Sex Segregation in the Workplace Trends, Explanations, Remedies (1984) / Chapter Skim
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4 Job Changing and Occupational Sex Segregation: Sex and Race Comparisons
4 Job Changing and Occupational Sex Segregation: Sex and Race Comparisons
Pages 56-86
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From page 56... ...
Using 1973 data on job changers, this paper will focus on change in occupational sex composition that people experience with a change in employer. It will describe the movement by black and white women and mend among occupations with clifferent sex compositions and will predict movement to or from sexatypical occupations using a range of individual and job history variables.
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From page 57... ...
An early choice of a typically female occupation, therefore, must be to some extent a choice about the type of training to get or the type of major to take in college (Polacheck, 19781. Tra~n~ng for a typically female job might preclude training for a typically male job; for example, when a woman decides or is advised to attend nursing school rather than medical school.
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From page 58... ...
. Reinforcement of Sex Segregation Once women have selected out of, or are excluded from, male occupations, some explanations go on to say, their tenure in typically female occupations furler reduces their ability to change to a typically male occupation.
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From page 59... ...
World War II has already been mentioned as an example where women were sucIdenly brought into men's jobs. After World War II, of course, women were just as brusquely forced out of the labor force or into the usual female jobs (Anderson, 19811.
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From page 60... ...
her or his educational credentials. Many of The third section shows the tYnes of occuthe typical occupations for blacks, however, were sex typed as well as race typed; for example, private household workers were black women anti porters were black men.
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From page 61... ...
Among the black women, however, the atypical jobs into which women moved were considerably different from their previous, typical employment, from private household worker to operative, for example" Jusenius, 1975:28~. There is considerable sex segregation within firms (Blau, 1977~.
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From page 62... ...
. DESCRIPTION OF OCCUPATIONAL SEX COMPOSITION AND EMPLOYER CHANGING Table 4-1 describes the current and previous occupations of the sample in terms of the average percent male.4 White males were most segregated on this measure: On the average, they held occupations composed of over 80 percent of the same sex.
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From page 63... ...
The median percent male of the 1973 occupation was 16 for black women, 16 for white women, 87 for black men, and 93 for white men. Since most people are in the tails of the distributions, the exact points chosen to separate male from female occupations should have relatively little importance as long as they are somewhere in the middle of the distribution.
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From page 64... ...
Black women as compared with white women, and black men as compared with white men, are 7 The movement across occupational sex types as defined here usually involves a relatively large change in the sex composition of a person's occupation; see Appendix A (Results for blacks, not shown, are similar to those in Appendix A.)
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From page 65... ...
For black women, those going to typically female occupations experience the greatest gains. Moving to a maledominated occupation does provide greater wage increases for white women than other types of moves, but white women do not significantly gain in wages by going from one male occupation to another.
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From page 66... ...
2.04 10.26 3.77 Engineering and science technicians 0 0 0 Other professional, salaried 1.36 17.95 4.84 Manager, salaried, manufacturing 0 0 0 Manager, other, salaried 0 7.69 1.61 Sales retail 3.40 0 2.69 Sales other .68 2.56 1.08 Clerical 38.10 20.51 34.41 Crafts 0 7.69 1.62 Durable and nondurable goods operative 15.64 17.95 16.13 Other operative 2.04 10.25 3.76 Nonfarm labor , 0 0 0 Private household worker 10.88 0 8.60 Service worker 25.85 2.56 20.97 Farmer, farm manager 0 0 0 Farm laborer, foreman 0 0 0 Totala 99.99 99.98 99.99 N 147 39 186 Percent white collars 46 62 White Women Engineer, physician, dentist 0 .71 .15 Health worker, teacher (except college) 12.82 11.85 12.61 Engineering and science technicians 0 1.42 .30 Other professional, salaried 1.32 17.54 4.72 Manager, salaried, manufacturing 0 .71 .15 Manager, other, salaried 0 13.03 2.73 Sales retail 5.40 1.18 4.52 Sales—other 0 6.64 1.39 Clerical 47.36 12.32 40.02 Crafts .25 3.09 .85 Durable and nondurable goods operative 9.74 16.12 11.07 Other operative 1.76 5.45 2.54 Nonfarm labor .06 4.26 .95 Private household worker 2.32 0 1.84 Service worker 18.98 4.97 16.04 Farmer, farm manager 0 0 0 Farm laborer, foreman 0 .71 .15 Totala 100.01 100.00 100.03 N 1596 422 2014 Percent white collars 67 65 a Totals differ from 100 due to rounding.
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From page 67... ...
