Women's Work, Men's Work Sex Segregation on the Job (1986) / Chapter Skim
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1. The Significance of Sex Segregation in the Workplace
1. The Significance of Sex Segregation in the Workplace
Pages 1-17
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Nearly all women work at some point in their lives, and the average woman today is expected to spend 12 more years working than did women in her mother's generation. In fact, the labor force participation patterns of women ant]
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Finally, in Chapter 5 we present a summary of our findings and make recommendations for strategies to reduce job segregation by sex and increase equal opportunity in the workplace. WOMEN IN THE LABOR MARKET Women's Participation in the Labor Force The majority of adult women are in the labor force, and their rate of participation
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b1980 data are for civilian women age 20 and over. FIGURE 1-1 Labor force participation rates of women ages 16 and over, based on annual averages for selected years between 1955 and 1980.
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Most women who work contribute substantially to or finely support themselves and their dependents. In 1981, about one out of five women workers maintained families on their own.
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Women are more likely than ever to be in the labor force, and they can expect to spend a substantial portion of their adult lives doing paid work. For these reasons the consequences of sex segregation are significant and enduring.
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. The occupation of most women not in the labor force, homemaker, is one of the most see regaled occupations.
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Because the sex composition of occupations differs in different establishments and industries, aggregate measures of occupational segregation underestimate the degree of segregation in the world of work. Aggregate measures of occupational seg regation underestimate segregation for another reason as well.
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Thus, even the 500 detailed occupations classified in the census or the Current Population Survey involve substantial aggregation. Because measures of occupational segregation underestimate segregation in work, it would be very desirable to have data for jobs, rather than occupations, in order to be able to assess the extent of and changes in segregation accurately.
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Although the 1980 census data have not yet been analyzed to assess whether the ef fect of occupational segregation on earnings differentials has changed since 1970 (the year to which the Committee on Occupational Classification and Analysis's estimates pertain) , a crude assessment is possible through the use of published data from the Current Population Survey (CPS)
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For 1970, and for private household workers in 1975, means were estimated by assuming that the category mean to be estimated bore the same ratio to the mean earnings of the total male labor force as it did in 1979. SOURCE: Current Population Reports, Series P-60: No.
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, who found that white-colIar female-dominated jobs in Chicago financial firms paid less largely because they did not compensate incumbents' qualifications and job characteristics at the same rate as did male-dominated jobs. Almost three-quarters of the $2,250 annual wage disparity was due to differential payment for qualifications and job characteristics, while differences in the mean qual ifications of workers in male- and femaledominated jobs accounted for a little more than $300 of the wage gap.
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Despite their limited generalizability to the labor force as a whole, studies of industries and enterprises that make use of very detailed job classifications should be encouraged because they illuminate the processes of segregation. Other Consequences of Sex Segregation Wages are but one aspect of the negative consequences for women of sex segregation in the labor market.
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In recent federal "reductions in force," women in positions with ratings of GS 12 or above were laid oE at a rate 2.3 times the average rate, presumably primarily because they had less seniority, although veterans' preference also protected men (Federal Government Service Task Force, 19811. Thus, in the short run, reducing segregation would place women in more cycIically sensitive sectors or occupations, but in the long run it would probably increase their labor force attachment and thereby reduce both the male-female unemployment clifferential and the overall sex difference in labor force participation.
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also found that after controlling for education and labor force experience, women showed very small gains in occupational status between their first and a subsequent job, while men's occupational status increased over time. Some of the sex difference was due to the differential ability of men and women to benefit from their education and employment experience.
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Suppressed hostility, a nonsupportive boss, little job mobility, and a blue-collar husband were all associated with coronary heart disease among clerical workers, presumably because they contributed to increased stress. However, knowledge of the effects of occupational segregation on workers' levels of psychological stress is very sketchy at this time.
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Women's choices both contribute to and result from occupational segregation, and segregation reduces the resources women bring to the marital unit and thus, potentially, their power in the household. CONCLUSION We have reviewed evidence that shows that sex segregation in employment has significant consequences for women, men, families, and society- but particularly for women.
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