Occupational Segregation by Sex: The Root of Women’s Disadvantage

  • Barbara R. Bergmann
Chapter

Abstract

The separation of work assignments into “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” must have originated in the earliest stages of human society. That heritage is still largely with us in the twenty-first century, despite the dramatic changes in women’s roles which have occurred in the last 50 years, despite the laws against sex discrimination, and despite the elimination in most jobs of any need to use more strength than women typically have. In the last half-century, women have entered some male preserves, but many jobs remain off limits to them.

Keywords

Sexual Harassment Woman Worker Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Occupational Segregation Woman Candidate 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    See Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Gender & Racial Inequality at Work: The Sources and Consequences of Job Segregation (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1993).Google Scholar
  2. 3.
    Peter A. Riach and Judith Rich, “Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place,” Economic Journal 112 (2002): 480–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. 4.
    See Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender and Society 1, 2 (June 1987): 125–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. To anyone seeking an understanding of women’s displays of gender, Susan Brownmiller, Femininity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984) is indispensable.Google Scholar
  5. 5.
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  6. 6.
    Rosabeth Kantor, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar
  7. 8.
    see Susan Eisenberg, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar
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  9. 11.
    This is the definition given by the Working Women’s Institute, quoted in Suzanne C. Carothers and Peggy Crull, “Contrasting Sexual Harassment in Female- and Male-Dominated Occupations,” in Karen Brodkin Sacks and Dorothy Remy (eds), My Troubles are Going to Have Trouble with Me (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp. 219–220.Google Scholar
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    See the discussion in Catherine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
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  12. 21.
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  13. 23.
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  14. 24.
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  17. 27.
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  18. 29.
    One study recorded that women employees had spent 12% of their time with their present employer in training, while men had spent 20%. Mary Corcoran and Greg J. Duncan, “Work History, Labor Force Attachment, and Earnings Differences between the Sexes,” Journal of Human Resources 14 (winter 1979): 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. 30.
    A review of studies on turnover rates by sex is given in Paula England, “Socioeconomic Explanations of Job Segregation,” in Helen Remick (ed.), Comparable Worth and Wage Discrimination (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
  20. 31.
    Max Boot, “For Plaintiffs’ Lawyers, There’s No Place like Home Depot,” Wall Street Journal, February 12, 1997, section A, p. 17. Boot was on the editorial staff of the paper.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Barbara R. Bergmann 2005

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  • Barbara R. Bergmann

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