Sex Segregation in the Workplace Trends, Explanations, Remedies (1984) / Chapter Skim
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9 Commentary: Strober's Theory of Occupational Sex Segregation
9 Commentary: Strober's Theory of Occupational Sex Segregation
Pages 157-170
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From page 157... ...
I then discuss sociological and economic ideas that, together with Strober's theory, help explain the job segregation ofthe sexes in the American economy. Strober's theory lays the ultimate blame for occupational sex segregation on the patriarchal system in which men enjoy women's sexual, child-rearing, and domestic services in the household.
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From page 158... ...
Although it attempts to go beyond standard neoclassical assumptions, it retains enough of these assumptions to encounter one of the most serious problems that neociassical explanations for sex discrimination tend to face, namely, the seemingly counterfactual prediction that sex segregation will gradually disappear. Moreover, whether Strober's theory can explain the extremely high levels of occupational sex segregation observed in our economy and preserved through decades of industrial change is unclear.
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From page 159... ...
The long-run implication is that such firms will succeed and discriminatory firms will fail, meaning that occupational sex segregation should gradually disappear. THE PROBLEM OF EXIREME SEGREGATION There is considerable evidence to suggest that the occupational segregation of the sexes in our economy is extreme.
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From page 160... ...
Thus, whether the basic tenets of Strober's theory necessarily imply the existence of high levels of job segregation is unclear. Perhaps in recognition of this possibility, Strober supplements her theory's basic tenets with a set of ad hoc arguments about the actions both employers and male workers are likely to take once a job has become substantially but not entirely occupied by men.
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From page 161... ...
would deliberately raise their wage bill simply because hiring women might "interfere with mate bonding."4 Thus, in the final analysis, the willingness of employers to fill substantially male jobs with more expensive male workers rather than turning to cheaper female workers remains unclear. If it is implausible that employers are the ones likely to ensure that high levels of job segregation exist, then in Strober's theory it must be male workers who do so (the only other possible creators of segregation are women, but in Strober's theory women are assumed to be powerless in the labor market)
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From page 162... ...
While there may be some validity to this idea in historical periods when feminist consciousness transcends class barriers, the idea seems implausible for the late nineteenth century, when most upper-class women apparently had little sense of identification with their working-class sisters or at best had a highly patronizing identification that made clear their own social superiority. Certainly, upper-class women in this period were willing to exploit the working-cIass women they hired as domestic servants, often treating them with little consideration or with the sense that the servant girl had much in common with the lady of the house (Katzman, 1978:158-1731.
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From page 163... ...
The other problematic assumption implicit in Strober's theory is that, in the context of the labor market, men were more interested in maintaining the domestic division of labor between the sexes than any other aspect of the patriarchal system, including the general male prerogative to contro} women and receive deference from them. True, even when acting as employers or as workers, men may have been interested in ensuring that women, as a class, were kept in an economically inferior position and hence forced to participate in a patriarchal family system.
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From page 164... ...
None of these theories, she states, is "capable of answering the three major questions concerning the gender designation of an occupation: its origin, its maintenance, and its change, if any." Athough Strober is narrowly correct no single theory in existence at the time her paper was written could adequately explain the origins and persistence of sex segregation in our economy I am not convinced that a new theory of occupational segregation is needed. The old theories, although incomplete and not always systematic, nonetheless offer considerable insight into the segregation of the workplace, especially when considered together.
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From page 165... ...
While it is clear that statistical discrimination cannot explain all forms of job segregation (e.g., that which occurs among unskilled workers doing equally heavy or light tasks) , this concept nonetheless points to an important process likely to contribute to the segregation of male and female workers.
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From page 167... ...
women's own occupational choices (Matthaei, 1982:194~. Second, as the concept of statistical discrimination suggests, the ideology of separate spheres and the division of labor between the sexes also influenced the actions of various occupational "gatekeepers"— employers, schoolteachers, employment agencies, and the householders who hired domestic servants.
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From page 168... ...
, and other historians are to be believed, women and men themselves helped create the segregation of the workplace by seeking jobs in which only their own sex worked. The tendency to choose a job labeled appropriate for one's own sex was exacerbated by the actions of employers and other occupational gatekeepers who, in keeping with the same precepts of masculine and feminine behaviors and the real differences between women's and 8 Marxist theorists also argue that employers hired men and women for different jobs as part of a strategy of labor market segmentation designed to keep the working class weak by creating divisions within it (e.g., Edwards, 1975~.
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From page 169... ...
at which sex segregation has changed over the past century (Williams, 1979~. The main implication of the views I have presented for the future of occupational segregation between the sexes is very similar to the point with which Strober ends her paper.
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From page 170... ...
Oppenheimer, Valerie Kincade 1970 The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing Its Growth and Changing Composition. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, Population Monograph Series, No.
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