponses to particular types of openings. Moreover, despite the opening of new oc- cupations to women, some areas are still explicitly closed to women and many others are implicitly so, as the evidence of barriers in the workplace reviewed above demon- strates. In particular, opportunities at the establishment level are apparently extreme- ly sex-segregated. As Bielby and Baron (1984) found for a sample of California firms, nearly 60 percent were totally segregated, i.e., were either aD male or all female or had a job structure in which each job category was occupied by a single sex. Within establish- ments, particularly large establishments, rules govern workers' opportunities. Rules governing seniority, job bidding rights, transfer, leaves, and so on have often con- tributed to restricting women's career ad- vancement ancI concentrating them in fe- male-dominated jobs. Throughout the economy, the index of segregation remains over 60 women often work with women and men with men, and women's occupa- tions are lower paid. An individual could not fad! to notice the sex-typing of jobs and the <lifferential opportunities apparently avail- able to women and men. And he or she might conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Weir choices are severely constrained. Finally, flexibility in workers' preferences and behavior (and in the labor market as weld is demonstrated by both a fair amount of mobility by men and women between sex- typical and sex-atypical occupations, as mea- sured at the level of detailed! census occu- pations, and the continuing influence of structural factors on their preferences and aspirations. In one recent study of women ages 30-44 in the National Longitudinal Sur- vey who changed jobs between 1967 and 1977, Jacobs (1983) found the sex type of their jobs at these two points uncorrelated (sex type was trichotomized into less than 30 percent female, 30-69.9 percent female, and over 70 percent female). When he rep- licated his analysis with 1980 and 1981 Cur- rent Population Survey data for job changers of both sexes and across the full range of adult ages, Jacobs observed only small cor- relations between the sex type of jobs at the two points (r = .10 for the women, .15 for the men). Rosenfeld's (1984) analyses of a sample of workers who changed jobs during 1972 revealed that about 15 percent of wom- en who worked in jobs that were over half female moved to jobs that were dominated by men, and about 40 percent of women in jobs in which men were the majority moved to similar jobs, with the remaining 40 per- cent moving to jobs that were at least 50 percent female. It is important to note, how- ever, that the sex type of these job shifts is generally measured for the occupational ag- gregates in which the jobs falls. For example, a shift from food server in a cafeteria to cross- ing guard might be measured as a shift from female-typed work to sex-neutral work, be- cause food servers are in an occupational category that is predominantly female while crossing guards are in an integrated occu- pational category (made up of female cross- ing guards and male traffic enforcement of- ficers). Nevertheless the actual move is from one female-type<] job to another. Because sex segregation is pervasive at the level of jobs within firms, many of the moves noted in these studies may be more sex-typical than is apparent. Despite these data prob- lems, however, these recent studies, con- firmed by other researchers (e.g., Corcoran

EXAMINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORSE 79 et al., 1984), suggest that a moderate amount of mobility occurs across sex-typed occu- pations. Evidence also shows that structural fac- tors continue to influence workers' behavior and attitudes after they enter the labor mar- ket. Theorists of labor market segmentation argue that workers' motivation and behavior are governed both by their position in labor market segments and, within organizations, on job ladders (Stevenson, 1978; Harrison and Sum, 1979~. For example, the turnover rates of both sexes are affected by the type of job they hold, so controlling for the latter accounts almost completely for sex differ- ences in turnover (U.S. Department of La- bor, Women's Bureau, 1975; Lloyd and Nie- mi, 1979; Haber et al., 19831. Recent evidence indicates similar effects of job char- actenstics on the psychological functioning of both women and men (Miller et al., 1979; Krause et al., 1982; Kohn et al., 19831. Peo- ple's jobs socialize them to certain attitudes toward work. It follows that exposure to var- ious work opportunities ant! experiences af- fects workers' occupational preferences. For example, longitudinal analysis of mature employed women revealed that their atti- tudes toward work became more favorable in response to their employment experi- ences (Ferree, 19801. The opportunity struc- ture can also be expected to have an effect on workers' occupational aspirations. To il- {ustrate, about half the women in tradition- aBy mate skilled craft jobs whom Walshok (1981a) studied had some childhood access to nontraditional work skills, but, according to Walshok, because they also realized that these fields offered no opportunities for women, they did not seek craR jobs until opportunities opened up. For example, a plumber described her experience: "I've al- ways liked tools . . . (but) it never occurred to me that I would ever be a plumber until somebody handed me a wrench and said 'Hop to it.' I just happened to run into that particular opportunity . . ." (p. 1691. It seems likely, then, that women's aspirations and preferences change as their perception of opportunities changes and that the occu- pational opportunity structure is an impor- tant determinant of their preferences. These findings suggest a fluidity in the labor market, in workers, and in their oc- cupational preferences. Apparently, work- ers can and do circulate in and out of sex- atypical occupations. Our discussion of in- formal barriers above suggested some rea- sons why workers might leave sex-atypical occupations, but farther systematic longi- tudinal research is clearly neecled to un- derstand the circulation of workers across sex-typed occupations. These frequent job changes belie the claim that segregation re- flects the relatively stable choices of women ant! men stemming from their childhood sex- role socialization but support the thesis that workers' job outcomes reflect the available opportunities. The amount of movement be- tween sex-typical and sex-atypical occupa- tions and the responsiveness of women workers to new opportunities makes the continued high degree of sex segregation in the economy even more remarkable. Clear- ly, theories of occupational sex segregation and of discrimination will have to take into account the movement of workers of both sexes in and out of sex-atypical occupations. Further research wiD be needed to ascertain to what extent these occupational changes actually involve movement across sex-typed jobs. In any case, however, the mobility is a significant aspect of the labor market for women and men. Two additional aspects ofthe occupational opportunity structure merit ~discussion. First, the occupational opportunity structure af- fects workers' decisions by affecting their knowledge of job opportunities as well as their preferences. As we noted above in dis- cussing institutionalized barriers in the workplace, many employers use referrals from other workers as an important recruit- ment technique. Thus potential applicants hear about available jobs from friends and other informal networks that tend to be sex

80 WOMEN'S WORK, MEN'S WORK segregated. Women are more likely to hear about available jobs from other women, and, because of the sex-segregated occupational structure, these women are likely to be in women's jobs. Second, it is important to re- member that while the occupational oppor- tunity structure results in part from em- ployers' actions, taken together, workers also participate in its development. Employers determine whom to hire and in what posi- tion, but workers sometimes play an active role, for example when whites or men object to minorities or women (Bergmann and Darnty, 1981), or when applicants accept or refuse jobs that are offered. As Strober (1984) notes, if white men refuse a job at the wage offered, employers may try to hire women or minority men. If some women or minority men accept it, their acceptance will signal to yet others that this job is now available to them. CONCLUSION From our examination of the evidence for several alternative and interrelated expla- nations of sex segregation, our primary con- clusion is that women's occupational choices and preferences play a limited role in ex- plaining occupational segregation by sex. Both explanations for occupational seg- regation that focus on women's own choices sex-role socialization and human capital the- ory recognize that cultural values about men and women condition their socializa- tion and their subsequent educational choices. Sex-role socialization is thought to contribute to labor market segregation by encouraging girls to be primarily responsi- ble for domestic work and boys for bread- winning and by identifying sex-appropriate occupations. Each gender is not only so- cialized to perform sex-specific primary adult roles, but each is also taught the skills, vaI- ues, and occupational aspirations compati- ble with them. The socialization process also encourages the development of different sex- 1irlked personality traits that may ultimately affect the occupations to which women and men fee! suited. The occupational aspira- tions of boys and girls continue to differ as do some occupationally related skills and values, although these differences have de- clined in the recent past. These differences are consistent with what we know of the content of sex-role socialization: parents, teachers, and counselors treat girls and boys clifferently and hold different goals for them. Tracking still occurs within the public school system, as does sex stereotyping in chil- dren's books, including textbooks, and the mass media. Although the link is not estab- lished unequivocally, it seems likely that so- cialization contributes to sex differences in aspirations, preferences, skills, and values and therefore probably contributes to oc- cupational segregation, but we are unsure about the size of any contribution ant! the value of focusing on sex-role socialization as a locus of change. Our literature review sug- gests that the impact of preemployment sex differences in abilities and values on occu- pational outcomes is probably small, except in those occupations that require skills that are usually acquired prior to employment. Further research to Claris the role of oc- cupational aspirations in producing sex-typed occupational outcomes is clearly indicated. The sizable amount of mobility that occurs across occupations, and more specifically across sex-typical and sex-atypical occupa- tions, is inconsistent with the view that out- comes reflect fixed occupational prefer- ences. Rather we have seen that preferences are likely to change over a lifetime, partic- ularly in response to new opportunities. The shifts that have been observed in women's occupational aspirations in recent years are consistent with expanding job opportunities for women in a broader range of occupations. That young women often expect to pursue more traditional occupations than those to which they aspire reinforces our argument that the perceived opportunity structure is of central importance in determining both preferences and outcomes. The educational

