Sex Segregation in the Workplace Trends, Explanations, Remedies (1984) / Chapter Skim
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3 A Woman's Place Is With Other Women: Sex Segregation Within Organizations
3 A Woman's Place Is With Other Women: Sex Segregation Within Organizations
Pages 27-55
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From page 27... ...
Even when job tasks are virtually identical, it is not uncommon to find men and women allocated to distinct job classifications within an orga.
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From page 28... ...
Therefore, if sex biases in allocating workers to job ladders were the only basis for segregating men and women, one would expect less segregation in firms lacking institutionalized employment arrangements—particularly small, labor-intensive, entrepreneurial firms in the so-called economic periphery (Averitt, 19681. This is certainly not the only mechanism placing men and women in distinct job cIassifications, and perhaps a more reasonable hypothesis is that the process of segregation differs according to an organization's administrative arrangements and location within the economy.
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From page 29... ...
DATA AND METHODS We analyzed data on work arrangements in hundreds of economic establishments studfed in California between 1959 and 1979 by the California Occupational Analysis Field Center ofthe U.S. Employment Service.
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From page 30... ...
The sex composition of jobs was not reported for 22 of these firms, reducing the sample size for analyses reported in this paper to 393.2 Of these, about 26 2 Job composition was not enumerated by sex after 1977-1978, apparently because of increasing resistance from establishments approached by the Employment Service. Unfortunately, this occurred when the California Field Center was studying agricultural establishments; therefore, 7 of the 22 observations lacking information on sex composition are in agriculture.
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From page 31... ...
; and 61 percent are independent businesses.3 Over half, 54 percent of these establishments were studied between 1968 and 1971, and 76 percent were visited by the Employment Service between 1965 and 1973. The 393 establishments in our sample employ nearly 47,000 men and over 14,000 women.4 The Documents Lois paper uses two types of data obtained from the records of the California Occupational Analysis Field Center.
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From page 32... ...
.28 .26 .33 .23 .21 .20 1.09 1.11 1.00 .27 13.8 360 Natural log of ratio of establishment job titles to unique DOT titles. 393 1 = some or all employees unionized or covered by formal bidding arrangements.
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From page 33... ...
Fragmentation is measured by the logged ratio of job titles in the establishment to unique 6-dizit DOT titles assigned by the Employment Service analyst.6 It measures the degree to which the organization differentiates its work force administratively beyond what might be expected from a breakdown of detailed occupational functions (Braverman, 1974:70-83; Edwards, 19791. Fragmentation is one strategy for segregating male and female workers who perform similar job tasks; that is, separate names are attached to men's and women's work.
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From page 34... ...
is Workers in nonproduction departments were excluded because the Employment Service did not always collect information denoting entry-level jobs in those departments. The measure was not computed for establishments with less than 15 percent of their labor force in production-related departments.
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From page 35... ...
Over one-half of the establishments are completely segregated, and over threequarters of the workers are in organizations having indices between 96 and 100. Indeed, only 10 percent of the nearly 61,000 workers are in establishment job titles that have both men and women assigned to them.
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From page 38... ...
However, not all small establishments differentiate job tasks to the same degree, and some allocate both men and women to broadly defined job classifications. Continued expansion leads to the implementation of rationalized, bureaucratic personnel procedures in nearly all firms.
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From page 39... ...
(3) Log size Log specialization Manufacturing industry Periphery sector Log fragmentation Union/bidding arrangements Proportion women Proportion production workers Proportion clerical & sales workers Proportion service workers Proportion PTMC workers Average complexity: data Average complexity: people Skill specificity (4)
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From page 40... ...
In sum, work settings in our sample approach complete gender segregation, and descriptive statistics suggest two mechanisms that may contribute to patterns of segregation: one reflecting the impact of administrative structures and personnel procedures that vary with organizational scale and the other pertaining to the occupational composition and skid level of establishments that rely primarily on nonmanual tasks typically done by women. The analyses reported below examine those mechanisms in greater detail.
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From page 41... ...
Standardized Weights 1st 2nd Function Function Log size Log specialization Core sector Ambiguous sector Log fragmentation Union/bidding arrangements Proportion women Proportion production workers .27 (.02)
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From page 42... ...
Union contracts and formal bidding procedures, positional specialization of the work force, reliance on firm-specific skills, and manual job tasks facilitate employer strategies that either keep women out of the establishment completely or confine them in segregated job classifications.
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From page 43... ...
Ten of the 16 establishments in Table 3-6 have relatively low segregation indices simply by virtue of having one job title in which a few men and women are employed. Two real estate firms listed in Table 3-6 have men and women in integrated job titles but segregate them locationally.
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From page 44... ...