Engineering and science technicians Other professional, salaried Manager, salaried, manufacturing Manager, other, salaried Sales retail Sales other Clerical Crafts Durable and nondurable goods operative Other operative Nonfarm labor Private household worker Service worker Farmer, farm manager Farm laborer, foreman Toting N Percent white collars Occupational Destinations Typicalb Atypical (~)
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From page 68... ...
t Change significantly different from 0 at the .1 level. PREDICTING MOBILITY TO AND BE117VEEN SEX-ATYPICAL OCCUPATIONS In this paper occupations have been dichotomized into sex-typical (for men, occupations with a male majority; for women, occupations with ~50 percent male)
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From page 69... ...
Independent Variables While the various explanations of sex segregation usually focus on its extent and persistence rather than on individuals' mobility from or to sex-typed occupations, they do suggest what might affect mobility across occupational sex-type boundaries. For example, many labor supply explanations of why women are in female occupations em8 An alternative to analyzing mobility across occupational categories would be to use as the dependent variable the distance moved, measured by the difference in percent male between the previous and the 1973 occupation.
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From page 70... ...
To the extent that typically female occupations offer less than fi~-time employment, one might expect those male or female who seek or find full-time work after being employed part-time to be those who are also moving from female to male occupations. Conversely, those taking part-time employment may be going to a more typically female occupation.
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From page 71... ...
required for the previous occupation and whether this occupation was white collar were also included among the independent variables. Especially among men, those who have white-collar jobs that require more skill couicl be those less likely to change their occupation, let alone the sex type of their occupation, across firms.
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From page 72... ...
South less likely to be in sex-atypical occupations. The independent variables thus include measures of employment continuity and intensity, changes in life cycle stage, age, education, training, and level of previous job.
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From page 73... ...
For white men, education has no effect, although it is also true for them that those who hold typically female occupations are more likely to be in white-collar occupations. For white men, skill level of their previous job is significant.
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From page 74... ...
In trying to interpret the effect of a change in hours, one needs to keep in mind that part-time work is not simply redundant with female occupations: The correlation between percentage male of 1973 occupation and whether the job is full-time is only .14 for white men, .12 for black men, .05 for white women, and .06 for black women. Human capital explanations for why women are in typically female jobs predict that being presently married and having taken time out for family care reduce the chances that a woman will move from a sex-typical to a sexatypical occupation.
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From page 75... ...
There is also a marginal negative effect of being under 30 on the chances that black men will stay with a male-dominated occupation. Since predominantly male occupations are the ones in which both black men and black women have the most to gain in terms of wage level, the younger blacks were at a disadvantage in the outcome location of their employer changes.
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From page 76... ...
The correlation between whether the previous job was white collar and its SVP is moderately high about .48 for white women. For black women and men it was approximately .43 and for white men, .34.
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From page 77... ...
At the same time, there were race differences. Even among the women, the black women's female occupations were much less likely to be white collar ones than those held by white women, in part because of the overrepresentation of black women in typically female service occupations.
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From page 78... ...
With the decreasing sex segregation of college majors (Belier, in this volume; Heyns and Bird, 1982) , it will be interesting to measure whether persons use such majors to follow atypical careers.l3 White women and men who held male occupations that required more skill were more likely to stay with a typically male occupation when they changed employers.
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From page 79... ...
While women may have a greater need to support their families now and may be more attracted to typically male jobs, competition for jobs increases the possibility of reverse discrimination charges by male and white workers, as well as informal efforts to exclude women from male occupational territory. Rapid changes in decreasing occupational sex segregation and improving sex role attitudes occurred in the 1970s; social scientists and policy makers need!
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From page 80... ...
(%) 1973 percentage male-previous occupation percentage male = (1973 occupation greater % male)
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From page 81... ...
- 1 to - 10 18.6 0 .6 15.9 -11 to -20 7.4 0 2.5 1.6 -21to -30 5.1 0 5.0 4.8 -31 to -40 4.9 0 10.7 3.2 -41 to -50 1.2 0 23.3 0 -51to -60 0 0 21.4 0 -61to-70 0 0 15.7 0 -71 to -80 0 0 11.3 0 -81 to -90 0 0 6.9 0 -91 to -99 0 0 2.5 0 Totalb 100.0 100.0 99.9 100.1 N 1926 210 159 63 a A sex-typical occupation is one that is at least 51 percent male for men or less than 51 percent male for women. b Totals differ from 100 due to rounding.
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From page 83... ...
83 He ~ ~ ~ Cal Cal Go ~ on ~ o ~ ~ oo ~ U
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From page 84... ...
England, Paula 1982a "Explanations of occupational sex segregation: An interdisciplinary review." Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Dallas, Department of Sociology and Political Economy. 1982b "The failure of human capital theory to explain occupational sex segregation." Journal of Human Resources 17:358-70.
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From page 85... ...
Olsen, Randall 1980 "A least squares correction for selectivity bias." Econometrica 48:1815-20. Oppenheimer, Valerie 1970 The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Govern85 ing Its Growth and Changing Composition.
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From page 86... ...
1973 Women in the Labor Force. New York: Seminar Press.
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