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Sex Segregation in the Workplace Trends, Explanations, Remedies (1984) / Chapter Skim
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14 Commentary: The Need to Study the Transformation of Job Structures
Pages 261-264

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From page 261...
... I then offer a brief criticism of the conceptual framework they themselves use in discussing the institutional arrangements that promote a sex-divided workplace. It is difficult to draw any general conclusions about the relative importance of the many specific practices described by the authors in explaining patterns of sex segrega
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From page 262...
... contractors" through hiringhall arrangements (GIover and Marshall, 1977:26~. As a consequence ofthe increasing importance of the nonunion sector in the construction industry during the 1970s, the apprenticeship programs and hiring halls of the building trades are no longer effective methods for controlling entry to construction jobs, for either men or women (MilIs, 19801.
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From page 263...
... Roos and Reskin's focus on barriers gives short shrift to those practices that structure the employment opportunities facing women- e.g., job design, wage setting for individual jobs, and location decisions promulgated unilaterally by managers. Instead, 2 There is yet another approach, which Roos and Reskin ignore altogether: the radical feminist literature that focuses not so much on competition or other processes within markets for wage labor as on the relationship of such markets to nonmarket institutions, notably patriarchical relations in the household and the linkages between paid and unpaid work.
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From page 264...
... The importance of job design criteria, job evaluation practices, and the location of work in maintaining sex segregation is hardly considered. But in fact we have evidence that new jobs are often designed and valued explicitly in relation to the gender of the work force expected to be recruited to fill those positions.
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Key Terms

  • employment opportunities
  • market operations
  • employment relationship
  • construction industry
  • institutional arrangements

  • sex segregation
  • building trades
  • industrial relations
  • job design
  • exclusionary practices

  • labor markets
  • career paths
  • apprenticeship programs
  • location decisions
  • professional associations

  • trade unions
  • whatever misconceptions
  • allocate workers
  • wage labor
  • youth labor

  • short shrift
  • efforts offormally
  • structure employment
  • increasing importance
  • hiringhall arrangements

  • regulate labor
  • markets change
  • hiring halls
  • managers bundle
  • institutionalist analysis


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