EXPLAINING SEX SEGREGATION IN THE WORKPLACE system also contributes to segregation by tracking students in sex-typical vocational courses. The failure of schools to present a wide range of occupational possibilities to students regardless of their sex necessarily narrows the job possibilities that they are likely to pursue later. Advocates of the human capital theory of sex segregation, a second major explanation that attributes sex segregation to women's choices, have constructed! an internally plau- sible account of how segregation could result Mom the economically rational decisions by women who plan to raise families to limit their investments in training and pursue cer- tain occupations. Women do fad] to acquire the training necessary for many jobs, but it is not clear how much this reflects their own choices, lack of encouragement, or the ex- istence of obstacles to their doing so. At- tempts to assess the theory by examining patterns of sex segregation by marital status have yielded conflicting results. Ike results of studies based on panel data that provide the most direct tests have been inconsistent with the theory's predictions. Women who spend more time out of the labor force are no more apt to choose female-dominated oc- cupations than those who plan continuous employment, and female occupations do not penalize intermittent labor force participa- tion less than maTe-dominated ones. Fur- thermore, any depreciation in women's oc- cupational skills Mat does occur when they leave the labor force seems to be quickly repaired, so that long-run income losses are too small to motivate women to postpone investing in training or to select low-paying occupations that require little training. The connections between familial responsibili- ties and work deserve additional research attention, however, because it seems likely that family care obligations do influence peo- ple's labor market behavior. Ibe limited effect of socialization and re- latecl factors that can be demonstrated di- rects our attention to the role offorces within the labor market that limit the set of occu 81 pations from which women workers can choose. Ibis approach recognizes the active role employers play in the labor market as well as the existence of other barriers that reduce women's options. A variety of bar- riers prevent women from exercising free occupational choice. Some barriers were codified into laws, ant! others were permit- ted by the courts. Most such laws are now invalid, but their legacy lingers in both em- ployment practices and the current segre- gated occupational structure. It is important to recall that cultural beliefs about women's proper roles influence decisions by employ- ers and male coworkers. Their behavior as well as institutionalized personnel practices also create barriers in the labor market. On these grounds we conclude that sex segre- gation cannot be ascribed primarily to wom- en's choice of female-dominated occupa- tions. As we have shown, women's exclusion from many occupations has unquestionably contributed to segregation. An examination of the operation of labor markets and of the importance of the occupational structure re- viewed indicates that the labor market out- comes of both men and women commonly depend on the opportunities that are known and open to them. These opportunities have been largely determined by employers and other decision makers in influential posi- tions. Employers have in many instances structured their workplace and personnel policies in ways that have established and reinforced job segregation, but employers also respond to changes in women's and men's attitudes as well as to government initiatives. Consequently the opportunities available to women expand at the same time that public and private awareness of chang- ing attitudes grows. As opportunities have expanded in the past, women have rapidly responded. This seems to be the best ex- planation for some rather dramatic changes over the past decade in women's represen- tation in a variety of occupations, which we examined in Chapter 2.

82 WOMEN'S WORK MEN'S WORK These conclusions have implications for different types of intervention. If it were possible and desirable to do so, reducing sex differences in personal traits produced by socialization without changing the labor market would probably reduce segregation only swiftly. Moreover, early sex-role so- cialization is probably less amenable to pol- icy intervention than are some factors that come into play later, such as tracking in schools ant! barriers women encounter in the labor market. Eliminating the latter fac- tors should contribute to changes in wom- en's occupational aspirations, as well as an increase in their opportunities, and thus both directly and indirectly modify women's dis- tribution across occupations. In the next chapter our examination of the effectiveness of a variety of interventions further dem- onstrates the close relationship between op- portunities and workers' behavior and illus- trates important sources of further change.

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Even though women have made substantial progress in a number of formerly male occupations, sex segregation in the workplace remains a fact of life. This volume probes pertinent questions: Why has the overall degree of sex segregation remained stable in this century? What informal barriers keep it in place? How do socialization and educational practices affect career choices and hiring patterns? How do family responsibilities affect women's work attitudes? And how effective is legislation in lessening the gap between the sexes? Amply supplemented with tables, figures, and insightful examination of trends and research, this volume is a definitive source for what is known today about sex segregation on the job.

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