Activities Sectora Industryb Total Female Employees Employees Segregation Job Index Titles Sixteen Least-Segregated Establishments 1 Citrus P Agriculture 30 14 12.5 3 2 Language schools A SOC 20 9 23.2 6 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Real estate management A Real estate P Real estate escrow A Real estate Retail books Children's camps Tomatoes Real estate Retail pets Scientific instruments A Educational therapy A A p p p p p SOC SOC SOC SOC Trade Services Agriculture SOC Trade Manufacturing SOC 169 23 105 320 9 10 41 9 3 8 98 137 6 95 128 1 5 23 7 1 .2 57 28.1 33.3 36.3 37.0 37.5 40.0 42.3 50.0 50.0 50.0 53.6 9 5 12 63 5 6 2 2 5 35 14 Plumbing supplies A Manufacturing 11 2 55.6 7 15 Garments A Manufacturing 14 7 57.1 8 16 Children's Jaunts A Services 43 17 57.7 24 Eleven Largest Establishments 17 Mining and quarrying C Manufacturing 825 18 99.5 204 18 Bakery products C Manufacturing 886 268 96.3 60 19 Printing and publishing C Manufacturing 985 236 100.0 148 20 Sugar refining C Manufacturing 1277 82 99.0 337 21 Thoroughbred racing C Services 1464 49 96.1 83 22 Ordnance C Manufacturing 1727 967 99.2 129 23 Banking C SOC 2340 1384 79.2 346 24 Thoroughbred racing C Services 2845 59 99.5 83 25 Airline C SOC 2987 661 90.0 252 26 Telephone C SOC 6874 369 99.2 78 27 Naval shipyards C State, 7825 334 100.0 615 Manufacturing a p = periphery; A = ambiguous; C = core. b S0c = social overhead capital.
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From page 45... ...
Unfortunately, we have no evidence of the generalizability of his or our findings, since the sex composition of jobs was not compiled for the Employment Service's more recent analyses of agricultural work. In sum, no single dimension of desegregation emerges from our analysis of"deviant" organizations.
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From page 46... ...
A company providing telephone service to a large metropolitan area states that it was company policy to employ women "without restriction" except in jobs requiring lifting 25 pounds or more, yet the segregation index was 99.2 (Narrative report 100, 1965~. The ordnance plant, studied in 1970, employed 555 females as assemblers and 243 males as production workers.
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From page 47... ...
, and an insurance company (/\ = 77.21. Among large bureaucracies, assignment of both sexes to the same job titles occurs most often in social overhead capital organizations- firms in health, education, and welfare services, transportation, utilities, finance, insurance, and real estate industries.
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From page 48... ...
Time 1 Time 2 Standard Standard Variable Mean Deviation Mean Deviation Log size 4.26 1.21 4.38 1.21 Log specialization 1.37 0.99 1.48 1.03 Manufacturing industry .79 Core sector .61 Ambiguous sector .32 Periphery sector .07 - — Log fragmentation .18 .20 .17 .19 Union/bidding arrangements .37 — .39 Proportion women .29 .2S .29 .24 Proportion production workers .64 .30 .62 .29 Proportion clerical and sales workers .16 .17 .18 .18 Proportion service workers .08 .22 .09 .22 Proportion PI Ma workers .10 .12 .11 .1 1 a Professional, technical, and managerial. been integrated precisely because they were new; it may take several years for the sex label of a new line of work to become established.
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From page 49... ...
The "integrated" title of chip girl in the poker cardroom is completely segregated by shift; apparently, only males work in the early morning hours. 2} A company that manufactured silkscreened wall coverings hired 4 female inspectors, but continued to discriminate statistically, hiring women only as inspectors, paint mixers, and clericals "due to occasional job requirements of lifting heavy 21 The apparent integration of the chip girl position may simply reflect a typographical error on the 1970 staffing schedule.
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From page 50... ...
In sum, changes in organizational forms and environments and shifting labor supply and demand had little eject on sex segregation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.22 In most of the establishments we examined, the consistently high levels of segregation are probably due to long-standing policies for hiring and allocating workers, perhaps reflecting industrywicle practices predating the establishment itself. Neither a changing 22 Nineteen establishments were visited 3 or more times by the Employment Service.
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From page 51... ...
When balanced sex ratios did occur, they almost always reflected just l or 2 integrated job titles within an establishment. Multivariate analyses revealed that organizational scale is strongly associated with levels of sex segregation.
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From page 52... ...
Eleven had segregation indices less than 75, but 5 were real estate enterprises studied by the Employment Service in 1973. Levels of segregation remained uniformly high in manufacturing establishments studied after 1971.
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From page 53... ...
Changing the sex composition of jobs will require modifying organizations' rules for advancement through internal labor markets. Such changes are easier to accomplish when female workers command firm-specific experience.
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We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of the California Occupational Analysis Field Center. Our thanks go to Isabelle M
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From page 55... ...
Fligstein 1979 "Sex and authority in the workplace: the causes of sexual inequality." American Sociological Review 44:232-52.
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